doc/en/donations/index.sgml

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<!ENTITY date "$FreeBSD: www/en/donations/index.sgml,v 1.9 2002/12/31 20:20:37 trhodes Exp $">
<!ENTITY title "FreeBSD Donations Liason">
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<h2>Contents</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#goal">Donations Liaison Goals</a></li>
<li><a href="#charter">Donations Liaison Charter</a></li>
<li><a href="#donating">Donating to the FreeBSD Project</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Other Donations Links</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="wantlist.html">FreeBSD Project Want List</a></li>
<li><a href="donors.html">List of FreeBSD Donations</a></li>
</ul>
<a name="goal"></a>
<h2>Project Goal</h2>
<p>As FreeBSD's userbase has grown, the number of people who want
to donate materials or funds to the Project has grown. The
Donations Liaison is intended to streamline the handling of these
donations, and to ensure that they are handled in a timely and
reasonable manner.</p>
<a name="charter"></a>
<h2>Donations Liaison Charter</h2>
<p>The purpose of the Donations Liaison Officer is to encourage and
guide donations according to a set of community-accepted rules.
The DLO has the following responsibilities.</p>
<ul>
<li>to establish and maintain a clear set of procedures for
handling donations.</li>
<li>to respond to donation offers in a timely manner.</li>
<li>to maintain a list of equipment and resources desired by the
FreeBSD community.</li>
<li>to coordinate donation offers with the FreeBSD developer
community.</li>
<li>to shepherd donations through the entire donation
process.</li>
<li>to coordinate a 3-4 person team to ensure that timely,
informed, and correct response is available at all times.</li>
<li>to publicly acknowledge donors and donations when the
donation is complete.</li>
<li>record the status of all loans to the Project.</li>
<li>provide open records of all donations to the FreeBSD
developer community.</li>
</ul>
<a name="donating"></a>
<h2>Donating to the FreeBSD Project</h2>
<p>So, you want to donate something to the FreeBSD Project?
Great! We strongly rely upon user donations to accomplish our
goals. Please read below to see how to contact us about your
donation.</p>
<p>If you don't know what you want to give, take a look at our <a
href="wantlist.html">list of needs</a>. We would appreciate any
items on this list. If you have equipment you'd like to donate,
read on.</p>
<a name="taxcredit"></a>
<h3>Tax Credit for Donations</h3>
<p>The FreeBSD Foundation can act as a charitable organization for
tax purposes. If you live in the United States, your donation
can be deducted from your taxes under certain conditions. If
you want a receipt for tax purposes your contribution, please
let us know when you send information on your donation.</p>
<p>A tax credit is not as easy as it might seem. Deductible
contributions must be shipped to the FreeBSD Foundation. There,
a Foundation volunteer must process the donation and ship it to
the actual recipient. The Foundation must also be able to
demonstrate that the donation is in the <i>public good</i>. All
of this together means that while we probably have developers
who would be interested in that big box of ISA cards in your
closet, you probably cannot get a tax credit for them; the total
work needed to process, ship, and document them far exceeds
their total value.</p>
<p>The FreeBSD Foundation will provide a receipt for delivery of
equipment. They will not, however, provide a fair-market
valuation of the equipment -- in fact, the law forbids them to
do so. We recommend checking elsewhere for valuations of
hardware donations. Since many of our donations are obsolete,
making fair market value hard to judge, we suggest searching on
Ebay or other used equipment sites for prices paid for similar
equipment.</p>
<h3>How to Donate</h3>
<p>Part of the goal of the Donations Liaison Office is to match
donations with developers who can use them. We don't accept
just any donation; we only handle those that have a home with a
developer who can use them to improve FreeBSD. This saves time
all around, and also helps assure donors that what their
contributions are actually supporting the FreeBSD Project. The
down side is that we need some information about your donation
before accepting it.</p>
<p>Donations generally fall into three categories:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#money">Financial</a></li>
<li><a href="#systems">Complete Computers</a></li>
<li><a href="#hardware">Hardware Components</a></li>
</ul>
<p>If you have something to offer that doesn't fall into one of
these categories, don't fret! Just contact us at
donations@FreeBSD.org with your offer. Just because it's not
the run-of-the-mill offer doesn't mean that we're not
interested.</p>
<h3><a name="money">Financial Contributions</a></h3>
<p>The FreeBSD Project does not directly accept financial
contributions. A sponsor organization, the <a
href="http://www.freebsdfoundation.org">FreeBSD Foundation</a>,
accepts financial contributions for us. Please see their Web
site for details on financial contributions.</p>
<h3><a name="systems">Complete Computer Systems</a></h3>
<p>The FreeBSD Project always needs computers. If you have a
computer that you would like to donate to the Project, please
contact us with the following information:</p>
<ul>
<li>Hardware specifications: architecture, motherboard, CPU,
disk space, memory. (If the computer is an Alpha, please also
include the output of the commands SHOW CONFIG, SHOW MEM, and
SHOW DEV.)</li>
<li>Does this system currently run FreeBSD, or is it
unsupported? If possible, please attach a dmesg from a
FreeBSD install on this system.</li>
<li>Are you willing to ship this system?</li>
<li>Your physical location. We try to make shipping as easy and
inexpensive as possible.</li>
<li>Also mention if you want a <a href="#taxcredit">tax
credit</a> for this system. (Note that not all donations can
realistically receive a tax credit, as the cost of supplying
the credit may exceed the value of the donation.)<li>
</ul>
<h3><a name="components">Computer Components</a></h3>
<p>If you have hardware that you would like to donate to the
Project, please contact us with the following information:</p>
<ul>
<li>The hardware description: model, part number, manufacturer,
etc. If you have an exact link to the manufacturer's Web page
for this component, that would be helpful.</li>
<li>Is this hardware currently supported in FreeBSD?</li>
<li>What documentation do you have? A piece of hardware is not
sufficient to write a driver; driver authors need detailed
chipset data from the manufacturer. (Don't worry too much if
you don't have this documentation, as it may be available
elsewhere.)</li>
<li>Are you willing to ship this system?</li>
<li>Your physical location. We try to make shipping as easy and
inexpensive as possible.</li>
<li>Also mention if you want a <a href="#taxcredit">tax
credit</a> for this hardware. (Note that not all donations
can realistically receive a tax credit, as the cost of
supplying the credit may exceed the value of the
donation.)<li>
</ul>
<h3>What we Do with this Information</h3>
<p>Once we have a description of the donation, the Donations
Liaison Office will contact the developer community and offer the
resource to them. If we have a developer who would like the
item, we put the donor and the recipient in contact and let them
work out shipping information. If there are multiple developers
interested in a resource, we try to learn what each developer
would use the resource for and allocate it most effectively for
the Project. If no developer is interested, we turn down the
offer.</p>
<p>Our goal is to place (or decline) all donations within 7 days
of receipt of complete information.</p>
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