Server finances

[JCVD1]

To form a non-profit, at least in Canada, you need a "bord of directors/admin council" (sorry, lacking the terms in english, sue my french brain!) and that means it becomes very democratic and members can be voted in and out, including the "president" and bord meetings are mendatory etc. Names, salaries and all financial details are made public too... I mean, i don't mind it all, but in board meetings, if any descisions are taken, there is no hiding or confidencial informations safely away from people eyes.

:O

[Anrilor]

Hi all,

For transparency sake, I'm having a lot of issues with Paypal lately. The only way to accept donations is by creating a business account. Since the US is now cracking down on tax evasion, they want me to fill in a form of our non-profit organisation... Which I'm not... I'm a person, not an organisation (I am non-profit though).

I'm looking into my options, and it looks like the options are the following:

1. Become an actual non-profit for the law. This can be done in two ways:
   1. Start an association. This means that we'll need members, officially. Also a lot of added administration. Members are the biggest challenge in this regard, I think.
   2. A private coorporation. Means I can just jot my own name down. However, this'll cost a lot of money just to set up. (1000 - 2000 dollar or so)
2. Become a bussiness... For that, I'd probably use my existing business to save hassle. Does cost more tax.
3. Move away from PayPal? Or whatever suggestions you might have?

Long story short, they want to know what money comes in, and goes out. That's of course no problem, as everything is handled through Paypal. But someone has to pay the taxes for it, or get exemption.

I'm still looking into how to solve this, as we unfortunately can't continue as we are doing now. I'll of course ensure that the bills get paid while our account is frozen

I was once part of an Arma 3 mil-sim community, and the owner of the community and server set up a non profit private corp. The Paypal donations went to the company, and it even had it's own bank account. He of course had to add in his own money when the donations didn't add up to the cost each month to run the website and servers, but overall it kept his finances out of the loop so to speak, so it didn't get muddled up and he was legally in the clear.

I think for communities that need to be self sufficant, like ours and that milsim community, a non profit private corp is the best way to go. yes the initial set up is costly, or it can be, but once in place, saves a lot of legal liabilities and finance issues that can come from what you are experiencing now.

[DM SummerBreeze]

What about a GoFundMe type of account?

Or Patreon, perhaps.

This one is highly used these days, this would probably be the easy choice.

[Ravial]

Onlyfans Patreon is a good choice.

[Roofshadow]

Patreon makes the most sense to me, since I've also seen other persistent world servers using it, presumably with no issue.

[Zanniej]

How many members would be needed for an association ?

I believe that, all who pay for it would count as "members".

I might give patreon a go. Otherwise, I'll go for either the association or non-profit way. I don't think Paypal has a "gift" option instead of a "donation" option.


Regarding how much goes in and out... you can see that in the (not recently updated) server finances thread
(which I'll update when this is over)