interest in NPO registration? facts? has this been discussed b4?

[Evan Leibovitch]

Some background. I've been involved in the incorporation of at least a 
dozen NPOs in Canada, the US and Brazil. I was one of three people who 
wrote the by-laws of Linux International, and as far as I know LPI still 
has its legal head office address in my old house in Brampton.

Before there is consideration given to making an NPO, it's *critical* to 
actually reach consensus on

   1) Why one is needed

   2) Whether the functions needed by an Ubuntu-Canada (or 
Ubuntu-Toronto) NPO could be served by an existing organization

Having an NPO requires an infrastructure, and bank accounts, and 
official people who are registered with the government and can be held 
accountable for events over which they may have no control. There are 
expenses; at very least the mandatory initial name-search and  
incorporation fees (which run about $300 for an Ontario NPO, slightly 
more for a federally registered org). There are annual reporting 
requirements and sometimes filing fees.

Consider that out of the more than 110 open source user groups in 
Canada, only about a half-dozen are incorporated. Most are perfectly 
capable of doing everything they need with contributed time and 
server/technical resources.

When the services of an incorporated body _are_ needed... throughout the 
open source world, existing bodies effectively act as umbrellas for 
projects so that the amount of admin and legal work required is kept to 
a minimum. The GNOME Foundation, the FSF and other groups provide such 
functions to projects in the US.

In the GTA there are two existing incorporated NPOs who can offer 
occasional services when Ubuntu-Toronto (or any local FOSS group for 
that matter) needs facilities of an incorporated body -- GTALUG 
(incorporated in Ontario) and CLUE (incorporated federally).

In the case of CLUE, one of our first functions was to establish a Linux 
presence at tradeshows such as Comdex Canada on behalf of local user 
groups -- show managers required an incorporated body to sign for the 
space, even though it was donated for free. CLUE has since provided 
similar services to LUGs across the country -- most recently we have 
provided both incorporated-signing-body and banking services for the 
Open Source Weekend event in Ottawa.

GTALUG is, by most estimations, an extremely underutilized corporation. 
I'm sure they would love to get involved with providing 
incorporated-body functions for an Ubuntu group as it has done for TLUG 
and NewTLUG.

My point is that there are already resources that can provide occasional 
services of an incorporated body, resources that have already consumed 
many volunteer hours by people committed to open source. Before creating 
yet another NPO I would recommend that people understand the pluses and 
minuses, have a clear idea of the projects and functions they want that 
would require an NPO, and to consider whether the occasional NPO 
services this group requires could be fulfilled by one of the existing 
groups with similar goals.

- Evan