Mastodon has announced the formation of a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity in the United States to help it collect tax-deductible US donations and in-kind support. This new foundation has announced its board of directors lineup that includes Asraa Al Shafi, Karin Bezuidenhout, Amir Gabi, CFO of Mastodon Felix Haletsky, and co-founder of Twitter Biz Stone.
The nonprofit said this board was chosen based on their values ​​that overlap with Mastodon’s. With their input, Mastodon says it will continue to offer free and open source decentralized social media.
The decision to become a US nonprofit comes after the German tax office abruptly revoked Mastodon’s nonprofit status it had received in 2021. Its tax advisor filed an appeal but no new information has been received.
You may be wondering why the creator of free software should even worry about finances, well, it pays employees as well as developer and designer contractors and has to cover the hosting and service fees necessary to operate. To pay for these things, he receives contributions from the community, which is taxed.
Commenting on how the denial of German non-profit status affected things, Mastodon said:
“Our day-to-day operations are largely unaffected by this event, as Patreon does not assume non-profit status, and Patreon’s income does not count as donations. In fact, we have not had to issue a single receipt for a donation since 2021. The meaning of non-profit status is in communicating our commitment to media creation A society that serves the interests of its users instead of its shareholders. Now we have the 501(c)(3) in the US to fill the void. However, it is also important to us that Mastodon is one of the few, if not the only, social media platform that operates outside the EU, and we would like to keep it that way.”
The company concluded her announcement By thanking Jeff Atwood and Mozilla for donating $100,000 each this year to support the association. He also noted that donations like these were important in supporting the two-person core development team to continue its work.