If I understand correctly, they cannot accept ‘donations’ because they are a for-profit business, not a non-profit charity. I don’t know exactly what complications this causes, but I think something to do with taxes.
I think they are also unwilling to accept money in exchange for any sort of shares or percentage of the business because they want to remain independent, with no outside party having any say-so in business decisions. (This is the impression I got, anyway.) They also seem to be reluctant to allow something like an Amazon.com link from which they would receive a percentage. I’m not sure what the problem is with this, but may have something to do with maintaining their independence.
I’m just mentioning all of this so you’ll know that various options have been discussed, but as yet no suitable option has presented itself. I can’t remember the dates, but there were several quite lengthy threads in ATMB discussing all of this - an ATMB search on ‘pay-to-post’ might turn up one or two of them.
If you buy books, T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc., they make a small profit from that and it is ‘legitimate’ income that doesn’t affect their tax status.
I’m pretty sure someone suggested, not long ago, what I thought was a good idea - have a lawyer set up some sort of account to which all Dopers could donate as much or as little as they wished, and when sufficient funds were on hand, loan the money to the CR at a practically zero interest rate and open-ended type payment plan. Probably completely unworkable in real life, still leaves the CR sort of ‘morally indebted’ to a particular group, and also means that their books will show this as a legitimate debt, which is going to affect their balance sheet and credit standing, and maybe affect their tax status as well.
I’m not sure I have all of this straight, it is just what I seem to recall from past discussions.
There is extreme reluctance to accept funds that are in any way tied to board membership, I think because of bannings, copyright issues, accusations of favoritism, etc.
They will allow you to buy advertising space in the website banner - so the only two ways for Dopers to legitimately put money in the CR’s hands to help support the board is through merchandise purchases and advertising.
This suggests a couple of possible ways that Dopers could help support the board:
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collect donations and periodically make mass merchandise purchases, perhaps donating SD books to libraries around the world or sending T-shirts to starving kids in Ethiopia (I’m not kidding - that’s what ‘We Are The World’ did with some of the funds collected during the worst of the famine - a large part of the ‘care package’ sent to relieve the famine in Ethiopa consisted of ‘We Are The World’ T-shirts.)
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collect donations and use money to purchase a rotation on the advertising banner that says something like ‘This board partly supported by the membership.’
Just from the little bit I know, however, this would be pretty darn complicated to do on a large enough scale to actually be of any help. It will require some sort of formal organization, probably being registered as a non-profit organization. Officers. Trusted, capable people to handle bank accounts, money, and transactions, and willing to donate their time and expertise to do so. Members who donate are going to want to see some sort of accounting of how much money is collected - how, when, and where it is spent (which means someone doing accounting and supplying financial reports). Members would also most likely want to have approval over money disbursements, which is going to mean some sort of formal contact between officers and donors, perhaps including voting on issues. Some people will be willing to donate large amounts - if they can deduct it off taxes as a charitable contribution. And all of this will have to be done outside of the boards because: 1) the CR can’t risk being involved in whatever is going on since they won’t have any control - what if we do something illegal?; 2) donors would have to remain completely anonymous as far as the board is concerned to prevent favoritism or accusations thereof; and 3) posters who are anonymous here are most likely going to want to remain anonymous in regards to this organization, too.
Complicated, difficult, and hard to manage without having some sort of spillover onto the board. It could work on a small scale - a few Dopers who know each other pooling their money for a brief advertising run or a mass purchase. Or some of the Dopefests - if there is a member attending that everyone trusts pretty well, they could ‘pass-the-hat’ at Dopefests, take a quick vote on how to use the money, and entrust it to the aforementioned trusted Doper. BUT, it would still be necessary to keep all of this activity strictly clear of the boards, not even a mention, for the reasons stated above.
But the best and easiest way I can see to help is to buy the books, buy the mugs, buy the T-shirts - if you’ve got it all already and so do all of your friends and family, donate the stuff to a worthy cause and write it off on your income tax.
