I'm currently doing some work for a nonprofit. People often start non-profits when they want to provide a service, they want some one to pay for it, but the parties paying for the service may not be the same as the recipient of the service. For example, large foundations will donate money for nonprofits to provide a social service, such as drug counseling, for people who can't afford to pay for it. Such a model of activity might well suit the open source community. Say TCLUG started an organization to provide installations of hardware and software to small businesses and other organizations that struggle with the cost of technology. TCLUG might then apply for grants (as well as charge modest users feees) to compensate technical specialists for their work. Many foundations are set up by large coporations (like IBM, or Sun), who are very interested in granting funds for projects that coincide with corporate goals. John Kuster -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20020914/465405e7/attachment.htm