Donation Policy

(Approved by advisory board in meeting at http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meeting/2012/mer-meeting.2012-06-01-11.01.html )

Mer is a cooperative project and depends on the generosity of supporters for funding community incurred expenses.

Our primary expenses are related to hosting and we are in the process of setting up a bank account to allow us to handle donations in a transparent manner.

Mer produces software that we expect to be installed directly onto devices - we have to take security very seriously. For this reason we can't accept donations of hardware for which we don't have exclusive control and the fairest way to do this is to make no exceptions. All hardware for Mer Project services will be obtained directly by the Mer Project from Hetzner unless the Advisory Board approves another solution. For organisational contributions we can organise invoicing via a UK VAT-registered limited company for a service to create and maintain Mer servers.

Our approach to funding hosting is to ensure that we have enough money to cover our hosting expenses for the next 12 months. ie we'll ensure that our projected bills don't exceed our balance before we commit to increasing our costs. For people who pay periodically we'll periodically re-confirm their commitment to continuing donations for the next six months and adjust our expenditure accordingly.