Donating to Battle for Wesnoth

[DerrendeJong]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum, however, I've been playing for about 10 years now. I'd like to donate in € to the game. Is there a donation possibility to keep funding the project we all have loved for such a long time already?

Kind regards,

Derren de Jong

[ForestDragon]

hmmm... the thing is, the bfw is not a single person/company project, it's an open source community one, that means most of the work is done by volunteers, so you see where i am pointing at.

[Yomar]

This Wesnoth fanpage has a donation section, the ppl there made a lot of projects for BFW.
You can make donations trough Paypal.

http://wif.altervista.org/

Scroll all the way down and you will see an Icon whit a man putting money in a pot. (Money box, piggy bank or whatever you want to call it).

[Flameslash]

hmmm... the thing is, the bfw is not a single person/company project, it's an open source community one, that means most of the work is done by volunteers, so you see where i am pointing at.

It's not all volunteer work. I think one of the portrait artists is paid?

[Aldarisvet]

hmmm... the thing is, the bfw is not a single person/company project, it's an open source community one, that means most of the work is done by volunteers, so you see where i am pointing at.

It's not all volunteer work. I think one of the portrait artists is paid?

250$ per LordBob's portrait. At least it was.
But actually you can donate to devs by buying iOS port if I not mistaken.

See more here - viewtopic.php?f=13&t=44185&p=597531#p597484

[Celtic_Minstrel]

Let me clarify that there is, at this time, no official way to donate money to Wesnoth. (The comment about the iOS port used to be true in the past as far as I know, but apparently is not true at the present time. I don't know the details.) Vultraz wants to set something up, I believe, but I don't know how long that would take, if it happens at all.

[Tad_Carlucci]

There are two ways to go with for donations.

One is to simply have someone handle it personally. This works well for small teams. I use it, for example, on a personal project where I'm the only one so I can trust myself to spend the money on expenses like domain name and hosting fees.

Larger projects though go for a 'foundation' such as the Apache Foundation. The advantage, there, is, presumably, there is a Board of Directors who oversee things like expenses. Often, here in the US, these would be a "501C3" not-for-profit charitable organization. What that means is, once the 501c3 requirements have been met (they're not that hard, my mother did it for a small local art museum she helped found) donations by US taxpayers are deductible. That can be a big advantage if the project finds it would like to expand to the point where it hires (or funds) individuals for certain roles. Here's a not-too-old article about one I've worked on in the past, which happens to mention a Wesnoth contributor:
http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/in ... id/1319557

[Pentarctagon]

There's also this, though I'm not sure if it's related to what vultraz wants to do or not.

[Spixi]

What about a crowdfunding campaign for Kickstarter or Indiegogo? People can pay any amount they want and gain a little attention for their donation, e. g. a special entry in the game credits for $10, a unit portrait based on the donator for $250, a Wesnoth t-shirt for $25 or a Wesnoth gym bag for $20 ...

[Heindal]

I'm against money donations, except it is done transparent and it is shown where the money goes.
I would accept project-based donations, such as make 20 new portraits or making new title songs by an artist.

Imho you can help the project most, by being an active member and donating your freetime into the game by sending bugreports, testing new versions and addons, commenting in threads, developing scenarios, pieces of code or make a fancy (or not so fancy) images or just be there and play. So far we (i mean the entire community) are a little bit seperated and tend to waste our ressources. One princinple of project management is to appreciate your own work and reuse it cleverly. For example there are great portraits in this game, which could be turned to icons easily (see examples). If some of use would stick together and share the work, we could create a ressource pool for any addon or campaign.

[doofus-01]

Let me clarify that there is, at this time, no official way to donate money to Wesnoth. (The comment about the iOS port used to be true in the past as far as I know, but apparently is not true at the present time. I don't know the details.) Vultraz wants to set something up, I believe, but I don't know how long that would take, if it happens at all.

If there ever is, I hope it is clear where the money is going. From this viewtopic.php?p=597651#p597651 , I didn't get the impression that was such a priority. Not that anyone was trying to pull a con, I think it was more "this is a can of worms I don't want to deal with, and I'm insulted that it's even an issue".

The transparency isn't just for the benefit of the people giving money, it's for all contributors (code, music/art, maybe even content). Why should anyone donate their time and efforts to something being used as a piggy-bank for someone's closed & copyrighted ventures (if not yacht payments)?

Larger projects though go for a 'foundation' such as the Apache Foundation. [...] Often, here in the US, these would be a "501C3" not-for-profit charitable organization. What that means is, once the 501c3 requirements have been met (they're not that hard, my mother did it for a small local art museum she helped found) donations by US taxpayers are deductible. [...]

Since you have already researched this, I'll ask: How could Wesnoth be considered a "charity"? Programming education or art education, or something like that?

[iceiceice]

doofus-01:

I don't know the laws that well, but out of the different sections of 501 c (3) law, I would look at "Social and Recreational Clubs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_or ... .29.287.29

Basically I would suggest to try to organize it as a "hobby club". That's pretty close to how I see the project anyways, at least.

Not sure if that's the best way though... wikipedia says that we would have to keep a bunch of records in this case.

It was mentioned on irc that incorporating as a nonprofit outside the US might be less difficult and expensive anyways. I don't know the details of that though. Relevant irclog date was August 08. https://www.wesnoth.org/irclogs/2016/08 ... -08-08.log

[Spixi]

Maybe it is possible to establish a foundation. In Germany, for example there exists a legal form named "Stiftung" which is similar to a nonprofit Limited (aka "gGmbH" in Germany), but has stronger regulations. It requires a clear foundation purpose, the approval of the federal state and the foundation capital must remain untouched. In contrast to a registered club ("eingetragener Verein") a Stiftung has no members (but it still has a director and may have other organs like a supervisory board) and it is subject to state supervision.

[doofus-01]

I don't know the laws that well, but out of the different sections of 501 c (3) law, I would look at "Social and Recreational Clubs".

The clubs look to be from a different part of the code (c7, not c3), and require memberships.

Maybe it is possible to establish a foundation. In Germany, for example there exists a legal form named "Stiftung" which is similar to a nonprofit Limited (aka "gGmbH" in Germany), but has stronger regulations. It requires a clear foundation purpose, the approval of the federal state and the foundation capital must remain untouched. In contrast to a registered club ("eingetragener Verein") a Stiftung has no members (but it still has a director and may have other organs like a supervisory board) and it is subject to state supervision.

That could solve the membership problem, I guess.

Well, non-experts using Wikipedia as a legal reference will just get confused anyway. Maybe the first donations can be to enable proper legal advice and the correct path forward, if the relevant people don't already know what to do.

It was mentioned on irc that incorporating as a nonprofit outside the US might be less difficult and expensive anyways. I don't know the details of that though. Relevant irclog date was August 08. https://www.wesnoth.org/irclogs/2016/08 ... -08-08.log

Hrm, as said there, maybe EFF could help, or at least advise.

[Tad_Carlucci]

Since you have already researched this, I'll ask: How could Wesnoth be considered a "charity"? Programming education or art education, or something like that?

As I understand it, 501c3 does not require one to be a "charity". That is, the organization does not need to perform works for the community like run a food bank or anything like that.

Rather, it refers to "not for-profit". Simply put, that means that, after expenses and such, any monies remain with the organization and are not disbursed (that is, no per-share dividend as a normal corporation). While a lot more research would be needed to cross all the Ts and dot all the Is, as I recall from my mother's involvement, the issue is two-fold, setting up a legitimate not-for-profit organization (usually just a filing fee .. $35 or so in most states .. with appropriate documents .. articles of incorporation, etc.), and obtaining a wide-enough base of contributions (enough different people contributing enough money each, and none being a 'primary' donor). Once you meet the requirement, there's annual filings, as I recall, both to continue the not-for-profit organization, and to report the funding and expenses to maintain the 501c3 status with the IRS.

At the heart of the matter is setting up the not-for-profit organization. That usually means a corporation, which means a board of directors to oversee it, and officers to run it. Since it's not for profit, the question is who can be on the board, and who can vote for the board, and how one joins that group of voters. (In a for-profit the answer is anyone can be on the board; and you purchase common stock to vote for them.) While, often, boards and offices are paid, that is not a requirement. This organizational step is, to my mind, the hardest part. As I recall, it took quite some time for the Apache Group to come up with a model which satisfied (to some extent) the various interests. At the other extreme is the NTP group which was all done by one man and nobody seems to strongly object to what he did.