Folding Forum

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2020 8:39 pm**

kostuek wrote:Actually, I wouldn't rush things. This "hype" may die out in a few weeks just like hypes tend to do. By that time, if you took big money from a big sponsor, this sponsor would probably like to know what is going on and where it's money is at. If you took some cloud infrastructure, the sponsor may take it away as soon as covid has gone away or even earlier, so you will need to go back to square one. I feel like staying independent is important for a long term project like this, covid will not last forever, other research will stay.

Taking donations does not require giving up an organization's independence. Folding@home is part of a 501(c)(3) organization under the US tax code, meaning any donations made specifically for folding@home would be tax deductible. At the same time, it's not unusual for people to make donations to a 501(c)(3) organization on the contingency that the funds are used a particular way.

Hypothetically, if either Bill Gates himself or the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation donated $25 million to folding@home, as long as it's used for research in pandemics, that's 100% allowable. Depending upon the requirements for the donation to the 501(c)(3), i.e., if Gates would require (in writing with the donation) the money is to be only used for Azure servers, the IRS may question if Gates' donation should be tax deductible for Gates, as the donation itself may be considered self serving, but Gates attorneys would know a heck of a lot more about his current tax situation than me.

I'm not saying that the existing infrastructure should be dropped, but the best way to expand for what may or may not be a temporary increase in folding@home GPU and CPU donors is 100% through a cloud provider. Receiving a donation from a cloud provider does not change folding@home's independent 501(c)(3) status in the least bit.

501(c)(3)'s can also prominently display a list of their donors, which for the donors is often free advertising for the donors because monetary donations cost them nothing if they can use the donation as a tax deduction. With the hype around folding@home, it's a great time to ask for donations, as any donor could receive a bunch of free advertising with the current hype around the project.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:26 am**

ftballpack wrote:I'm not saying that the existing infrastructure should be dropped, but the best way to expand for what may or may not be a temporary increase in folding@home GPU and CPU donors is 100% through a cloud provider. Receiving a donation from a cloud provider does not change folding@home's independent 501(c)(3) status in the least bit.

Agreed.

ftballpack wrote:which for the donors is often free advertising for the donors because monetary donations cost them nothing if they can use the donation as a tax deduction. With the hype around folding@home, it's a great time to ask for donations, as any donor could receive a bunch of free advertising with the current hype around the project.

I'm not an accountant, and I don't specialize in U.S. tax. That said, I highly doubt donations result in a 100% tax deduction for the party donating, probably more like 20%-50%. So definitely not free.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:54 am**

gbowman wrote:Thanks all for the feedback, advice, and, of course, compute power. We can use all the help we can get! We're picking up new skills as fast as possible. If you have skills/time to offer, please reach out to me by private message on the forum or twitter. By all means, if you see opportunities to take initiative, please take them. Some folks have made enormously valuable introductions to tech firms, for example. I'm prioritizing getting more work servers and work units up. If someone with some science background and writing skills wants to take a stab at updating wikipedia, that would be awesome! I'm recruiting all the scientists I can to help setup simulations.

Dear Mr. Bowman, I tried to reach you by DM here and on Twitter, but it seems you've blocked DMs on both platforms. If I understand the situation correctly, Folding@Home needs additional general-purpose infrastructure and bandwidth to cope up with the spike in Donors (clients).
Without having any idea, what kind (and what amount) of resources you might need, I still believe I might be able help, as one of my companies have "some" spare resources and engineers - storage, VMs, multi-homed PI AS network, bandwidth...My Twitter handle is @VassilTT and I could get DMs from anyone, so let me know if I could help, apart from bringing to FAH all GPU workstations we have in the office, as all our people are working form home with laptops

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Code: Select all

https://www.dgm.bg/en
https://www.sensika.com

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2020 4:10 am**

aaronbrighton wrote: I'm not an accountant, and I don't specialize in U.S. tax. That said, I highly doubt donations result in a 100% tax deduction for the party donating, probably more like 20%-50%. So definitely not free.

It depends upon the person or couple (if filling jointly) and the person/couple's income level. You can not donate away the entirety of a person's tax bill, but up to a limit, depending upon what a person's tax bill would be, the donation would be 100% tax deductible.

3. What's the maximum amount I can claim as a charitable tax deduction on my taxes?
When you donate cash to a public charity, you can generally deduct up to 60% of your adjusted gross income. Provided you've held them for more than a year, appreciated assets including long-term appreciated stocks and property are generally deductible at fair market value, up to 30% of your adjusted gross income. Combining more than one type of asset can be a tax-efficient move to maximize the amount that you can take as a charitable tax deduction.

https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guid ... tions.html

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2020 11:55 pm**

vassil.velichkov wrote:
gbowman wrote:Thanks all for the feedback, advice, and, of course, compute power. We can use all the help we can get! We're picking up new skills as fast as possible. If you have skills/time to offer, please reach out to me by private message on the forum or twitter. By all means, if you see opportunities to take initiative, please take them. Some folks have made enormously valuable introductions to tech firms, for example. I'm prioritizing getting more work servers and work units up. If someone with some science background and writing skills wants to take a stab at updating wikipedia, that would be awesome! I'm recruiting all the scientists I can to help setup simulations.
Dear Mr. Bowman, I tried to reach you by DM here and on Twitter, but it seems you've blocked DMs on both platforms. If I understand the situation correctly, Folding@Home needs additional general-purpose infrastructure and bandwidth to cope up with the spike in Donors (clients).
Without having any idea, what kind (and what amount) of resources you might need, I still believe I might be able help, as one of my companies have "some" spare resources and engineers - storage, VMs, multi-homed PI AS network, bandwidth...My Twitter handle is @VassilTT and I could get DMs from anyone, so let me know if I could help, apart from bringing to FAH all GPU workstations we have in the office, as all our people are working form home with laptops .
Code: Select all
https://www.dgm.bg/en
https://www.sensika.com

I too have access to datacenter resources. We have many Gb's of internet bandwidth available and several hundreds of modern XEON cores sitting idle in our DR facility. I'd happily put them to use by way of work servers or donors.

Posted: **Sat Mar 21, 2020 3:50 pm**

ftballpack wrote:
aaronbrighton wrote: I'm not an accountant, and I don't specialize in U.S. tax. That said, I highly doubt donations result in a 100% tax deduction for the party donating, probably more like 20%-50%. So definitely not free.

I'm an accountant, in the USA. A tax "deduction" never yields a dollar for dollar benefit. A tax "credit" does, however.

A deduction of $1,000 for someone who was paid $100,000 in salary means you will actually pay income taxes over $99,000. This yields a tax benefit that is a fraction of $1,000. In other words, the donation still costs more money than it saves you.

If it was a tax credit, you'd be saving the full $1,000 donation.

Posted: **Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:26 pm**

I think some people are sort of missing the point about me suggesting that someone should reach out to the Gates Foundation.

"Foundation Trust Endowment: $46.8 billion"
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/who-we- ... -factsheet

That is besides the fact that Bill Gates is passionate about fighting pandemics.

Also and this is important, the majority of the grants that the Gates Foundations gives out is to U.S. 501(c)(3) organizations.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We- ... ortunities

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