The Liberation of Freenode, Part 5
Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 6:09 pmNow, a lot of people have been asking exactly how much money Rob has been making via PDPC via donations, especially since the server hardware and bandwidth is completely donated, a team of 20 or so volunteers do all the actual work, and the only out of pocket expenses PDPC actually needs to pay for Freenode is the domain registration.
Well, I’m trying to double check to see if all these numbers are correct, but at this moment, I believe the values to be this (years are defined as the fiscal year ending June 30 of that year, starting June 30th of the previous year):
- 2003: +$2,548 from individual donations, +$0 from corporate contributions, -$75 in expenses
- 2004: +$9,611 from individual donations, +$4,800 from corporate contributions, $-889 in expenses
- 2005: +$18,600 from individual donations, +$0 from corporate contributions, $-4,776 in expenses, $-13,824 in wages and employee related taxes
Now, what I want to know is, since every Freenode resource is donated, and Rob is the only one who gets a paycheck from the PDPC, and $13,824 of this money has been (legitimately?) placed towards this paycheck, where is the other $15,995 dollars?
Also, since this doesn’t include 2006’s figures, and the PDPC has to file an IRS 990 because it made more than $25,000 this year, I can imagine a similar problem in relation to 2005’s numbers. So, we’re looking at about $15,000 - 25,000 in funds that, are otherwise, not being used on Freenode in any way, and possibly aren’t in the PDPC’s posession anymore.
What gives, Rob?
OK. I’ll bite… Where did you get the numbers for the expenses for 2003 and 2004? I can’t think of any conceivable way that the PDPC had expenses of only an even $75.
I count the following as being likely expenses for a first-year 501(c)(3), having seen a few sprout over the years:
1) Telephone service. This alone should cost > $75.
2) Utility bills. (I’m sure that the PDPC uses some form of utilities to carry on its work.)
3) Web hosting/domain registration.
4) Legal fees. Just about every non-profit I’ve seen has had to ask for legal assistance of some form in their first year. Lawyers tend to cost more than $75, too. And lawyers wouldn’t stay in business if they provided all their non-profit clients pro bono work. So don’t try to claim pro bono.
There are many many other likely sources of expenditures which I can see for 2003 alone. I’d love to know where you got those numbers.
Apparently, 2003’s $75 in expenses are just for bank service fees (buisness/merchant account for PDPC?). The PDPC afaik doesn’t have a physical location, and only has one actual employee, Rob Levin himself, and he works out of his home.
As for 2004’s $889, theres $278 on there for telecommunications (Rob, from what I’ve heard, uses a SDSL line, maybe this is it?), $258 for travel and transportation, and $352 for bank service fees.
For 2005’s $4,776, thats broken down to $1,830 in accounting fees, $668 service fees, $1,578 telecommunications, $500 staff development (wtf is that?), $200 in other expenses.
So, yeah, theres no legal fees. It seems to be clearly marked $0 in 2004 and 2005. 2003 also has no legal fees. So, either Rob has a lawyer who really is doing pro bono, or he’s trying to pull a fast one on us.
[...] According to an anonymous staffer (who’s identity I wish to protect) thinks Rob has been doing serious cooking of books lately. As I previously quoted some information that I’ve been able to aquire, the PDPC made $18,600 in fiscal year ending June 2005, which as it’s under $25,000, Rob didn’t have to file an IRS form 990 (a tax return for non-profits). [...]