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As for a "loan/donation" If MICE were to get the bank account down to minimum values to pay the support contract for 3 years, and port fees were slower than expected to come in, you can count on me to personally loan/donate MICE the fees to cover other normal expenses like ARIN fees, or misc parts. From: MICE Discuss [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jason Hanke Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2018 11:35 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MICE-DISCUSS] Arista Support Contract imho donations are going to shift the burden back to the faithful. This is a normal business expense and the savings will help everyone. As far as source for a possible loan, I would ask our bank first and then open it up to members and outsiders take the best deal. The bank is usually the cheapest money. On Feb 1, 2018 11:00 PM, "Richard Laager" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: On 02/01/2018 09:35 PM, Jason Hanke wrote: > How about getting a loan to cover the difference? That way we could get > the savings and not affect the revenue percentages. The message of mine you replied to was about the 85% rule, which applies to revenue. That was in the context of donations. We need to ensure that, each year, our revenue is at least 85% derived from members. For small donations that together don't add up to anywhere near 15%, this is not a concern. If someone wants to make a _sizable_ donation or we get a lot of small donations, that should be okay as long as they are from members, but we may want to double-check with a professional first. If non-member donations would push member-derived revenue under the 85% mark, we lose our Federal tax-exempt status for that year. See: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part7/irm_07-025-012 However, there is a _separate_ issue as to whether donations from members count in the same way as purchases (i.e. port fees) when calculating capital credits. If someone wants to donate, we'll need to seek professional guidance about how to handle that. Either way, I imagine we would be able to accept the donation. As far as I can see, loans aren't relevant to the 85% member revenue test. Putting three year's worth of major expenses into one year would have an effect on capital credits. As far as I know, we are accounting on a cash basis. By "bunching" expenses into the first year, our profit will be lower in the first year and higher in the second and third years. This means that members will accrue lower capital credits in year one and higher capital credits in years two and three. If everything else was equal (no members come or go or pay different port fees), this would be irrelevant. But in practice, it will create some variation. With cash basis accounting, it seems to me that a loan should smooth that out. Is that variation in capital credits a problem? Probably not. It seems like it's going to be part of the natural cycle. I expect our typical pattern over the long term will be to build up cash for a while and then spend a big chunk on switch hardware before starting the cycle over. -- Richard To unsubscribe from the MICE-DISCUSS list, click the following link: http://lists.iphouse.net/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=MICE-DISCUSS&A=1