We had a fun(d) volunteer meeting at 9 PM over Jitsi. Attended by @khitab and @mrugesh . We’ll be meeting every week for regular chit chat.
Overall discussion:
We will take up things like administrative aspects (e.g. account setup) in the next FOSS united community meeting with the staff. Shree will own this.
Between @mrugesh and @khitab we have the web and the payments covered. Plan is to build a mockup and get feedback from people.
We are not setting a timeline right now to launch the fund. Instead, we check weekly progress
The objective of the fund is to “involve” more people. Hope is that over time, a larger number of people involved can yield better outcomes
Should the minimum be 1 or 10 was discussed. Sticking with 1 right now. Idea is that every project dev/student/pro can afford this. It’s a binary thing. We are trying to see how many people resonate this idea - rather than collecting a lot of money.
There are various technical TODOs - e.g. razorpay payments, support for recurrent payments, using the API to get stats etc. These will get resolved.
Planning to have a separate domain for rupee fund. Simple page with clear messaging.
Minutes doesn’t cover everything we discussed in 50 minutes we spent together. Among the most fun parts was @mrugesh saying we’ll give a talk at IndiaFOSS 2026. I was joking that If we don’t get enough people by then then slide 2 will be UPI barcode of fund
I would also like to participate in this, @Shree_Kumar. Could you add me as a volunteer, too? Even if I couldn’t join all calls, I will see if I can do my part here.
We’re planning to hop onto the next community call (tentatively 22nd dec). See if you can join that ? Others are joining… I’ll remember to rope you into the next meet too.
I will just be almost at the end of one leg of my travel and hopefully will join! After this call, we will have clarity on what are the actionable steps and then we’ll probably make progress after the vacations
I and Shree were able to meet Rahul and Ansh from the foundation along with other community members for a productive discussion.
Current Action Item: Rahul has agreed to get back to us with the information on the dedicated account after he gets a chance to speak to the team. We will have the details latest by next community call.
Meanwhile we (rest of the TRF volunteers) could meet, hopefully once Shree is more available to go over the excellent designs that Khitab has already has.
Core idea behind TRF is that anybody should be able to contribute, without much friction. Turns out that we do have some friction to contend with.
FOSS United has 12A registration. This enables us to take money without tax. However, all such donations must have a PAN number and address. For the sake of logistics, FOSSU CA has recommended that we don’t take very small donations (e.g. 1/10 etc). The recommended minimum hovers around 500. 500 rs is about the cost of a T-shirt, so anybody spending such amounts may “expect” something in return. Thus, this number does not gel well with the concept… One option is to pay additional for accounting, if the overhead turns out to be high. Such expenses can be deducted from the donations, and the rest used as fund. A feasible plan would be to open up the rupee fund for online donations, and see how we are doing for a month. Then take a call accordingly.
The requirement of a PAN number, unfortunately, rules out student donations online. A way out is to have a donation option (e.g. UPI QR) at physical events. Anonymous donations are taxed at 30%, and that’s a bummer. That (plus any overheads) would be the price for participation.
Summary of overall limitations are:
Additional friction due to requirement for PAN and address
30% tax loss on anonymous donations (e.g. at venue).
We don’t need to setup a separate bank account. One less thing to do… I’m happy that the ball is close to rolling again. Next steps (I guess):
Finalize the fund page
Get the fund page content reviewed.
Launch!
PS: the fund can longer be called “TRF” obviously Maybe just “Rupee Fund”
I don’t think so. This someone’s PAN and address would be required. What’s a practical application of this ? Wondering if this provides a way for many students to pool together and contribute…
Yes, and at first I thought UPI was a silver bullet to pull this off. Every chaiwala takes 10 rs, I keep telling myself - why should this be so hard
FOSS United’s overall budget is on the order of 2 crore rupees. Govt regulations can be a pain. We will have to work with the accountants to ensure things are done right. I’ve seen at-least one NGO take 100 rs a year, and that gives me reason to believe this can be done.
at 9 PM over Jitsi. Attended by @khitab and @mrugesh . We’ll be meeting every week for regular chit chat.
Maybe just “Rupee Fund”