Re: Donations

[elzubeir at arabeyes dot org (Mohammed Elzubeir)]

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 10:17:58PM +0800, Ossama Khayat wrote:
> Assalamou Alaikom everyone,
> I've sent an email some time back about paying some donations to the Arabeyes project.
> (http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/general/2003/June/msg00030.html)
> Still I didnt get any feed back other than from Nadim.
> Would someone (Mohamamd?) please provide me with some help on how would I be able to contribute with the amout I have so far ($300)?
> 

Salam,

Ossama, I sincerely don't know how to handle this. We have talked about
this many times and it is a very complicated problem. The problem is
that we don't want any donations to Arabeyes to go to a personal bank
account. That means, it cannot be addressed to a person or to be cashed
to an individual. This left us with the PayPal option (at least it's
easier to track).

The other option (and the more 'final') solution would be to incorporate
Arabeyes and give it legal status. This would allow us to open bank
accounts under the Arabeyes name. Since I have been to Bahrain and now
Dubai,UAE I have met with many lawyers. The consensus I have received
from my discussions about the project is that this is going to be a very
long and complex process. Arabeyes is not "tangible" as an organization
and the whole purpose of it is very strange and suspecious (money
laundering, terrorism, etc). The concept of Open Source and volunteerism
in that way is simply too radical for the legal framework of these
countries. What can I say? 

The last time Nadim and I were talking about this and we decided that he
would check out registering us as a non-profit organization in the US. I
hope it would not be complicated given the current political environment
(but I bet you it is less complicated than doing it here). Once we are
registered there, it may be easier to get us registered here (in Dubai).

Until then, I am open to suggestions.. as I really don't know how else
to handle this.

Thanks
Mohammed Elzubeir