Grae
Joined 13 years ago
Joined 13 years ago
I hope something really fun for you comes out of the unexpected scale.
As is common with schools, parks districts, etc., the Open Source Lab partners with a 501(c)(3) organization, the Oregon State University Foundation, to accept tax-deductible donations.
For anyone who would like to directly support the Open Source Lab in staying open, please be sure to indicate "Open Source Lab Fund" on the Oregon State Foundation donation page [0]. Note that their form is *not* set up with any tracking to attribute your gift from your clickthrough, and that any general donations to the Foundation will likely *not* support the Lab in this effort to stay open.
[0] https://give.fororegonstate.org/PL1Uv3Fkug, or click through from the general donation page.
NBD but sharing in case you want this kind of playtesting feedback!
> The best interests of the company and the mission always come first.
That is absolutely not true for the nonprofit inc. The mission comes first. Full stop. The company (LLC) is a means to that end.
Very interested to see how this governance situation continues to change.
Courts can only weigh in on legal issues when people bring a dispute before the court. In this case, if someone did what the author describes it would trigger a lawsuit from typographers, which would give the court a chance to (re)interpret or overturn the existing law.
Yeah I share that conviction. This space is less about creating value and capturing a part of it than creating community (though done well the value created by a thriving community _is_ substantial). And for reasons I've only partially grokked, many people are willing to contribute to a community backed by a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation but not a regular corporation.
My local incarnation, BARN[0][1] is a financially sustainable nonprofit. However, we wouldn't be sustainable as a for-profit company, certainly not if we had investors chasing a return.
[0] bainbridgebarn.org
[1] Disclosure: I'm the executive director and deeply in love with this place. Happy to connect to share our experiences with anyone seriously considering a similar path.
I've been very loosely involved in Interintellect[0], which itches a similar scratch and looks spiritually very similar to the Catherine Project, with perhaps less of a focus on great books and a wider, more modern gamut.
For anyone considering Catherine Project, Interintellect, or St. John's College, I heartily recommend them. Diligently reading through deep written work, then discussing it with other people genuinely interested and invested in the work and the dialogue is a wonderful experience and one that's hugely shaped me.
There's an unfortunate stigma about bankruptcy in the U.S. which leads to _far_ fewer people/businesses filing bankruptcy than should be.
No one is better off limping along under unsustainable debt, not businesses and not individuals. We need to get rid of this stigma and let people use the tools we put in place to solve these problems.
Email me at [email protected] to connect about BARN.