Financial matters of Guix Foundation

[Andreas Enge]

Hello all,

a quick update on our finances. As said before, our previous bank
(Banque Populaire) closed our free bank account last February, after
much back and forth and time spent trying to explain our activities.
A few days after that, the SAC decided that we are okay with paying up to
20€/month at a different bank (and we hope it will be closer to 10€, but
wanted to leave a bit of leeway); this decision was not registered in our
minutes, which I have done just now. The text is in the website git now:
   
https://framagit.org/guix-europe/guix-europe/-/blob/main/website/minutes/sac-20240227.txt?ref_type=heads
and will hopefully appear soon on the website itself under:
   https://foundation.guix.info/minutes/index.html
(I think the link between the git and the website is broken; it would be
great if someone who remembers how it works could have a look at it.)

Our treasurer Tanguy is working with Banque Postale to open an account;
it should also be possible to obtain a credit card so that we could
directly buy stuff (such as new machines) online, even when they are
supposed to be sent to another member, so that the member would not need
to advance the funds. I hope that we will be able to close this chapter
this year!
 

With Adriel at Capitole du Libre we looked at options to receive money via
credit card, which would help people outside Europe send us their
membership fees. Or send donations.

One option would be HelloAsso. They are an "entreprise solidaire d'utilité
sociale", so somewhat less capitalist than the average company.
   https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/HelloAsso
It is easy to set up a page for membership fees, donations and even web
shops. For instance, if you wish to sign up to my aquarium club, you can
do so here:
   
https://www.helloasso.com/associations/association-france-vivipares/adhesions/adhesion
The service is free for everyone, but they heavily encourage people to
make a donation during payment. For instance, for the 25€ membership fee
above they suggest a donation of close to 5€. But with a few clicks, you
can modify the amount and even replace it by 0. Big drawback: You need to
create an account before paying, so HelloAsso will have your payment history.
Of course Guix Foundation would also need an email address and an account
to sign up; I wonder if we should ask Aquilenet for an email address
(which comes with our membership there), or a mailing list, which could
make it easier that several people interact with HelloAsso.

We also looked at Liberapay:
   https://en.liberapay.com/
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberapay
which is a non-profit, which is of course even better.
But they only offer recurring donations. Well, we could probably ask for
a yearly recurring donation of 10€. And they also require that people
create an account for paying.

We then got in touch with the people at the Debian booth next to ours and
with APRIL. It turns out they are running some kind of webshop and donation
platform:
   https://enventelibre.org/en/
Donation collection is free, but then they usually do not give out the
identity of the donors. For sales of goods, they take a percentage, and
give out the identity of the people who pay. If I remember well, they even
do the shipping assuming that one drops off the hoodies at their Paris
store room. They told us that for collecting our membership fees, it should
be possible to combine the features so that they do it for free, but also
give us the names of the members, and suggested to get in touch with them.
Tanguy, I think you are ideally placed to follow this lead!
If it can be set up, it looks like the best option.

The Debian booth also had a little credit card terminal, which looked like
the one I saw for the first time at FOSDEM. It comes from Sumup:
   https://www.sumup.com/en-us/
Strangely, their pricing seems to depend a lot on the country.
If I buy it from France, they have a Black Friday price for the card reader
of 19€ plus VAT, and then taking payments costs 1.75% in person (tapping
a card) or 2.5% online, without monthly fees:
   https://www.sumup.com/fr-fr/tarifs/
On their "en-us" website, this is much more.
I wonder if I should just get one of these (I would be happy to pay the
card reader myself), but it only makes sense if we (or my aquarium club...)
will sell goods at some point in time at FOSDEM or other events.
Which sounds rather unlikely, and then we can still accept cash.

What do you all think?

Andreas