[Commotion-discuss] Geting funding for a wireless mesh project

[Ben West]

What Adam describes is called Fiscal Sponsorship, i.e. partnering with an
established 501.c3 to receive a grant through their non-profit status.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship

It is actually is a common method for US-based non profits to affiliate
with related groups in the grants they receive.  I've been involved with
several fiscal sponsorship relationships here in St. Louis (including
WasabiNet).

The IRS guidelines for pursuing fiscal sponsorship generally require that
whatever non-profit you're partnering with have a public mission statement
that aligns somewhat with your own goals.  Also, it is conventional that
the partner non-profit take 10 to 15% fee of the grant award as
administrative fee.  Finally, the non-profit will need all records of how
any grant funds are spent, e.g. receipts and such.

Any fiscal sponsorship relationship would need to be defined in a written
contract between your group and the non-profit, and signed before pursing
any grant applications.  I have a boilerplate contract I've used in the
past that I could share.

Do please note that many funders specifically do *not* award grants for
fiscal sponsorships, and unfortunately they don't always announce this
restriction publicly.  Be sure to ask this of any funders you come in
contact with.

(P.S. It is always a good idea to call up any prospective funder and chat.
Just submitting forms online is pretty bland; they like to hear from the
people they're supporting.)


On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:59 PM, <sp2ong at wp.pl> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I will be following with this subject because we have starting built Mesh
> network base on openwrt and olsrd v1 for hamradio in Poland. We have use
> Mikrotik RB411, RB112, TP-Link WR740, Ubiquiti like Nanostation2, M2 and
> WA5210G.
>
> We have in a few cities running small local mesh networks. Distances
> average between nodes are about 1 - 3  and more kms.
>
> We use frequency below 2400 Mhz where we have our bandplan for hamradio
> and we can use channel width 5 or 10 Mhz.
>
> But we have observer low speed in transfer for example in many cases we
> have 250 kBs  in hwmode 11G between 1 hop nodes
>
> We have try tune wireless parameter like distance (ACK Time), RTS, Frag
> but without big improvement
>
> It will be nice to read any advice and suggestion.   We have try use
> internal antenna in Ubiquiti devices but we have try use external like
> yagi, Biquads, AMOS (sector home made antenna
> http://www.qsl.net/yu1aw/ANT_VHF/Amos_Ant/amos_antennas.htm )
>
>
>  Best regards
>
> Waldek
>
> 2015-05-27 21:54 GMT+02:00 <dpeel at vtlink.net>:
>
>> We're working on a pilot wireless mesh project in a downtown low income
>> area in a small town in northern Vermont. We're doing pretty well with our
>> own resources so far including some donated equipment, but if we are to
>> involve very many residents we will need more money to provide free routers
>> as most people here are not able to afford it themselves. We've thought
>> about becoming a non-profit but that looks really complicated! We also
>> thought about looking for an organization that is already a non-profit
>> under which we could work to apply for grants. Or we could try
>> crowdfunding? Does anybody have any insights or suggestions? Thanks--Diane
>>
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>
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>


-- 
Ben West
http://gowasabi.net
ben at gowasabi.net
314-246-9434
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