At 06:47 AM 5/31/2002 -0400, Terria Baynor wrote:
Does the EIN require that tax forms be filed quarterly? Have they
been
filed as required? Will they be easily transferred to the next SC? These
are all questions that need to be answered, especially before the election
of a new SC. They need to know what their duties are.
I believe Paul covered these questions:
"The NCGenWeb Project and name was registered with the Secretary of State
of North Carolina as an unincorporated club or association. Registration
required the notarized signature and physical address of the principal
officer of the association, at the time Sharon Williamson. A "one-time"
filing fee of $50.00 was paid. The NCGenWeb Project is registered as
"owned" by its members, not Sharon.
A tax number (EIN) was obtained to register the NCGenWeb Project with the
Internal Revenue Service as an unincorporated non profit association. The
NCGenWeb Project is not registered as a 501(c) organization and is not
required to file any returns because it does not sell anything, accept
contributions, collect dues, or incur expenses. No registration fee was
paid."
The tax number itself would not need to be transferred to the next SC -- it
belongs to the registered entity, not an individual.
Funny how some people see the same situation so differently. I found
it
interesting to hear that Sharon was able to do anything to those sites.
Especially since I still see them up and dancing.....at least on the
ncgenweb.net site. I don't see that she succeeded at all, please correct me
if I am wrong, but I just don't see it. If the hosting company did anything
positive for us, I would love to see what they wrote to Sharon. That would
be proof that it was taken care of. They also have that horrible "powered
by internet trash" can on the site still and refer to cows out of the barn
somehow?? on the taskbar. How is that better than before?
At least there's only the one cow now! And it least there's *something*,
no matter how pitiful, that does seem to indicate some relationship to
genealogy. Remember, the first dancing cow page was awfully similar to the
dancing hamster page -- nothing but those danged cows and that obnoxious
music. Oh, and the ticker-tape on the bottom saying that the page was part
of the NCGenWeb Project.
We can't stop someone from using a domain name, but if I remember right,
Sharon has dealt with at least two web-hosts, who agreed to remove the
pages as violating copyright/service mark regulations. I don't know if the
current webhost has been contacted, but I believe that it's something that
should be considered -- on the
ncgenweb.net page, they're now displaying a
logo marking the NCGenWeb name as trademarked. The name is already
registered as a service mark belonging to the NCGenWeb Project, so at the
very least, the logo is misleading and unethical. And possibly illegal.
I also never understood why anyone in this state got upset that the
domains
disappeared from our grasp considering, the vote of the CC's was, as Angie
said, against purchasing the domain. If we didn't want it, then why are we
complaining? It was never ours, through our own decision, so why were we so
possessive?
Technically, the vote was not against purchasing the domain, but was for
deferring action until a later date. I can only speak to my personal
opinion for why I believed deferring action was the right thing to do -- at
the time, we had come to no decision as to who should purchase it, who and
how to host it, who would pay for these things, etc.
For what it's worth, I didn't have a problem with a CC purchasing the
domain name, per se. I would have considered it an altruistic gesture for
someone to have purchased the domain name and simply held on to it until
the project made some decisions as to how to continue. I would have even
considered it a noble gesture if someone had purchased the domain name and
forwarded it to *our* state page while these issues were being worked
out. Where I *did* have a problem was with someone purchasing the domain
name, then announcing that purchase along with what read like a list of
demands. Perhaps it wasn't his intention, but I don't think I'm the only
person who interpreted it as "I bought the name and I own it and if you
don't do things the way I want them done, you're just out of luck for the
next ten years because it's MINE."
As far as possessive, again, I can only speak for myself. I've been part
of the USGenWeb Project since early on, about as close to the beginning as
you can get if you didn't have an original Kentucky county page <g>. I
didn't even know the first bit of HTML when I adopted my first county! I
had to learn it awfully quick to get my first page on line -- I didn't know
that there was such a thing as a template that you could just fill in the
blanks, or that there were HTML editors that did darned near everything for
you. So maybe I *am* a little possessive about the project -- I don't want
to see anyone do anything that could reflect badly on the project as a whole.
This is all past history though and not something that all needs
rehashing
True -- and there's nothing that can be done now about this particular
issue, even if we hash and rehash it for the next hundred years. I agree,
it's time to look forward and see how we can continue to build our
project. My opinion, we should stay focused on our goal -- putting freely
accessible genealogical data on line. Anything that doesn't further that
goal is a distraction. (I suppose you could consider the last couple of
sentences a bit of my campaign platform <g>.)
Angie