HamOpen.org non-profit progress and membership drive

[Bruce Perens]

Here is a progress report for HamOpen.org, the non-profit that we created to support Open Source and Open Hardware development for Amateur Radio.

You may now join, Please click the link at HamOpen.org

We constituted our board and registered as a public-benefit non-profit corporation in California. We have our 1023 form to become a 501(c)3 non-profit, and I will file that before I leave for Hamvention.

We are exhibiting at Hamvention, both 1909, in Building 1, the "Maxim" building. We will show the M17 project (http://m17project.org) the $14 remote rig controller (http://github.com/BrucePerens/rigcontrol), and Applied Ion Systems (http://appliedionsystems.com/) Open Source electric thrusters for Amateur Satellites. And there will be a membership drive. Mel and Mooneer will be at the TAPR table exhibiting FreeDV.

Hamvention will cost us at least USD$1.5K between the booth and a paid staff person to help the booth volunteers, which I have paid. I am about USD$2K out of pocket to start the organization, and there's a $600 IRS fee for the 501(c)3, so please click that link at HamOpen.org

Future plans are to get grants. But to pass the Public Support Test of the IRS, we need to collect 1/3 of our donations from small donors who individually do not provide more than 2% of our total funds. We plan to implement this by having the grants be 2X matching grants for individual donations. So, if you contribute $15 with a 2X matching grant, that will be $45 for HamOpen.org in total, which is a great motivator for donations.

    Thanks

    Bruce