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{% extends "base_conservancy.html" %}
{% load humanize %}
{% block subtitle %}NPOAcct - {% endblock %}
{% block category %}npoacct{% endblock %}
{% block head %}
<link href="/jquery-ui.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/supporter-page.js"></script>
{% endblock %}
{% block content %}
<div class="donate-sidebar">
<table style="background-color:#afe478;width:100%;">
<tr><td style="text-align:center;padding:10px;padding-bottom:10px;">
<div id="donate-box" class="toggle-unit"><h1 class="toggle-content">Donate Now!</h1></div>
<!--
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://js.balancedpayments.com/v1/balanced.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
// FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY - if you already have a server you can POST to, replace
// the URL with the URL to post to.
// go to http://requestb.in/
// click create new request bin and COPY that URL without the ?inspect at the end
var requestBinURL = 'http://requestb.in/1dk2x8y1'; // make sure it doesn't end in ?inspect
var marketplaceUri = '/v1/marketplaces/TEST-MPMp7ZUPDpbj69vk2wGHRVY';
//var marketplaceUri = 'https://www.balancedpayments.com/marketplaces/TEST-MPMp7ZUPDpbj69vk2wGHRVY';
balanced.init(marketplaceUri);
var cardData = {
"name": "Bernhard Riemann", // Optional
"card_number": "4111 1111 1111 1111",
"expiration_month": 4,
"expiration_year": 2014,
};
function evbind(el, ev, handler) {
if(el.addEventListener) {
el.addEventListener(ev, handler, false);
} else if(el.attachEvent) {
el.attachEvent('on'+ev, function() {handler.apply(el);});
}
}
/*
function responseCallbackHandler(response) {
alert(response.status);
switch (response.status) {
case 400:
// missing or invalid field - check response.error for details
console.log(response.error);
break;
case 404:
// your marketplace URI is incorrect
console.log(response.error);
break;
case 201:
// WOO HOO! MONEY!
// response.data.uri == URI of the bank account resource you
// should store this bank account URI to later credit it
console.log(response.data);
var $form = $("#bank-account-form");
// the uri is an opaque token referencing the tokenized bank account
var bank_account_uri = response.data['uri'];
// append the token as a hidden field to submit to the server
$('<input>').attr({
type: 'hidden',
value: bank_account_uri,
name: 'balancedBankAccountURI'
}).appendTo($form);
$form.attr({action: requestBinURL});
$form.get(0).submit();
break;
default:
console.log(response.status);
}
}
//alert('allo?');
var tokenizeInstrument = function(e) {
alert('what"s going on?');
e.preventDefault();
var $form = $('#bank-account-form');
var bankAccountData = {
name: $form.find('.ba-name').val(),
account_number: $form.find('.ba-an').val(),
bank_code: $form.find('.ba-rn').val(),
type: $form.find('select').val()
};
balanced.bankAccount.create(bankAccountData, responseCallbackHandler);
};
$('#bank-account-form').submit(tokenizeInstrument);
*/
</script>
-->
<h3>Support NPO Accounting Project Now!</h3>
{% if fundgoal.fundraiser_donation_count > fundgoal.fundraiser_donation_count_disclose_threshold %}
Thanks to <span id="fundraiser-donation-count">{{ fundgoal.fundraiser_donation_count|intcomma }}</span> donations,<br/>
{% endif %}
$<span id="fundraiser-so-far">{{ fundgoal.fundraiser_so_far_amount|floatformat:0|intcomma }}</span> raised toward<br/>
our $<span id="fundraiser-goal">{{ fundgoal.fundraiser_goal_amount|floatformat:0|intcomma }}</span> goal.<br/>
<div id="progressbar"><span id="fundraiser-percentage">(i.e., {{ fundgoal.percentage_there|floatformat:1 }}%)</span></div>
<p style="font-size: 75%">(Progress bar updated daily.)</p>
<a id="donate" style="text-decoration:none"></a>
<h3 class="donate-box-highlight">Help us reach our goal:</h3>
<!-- PayPal start -->
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="3VRTJALJ5PQRW">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" style="border:0" name="submit" alt="Donate Now!">
<img alt="" style="border:0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>
<!-- PayPal end -->
<!-- Balanced start -
<div class="container">
- <form action="#" method="POST" id="bank-account-form" class="form-horizontal" onsubmit="balanced.card.create(cardData, function(response) { alert(response.status); });"> -
<form action="#" method="POST" id="bank-account-form" class="form-horizontal">
<fieldset>
<legend>Bank Account Information</legend>
<p><label>Account Holder's Name
<input type="text"
autocomplete="off"
placeholder="Bank Account Holder's name"
class="ba-name"
name="ba_name"
value="4111 1111 1111 1111">
</label></p>
<p><label>Routing Number
<input type="text"
autocomplete="off"
placeholder="Routing Number"
class="ba-rn"
name="ba_rn"
value="4">
</label></p>
<p><label>Account Number
<input type="text"
autocomplete="off"
placeholder="Account Number"
class="ba-an"
name="ba_an"
value="2014">
</label></p>
<p><label>Account Something
<input type="text"
autocomplete="off"
placeholder="Account Something"
class="ba-as"
name="ba_as"
value="something someone">
</label></p>
<p><label>Account Type
<select name="ba_type">
<option value='' disabled selected style='display:none;'>
Select Account Type
</option>
<option value="checking" default>CHECKING</option>
<option value="savings">SAVINGS</option>
</select>
</label></p>
<button type="submit" class="btn">
Tokenize
</button>
</fieldset>
</form>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
evbind(document.getElementById('bank-account-form'), 'submit',
function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
console.log(this.ba_as.value);
balanced.card.create(
{
"name": this.ba_as.value,
"card_number": this.ba_name.value,
"expiration_month": this.ba_rn.value,
"expiration_year": this.ba_an.value,
/*
"name": "Bernhard Riemann", // Optional
"card_number": "4111 1111 1111 1111",
"expiration_month": 4,
"expiration_year": 2014,
*/
},
function(response) {
console.log(response);
console.log(response.data.uri);
$.ajax("/campaign/?token=" + response.data.uri + '&amount=' + document.getElementById('bank-account-form').ba_an.value);
alert(response.status);
});
});
</script>
- Balanced end -->
<p>
<span class="donate-box-highlight">Other donation methods:</span>
<div class="toggle-unit">
<h4 class="toggle-control" data-text="Wire Transfer"
data-expanded-text="Wire Transfer:">Wire Transfer</h4>
<div class="toggle-content">
Please
contact <a href="mailto:accounting@sfconservancy.org">Conservancy
by email</a><br/> for wire transfer instructions.<br/>
Please Include your currency and country.<br/>
</div><!-- /.toggle-content -->
</div><!-- /.toggle.unit -->
<div class="toggle-unit">
<h4 class="toggle-control" data-text="Paper Check"
data-expanded-text="Paper Check:">Paper Check</h4>
<div class="toggle-content">
Send paper check donations to:<br/>
Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.<br/>
137 MONTAGUE ST STE 380<br/>
BROOKLYN, NY 11201-3548<br/>
Please write <q>NPO ACCOUNTING</q> in the memo line.
</div><!-- /.toggle-content -->
</div><!-- /.toggle.unit -->
<!-- Flattr start -->
<p><a href="https://flattr.com/thing/1296704/NPOAcct-to-develop-Free-and-Open-Source-Non-Profit-Accounting-Software" target="_blank"><img src="https://api.flattr.com/button/flattr-badge-large.png" alt="Flattr this" title="Flattr this" style="border:0" /></a></p>
<!-- Flattr end -->
</td></tr></table>
</div>
<div class="content-with-donate-sidebar">
<h2>Non-Profit Accounting Software</h2>
<img src="/img/conservancy-accounting-campaign-logo.png" alt="Conservancy accounting campaign logo" style="float:left;" />
<p>Conservancy has a plan to help all non-profit organizations (NPOs) by
creating an Open Source and Free Software accounting system usable by
non-technical bookkeepers, accountants, and non-profit managers. You can
help us do it by donating now.
</p>
<h3>What is the Non-Profit Accounting Software Project?</h3>
<p>To keep their books and produce annual government filings, most NPOs rely
on proprietary software, paying exorbitant licensing fees. This is
fundamentally at cross purposes with their underlying missions of charity,
equality, democracy, and sharing.</p>
<p>This project has the potential to save the non-profit sector
millions in licensing fees every year. Even non-profits that continue to use proprietary accounting
software will benefit, since the existence of quality Open Source and Free
Software for a particular task curtails predatory behavior by proprietary
software companies, and creates a new standard of comparison.</p>
<p>But, more powerfully, this project's realization
will increase the agility and collaborative potential
for the non-profit sector &mdash; a boon to funders, boards, and employees &mdash; bringing the Free Software and general NPO communities
into closer collaboration and understanding.</p>
<p><a href="#endorsements">Endorsers of this effort</a> include April, Fractured Atlas, The Free Software
Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, GNOME Foundation, OpenHatch, Open
Source Initiative, QuestionCopyright.org, and Software in the Public
Interest; all encourage you to <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donate and support it</a>.</p>
<h3>Background</h3>
<p>Like many non-profit organizations (NPOs) in the USA, Conservancy's
financial accounts are audited annually by an independent accounting firm;
we recently completed our fiscal year 2011 audit. As usual, our auditors
asked plenty of questions about our accounting software. Conservancy uses
only Free Software, of course, centered around a set of straightforward reporting
scripts that we created to run on top
of <a href="http://www.ledger-cli.org/">Ledger CLI</a>. (Conservancy's
current configuration using Ledger CLI
is <a href="https://gitorious.org/ledger/npo-ledger-cli">publicly
documented and explained</a>.)</p>
<p>Our auditors were only familiar with proprietary accounting software, and
so our system seemed foreign to them, as it relies on Ledger CLI's text files, Emacs and
version control. During their questions
about our setup, we asked them to hypothetically prescribe a specific
proprietary software setup as a model for managing Conservancy's
accounts. Our chief auditor started by mentioning a few well-known
proprietary solutions. But then he paused and continued: <q>Given
that Conservancy's a fiscal sponsor with so many temporarily restricted
accounts, existing systems really wouldn't do that good of a job for
you</q>.</p>
<p>Indeed, Conservancy reached out into the broader fiscal sponsorship
community beyond the <abbr title="Free, Libre and Open Source Software">FLOSS</abbr>
<abbr title="Non-profit Organization">NPO</abbr> community and discovered that many larger fiscal sponsors &mdash; even
those willing to use proprietary components &mdash; have cobbled together
their own unique systems, idiosyncratically tailored to their specific
environments. Thus, good, well-designed, and reusable accounting software
for non-profit fiscal sponsorship is not just missing in the software
freedom community; it's missing altogether.</p>
<p>The project that Conservancy proposes will take a modest step
forward in creating a better solution for everyone.
<a href="#quotes">Many NPO leaders and academics agree</a> with Conservancy about the
immediate need for work to begin on this
effort. <a id="endorsements"
style="text-decoration:none"></a><a href="http://april.org">April</a>, <a href="https://www.fracturedatlas.org">Fractured Atlas</a>, The <a href="http://fsf.org">Free Software
Foundation</a>, The <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/foundation/">Mozilla
Foundation</a>, The <a href="http://www.gnome.org/foundation/">GNOME Foundation</a>, <a
href="https://openhatch.org/">OpenHatch</a>, <a href="http://opensource.org/node/658">Open Source Initiative</a>,
<a href="http://QuestionCopyright.org">QuestionCopyright.org</a>, and <a href="http://www.spi-inc.org/">Software in the Public Interest</a> have
all endorsed Conservancy's plan, and they encourage you to <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donate and
support it</a>.</p>
<p>Conservancy is uniquely qualified to undertake this task. Using only Free
Software, Conservancy already meets the complex accounting challenges of
earmarked, directed donations for over thirty different projects. We've
learned much about this work in our first seven years of
operation, and we're prepared to apply what we've learned to solve
this problem not just for ourselves, but for anyone who seeks a
solution that both respects software freedom and handles non-profit
accounting for all sorts of NPOs, including fiscal sponsors. General NPO
accounting is just a &ldquo;base case&rdquo; of fiscal sponsorship (i.e.,
an NPO is just a fiscal sponsor for one and only one specific project),
and Conservancy therefore believes a solution that handles fiscal sponsors
will also handle the simpler case as well.</p>
<h3>Why Conservancy Must Fund This Work</h3>
<p>As it stands, nearly all Open Source and Free Software NPOs either use
proprietary software, or fully outsource their bookkeeping and accounting
to third-parties. Those that don't do so (such as Conservancy and the Free
Software Foundation) have long complained that existing Free Software in
this area is inadequate, and have been forced to develop customized,
one-off solutions in-house to make the systems work.</p>
<p>It's highly unlikely that the for-profit sector will adapt existing Free
Software accounting systems to meet the differing needs of NPOs (let alone
the more complex needs of fiscal sponsors; based on
advice from our auditors and other fiscal sponsors, Conservancy understands that <em>no existing
solution &mdash; proprietary or Free &mdash; meets the requirements of fiscal sponsorship accounting</em>). Fiscal sponsors like
Conservancy must track a separate set of books for every project, keeping
in mind that a project may leave at any time for another NPO and need to take
their books with them. Yet, the books of the entire organization are the
aggregate of the books of all these projects, and internally, they need to
be presented as a single set of books for those purposes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, even if an organization is not a fiscal sponsor, non-profit
accounting is <em>just different</em> than for-profit accounting, particularly in
the USA. For example, for-profit-oriented systems often make problematic
assumptions about the workflow of accounting tasks (often because NPOs
rely primarily on donations, rather than fee-for-service or widget-selling
income). Also, non-profit income is categorized differently than
for-profit income, and the reporting requirements vary wildly from their
for-profit equivalents.</p>
<p>Conservancy's existing system is working adequately, but requires daily
the relatively more expensive time of a highly technical person to do the
job of bookkeeping. Also, the system cannot easily be adapted in its
current form for another NPO, unless they also have a
skilled technical employee to act as bookkeeper. This project aims to build
on what Conservancy has learned and produce a non-profit accounting system
that corrects these flaws.</p>
<p>Finally, Conservancy's mission (as stated
on <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/docs/conservancy_Form-1023.pdf">our Form
1023 with the USA IRS</a>) includes producing Open Source and Free Software.
Thus, this project is a great way to pursue Conservancy's mission and address a
specific need that so many NPOs (including us) have. If no one steps up to create Free Software to replace the widely used
proprietary software, NPOs in aggregate will pay <em>much more</em> money for
proprietary licensing than Conservancy will ever spend in developing a
replacement. Please <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donate
generously</a> to help us do it!</p>
<a id="quotes"></a>
<h3>Statements of Support For This Project from Others</h3>
<p><q>As a national fiscal sponsor with over 3,000 arts and cultural projects
under our umbrella, Fractured Atlas is ecstatic about this effort's
potential. After 15 years wrestling with Quickbooks and other inadequate
options, the idea of an open source tool designed specifically for this niche
of the field is beyond welcome. We wholeheartedly support the Conservancy's
work on this front and look forward to seeing where it leads.</q> &mdash;
<a href="https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/bios/staff/1/Adam%20Forest_Huttler">Adam
Huttler</a>, Executive Director, <a href="https://www.fracturedatlas.org">Fractured Atlas</a></p>
<p><q><a href="http://QuestionCopyright.org">QuestionCopyright.org</a> is
just one of many organizations that would benefit from a Free Software
accounting system that is usable by non-technical people. We
enthusiastically support the Conservancy's campaign to create one, and look
forward to using the result.</q>
&mdash; <a href="http://questioncopyright.org/speakers/karl_fogel">Karl
Fogel</a>, Executive Director,
<a href="http://QuestionCopyright.org">QuestionCopyright.org</a></p>
<p><q>As a fiscal sponsor organization with over 30 currently-associated Free
Software projects, Software in the Public Interest shares the Conservancy's
needs and interests in this area, and welcome the opportunity to collaborate
on the development of a Free Software solution to our accounting needs.</q>
&mdash; Bdale Garbee, President, <a href="http://www.spi-inc.org/">Software
in the Public Interest</a></p>
<p><q>Open Source accounting software specifically tailored for non-profits
will fill a pretty large need.</q>
&mdash; <a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/calabrese">Thad Calabrese</a>,
Assistant Professor of Public and Nonprofit Financial Management
at <a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/">NYU Wagner</a>, and co-author
of <cite>Financial Management for Public, Health, and Not-for-Profit
Organizations, 4th Edition</cite>.</p>
<p><q>Creating free software specifically designed to address the needs of
nonprofits is a laudable goal and one that Conservancy is extremely well
positioned to achieve.</q> &mdash; <a href="http://gnomg.org">Karen
Sandler</a>, Executive
Director, The <a href="http://www.gnome.org/foundation/">GNOME Foundation</a></p>
<p><q>The Open Source Initiative has shared the experiences of Software
Freedom Conservancy in navigating the financial management needs of
non-profit organisations and shares their concern. We have many NPOs as
members and we welcome this useful initiative by Conservancy.</q>
&mdash; Simon Phipps, President, <a href="http://opensource.org/node/658">Open Source
Initiative</a></p>
<p><q>The <a href="https://fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> is committed to doing all of its work,
both public-facing and internal, using only free software. We are thankful to
the developers of SQL Ledger for providing the accounting software that has
served us well for many years. As we have grown, so have the complexities of
our finances. Because of our own needs and our mission to help other
organizations &mdash; both inside and outside of the technology sphere
&mdash; run their operations on exclusively free software, we wholeheartedly
support this Conservancy initiative.</q> &mdash; <a href="http://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board#johns">John Sullivan</a>, Executive
Director, <a href="https://fsf.org">Free Software Foundation</a></p>
<p><q>Open source is a great way to solve new problems and make software that
is more flexible and responsive to the needs of the people who use it. That's
as true for the finance industry as it is on the web.</q>
&mdash; <a href="http://blog.mozilla.org/press/bios/mark-surman/">Mark
Surman</a>, Executive
Director, <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/foundation/">Mozilla
Foundation</a></p>
<p><q>As a young free software non-profit, OpenHatch is thrilled to see this
effort; it would let us spend more of our time on programs and less on
paperwork. I have already personally <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donated</a>.</q> &mdash; Asheesh Laroia,
Executive Director, <a href="https://openhatch.org/">OpenHatch</a></p>
<!-- closes div.content-with-donate-sidebar -->
</div>
{% endblock %}
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