A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
Hm. I would be happy to be Chick What Keeps Charity Records, since I have the records of who gave what and it's my arse if IRS comes a knocking. I can send a record of the amount, charity name, when the donation was received by charity, reason for giving, any other pertinent but not personal info to ita or you for Buffista record keeping/posterity.
It's been a few hundred, not much, but still, I think important as a community to have a record of charitable deeds, so that well hellfire comes to lick our asses, we can maybe use such deeds for a free snowcone every century.
Allyson, if you remember back when I talked to the IRS for you, they said if you called them, they would be glad to talk to you about how incorporating as a non-profit fan organization (it fits under cultural activities). Don't know if your income is high enough for this to do you any good. (And it is none of my business. don't want to know.) You could deduct some of your rent and utilities, most of your book and DVD purchases, part of your internet costs, purchase of action figures. As at present you would not deduct these chartiable contributiosn (unless they came from you rather than other people) because you would never count them in your income. But the people who donated could also count them.
A slightly less uplifting version of this is the bar in downtown Milwaukee called "My Office."
I *just* got this as I was driving this morning. I had been trying to figure out why a homeless person would want to tell a potential employer that he lived in his office. Would whoever stole my brain please return it? I need it...obviously pretty badly.
Right!
Yes!
It came up during the last exile ... CafePress and their new TOS. I don't think we should be keeping our swag there, not if it risks costing us dosh.
Are there alternatives? Ideas?
Here is a clarification to that bit of the Member Agreement (bold mine):
Clarification: Members who have commission in their accounts and do not reach the $25 minimum payment threshold within 6 months will be subject to a $25 per month account maintenance fee until their account balance is $0. Members are not charged beyond the balance in their accounts (we will not charge your credit card, send you a bill, etc). The CafePress.com service and CafePress Basic Shops are still free, and if you have not commissions in your account, you will never be charged the account maintenance fee. This fee is only charged to those members with outstanding commission that never reach the payment threshold.
Which means that most of our stores will never be charged, since they earn no commission.
The original swag stores have a current commission of about $16. In order to get that out of CafePress' hands (before July 1st, when the new agreement goes into effect), what I can do is close those stores, and reopen them w/o commission. This will cost $5, but we won't have to pay the $25 commission fee, ever.
The other bit that was worrying is this:
6.2 You hereby grant to CafePress.com a royalty-free, worldwide, nonexclusive, right and license to use the trademarks, trade names, designs, logos and other images that you upload to your image basket in connection with your use of the CafePress.com Service ("Party Marks"). If you or CafePress.com terminate your account, CafePress.com will cease its use of the Party Marks within 90 days of the termination.
The only difference between this and the old member agreement is the last sentence, which to me looks like it puts an end date on their license that wasn't there before, which is of the good.
Isn't commission earned unpredictably? Or do they not still have volume discounts?
Isn't commission earned unpredictably? Or do they not still have volume discounts?
I can look up their definition of "volume" on the site, but we never earned any commission during the busiest F2F ordering period, so I'm not worried.
[edit: Volume pricing starts at 20 items/month. So far, we've never been close to that.]
We have gotten money back from them. Not a lot, but some.
Volume pricing starts at 20 items/month
It has to be the same item/same pattern, I'm guessing, right? Then we should be good.
