[R] Supporting R/Membership

Fri Sep 30 13:19:10 CEST 2011

Dear Joshua and others,

Please excuse the slow response, but I wanted to consult other R Foundation members before answering.

The R Foundation is coincidentally discussing fund-raising and the use of funds that are raised by the Foundation. There are costs associated with keeping R going, such as the maintenance of CRAN and R-Forge, and there might well be other areas to which donations can be applied. If the R Foundation decides that it would be desirable to raise more funds, we'll consider your helpful suggestions about how to do so.

Best,
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Senator William McMaster
  Professor of Social Statistics
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
> Behalf Of Joshua Wiley
> Sent: September-26-11 11:31 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Supporting R/Membership
> 
> Thanks for the insight, Ben.  I can appreciate not wanting the hassle of
> administration, and I suppose there are already sufficient funds for the
> fixed costs of stuff like the website.
> 
> I like the idea of an intermediary that would handle all the issues related
> to donations, non-profit, etc.  Then funds could periodically be transfered
> to the R Foundation or if there were specific related community projects
> (useR and crantastic come to mind), it could also support those.  I do not
> see a reasonable solution to the trust issue, though.  The only people I
> think the community could get behind as trustworthy are the developers, which
> gets right back to R core dealing with administration.
> 
> On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Spencer Graves <spencer.graves <at> structuremonitoring.com> writes:
> >
> >>
> >> On 9/25/2011 9:57 AM, Berend Hasselman wrote:
> >> > Joshua Wiley-2 wrote:
> >> >> So we have at least three people interested, maybe not call for a
> >> >> totally new system.  What about a PDF form that could be filled
> >> >> out digitally, saved, encrypted using the R Foundation's public
> >> >> key, and emailed?  GPG keys are free, and I can make a fillable
> >> >> PDF.  Is that sufficiently secure?  Are there risks I am missing?
> >> >> In fact, attached is a sample of how the form could work.  For the
> >> >> overall signature, you could just retype your name, but for the
> >> >> credit card, the field is a digital signature.
> >> >>
> >> >> I know what you mean about being uncomfortable sending credit card
> >> >> details by mail---I'd almost just as well send it in plain text
> >> >> via email as plain text via post.
> >> >>
> >> >> Anymore thoughts?  I did check out Paypal again, even for a
> >> >> nonprofit, there is a 2.2% transaction fee + additional fees for
> >> >> currency conversion + international fees.
> >>
> >>        Just brainstorming:
> >>
> >>              1.  What are the charges for alternative methods of
> >> payment?  Josh said Paypal charges 2.2 percent.  What about various
> >> credit and debit card clearing services plus paper checks and
> >> electronic funds transfers?
> >>
> >>              2.  In which locations and currencies does the R Project
> >> incur costs?
> >>
> >>              3.  Answers to these two questions could help us design
> >> a system that makes it easy for people to contribute while also
> >> maximizing the portion of the money contributed that actually
> >> supports the R Project (minimizing losses to bank charges).  [Getting
> >> this information is not easy, because financial institutions have
> >> innovated to increase the complexity of the services they offer,
> >> because this makes it easy for them to charge higher fees then they
> >> could if consumers could more easily compare what are essentially
> >> commodity services.  See, e.g., Stiglitz 2010 Freefall, Norton, esp.
> >> ch. 6.]
> >>
> >>        My biases are to avoid if possibly the large multinational
> >> banks, because the evidence I've seen (e.g., from Stiglitz and
> >> others) is that the largest banks are primary drivers of political
> >> corruption and instability in the global financial markets.  My
> >> biases tend toward credit unions, at least some and perhaps all of
> >> which are officially owned by their customers and are legally
> >> constrained in their lending practices to avoid the most risky and
> >> destabilizing types of investments.  However, those are issues
> >> largely independent of what the R Project can do to maximize revenue
> >> from contributions and ease of managing its finances while minimizing
> losses to bank charges.
> >>
> >>        Best Wishes,
> >>        Spencer
> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Josh
> >> >>
> >> > I would also be interested.
> >> > A similar pdf form for donations could also be considered.
> >> >
> >> > It's most likely I would want to transfer money directly into the R
> >> > bank account.
> >> >
> >> > Berend
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >
> >  Just a few cents on this topic. By extrapolation from previous
> > conversations with one R-core member and general observation of the R
> > scene, and at the risk of putting words in their mouths (they can
> > always speak up if they disagree), R-core are not tremendously
> > interested in increasing the stream of donations. They would be
> > unlikely to object, but because almost any major expansion of revenue
> > would mean a lot more time doing R administration (i.e. figuring out
> > how to spend the money and spending it), my impression is that they
> > feel that getting lots more money would be more trouble than it's worth.
> >
> > Of course, anyone else could set up an "R bank" (they could then send
> > the money to the R foundation, or alternatively disburse it in some
> > sensible way as specified in advance or requested by the donor -- e.g.
> > administering a bounty system, giving grants, etc.)  -- if people
> > trusted them not to run off with the money. But then whoever it was
> > would have to deal with all the administration, establish non-profit
> > status to avoid tax burden, etc ...
> >
> >  http://www.r-project.org/foundation/donations.html states that the R
> > foundation is not registered as a non-profit organization in the US,
> > which might make it difficult to get Paypal non-profit rates (I don't
> > know how they go about deciding on the status of a foreign non-profit
> > ...)
> >
> >  My own personal feeling is that if anyone can figure out how to do
> > this, even a 2 or 3% banking overhead would be worth it -- 97% of
> > something is a lot more than 99% or 100% of nothing!
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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> > PLEASE do read the posting guide
> > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Joshua Wiley
> Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
> Programmer Analyst II, ATS Statistical Consulting Group University of
> California, Los Angeles https://joshuawiley.com/
> 
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