On LI Fund management

["Indranil Das Gupta" <indradg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I appreciate Guru's interesting suggestion that in between events LI should have no monies in its kitty... it would be
quite an ideal situation... but is it practical?

Consider this for a moment... what happens to the money that may be leftover in the LI kitty after any such fund-raising
effort for any event? How do we spend this money? on what? Please don't suggest that we handover the remainder to the
sponser... it would be impractical and an accounting nightmare... e.g an event has more than 1 sponsor funding the
event?

IMO, its far better to use this money to buildup long-term funds... that can be used in raising user-awareness,
propaganda/publicity campaigns in a structured manner. Every organisation of every nature requires funds for long term
functioning. Sure, we are different in many ways than others, but even we can't do without money for various resources
and requirements... whether it is subscription-based, fee-based, voluntary contribution based or sponsorships... the
bottom-line is that we need funds. While Guru's ad-hoc fund-raising idea sounds simple and ideal on the face value, IMHO
it is not entirely practical.

BTW, I am all for us practising complete caution, but against becoming a bunch of  "Doubting Thomas"es. We seem to be
drifting on occassions to doubt everyone's motives/intent.... The majority of us are here with honest motives. And since
we are sticking to the democratic principles I am sure we can overcome/overrule representative with any other
"interests".

--indra