> If more than the € 30,000 required to date is donated, if the legal costs are lower or if court costs are repaid, all payments received in excess will be used for the statutory purposes of the Chaos Computer Club e.V.. Please note that the CCC e.V. is not formally recognised as a non-profit organisation.
That is one sure way to make people not donate to the cause. I want to support the people, but I don't want my money to go elsewhere, and there is no way of knowing how much has been raised to date or guarantees to get the funds back when the legal costs eventually get covered by Newag. The only guarantee stated is that they will definitely use money for something else. Not OK.
The "Please note that the CCC e.V. is not formally recognised as a non-profit organisation" part is a bad translation - this one is related to the German tax code.
To put it short: there are two different kinds of NPOs, first "regular" e.V. and then those e.V. that fulfill exclusively "aims for the common good" ("gemeinnützige Zwecke", the full list is in §52 AO [1]) - they carry a special benefit: donations can be deducted from your income for tax purposes.
The CCC is a non-profit organization, but since it (among other things) engages in taking political stances while at the same time not being a political party, it is not seen as a "gemeinnützig" organization - a fate that hit quite a few organizations in the last years [2] or is looming over their head [3].
I kind of envy Germany's large array of possible corporate charters for non-profits, for-profits and kinda-sorta-nonprofits. I wish America had the same menu to pick fro.
I'll add some more confusion to your mental list: the "gemeinnützige GmbH" aka "common-good LLC" - it is allowed to undertake commercial (income-generating) activities as its main activity (unlike the e.V. which may only do commercial activities like selling stuff on a very limited basis, stuff like selling swag for example), but the proceedings must be used only for activities in the list in §52 AO as well.
I’m assuming they have to say this from a legal perspective. In reality what they are saying is “we don’t know how much the legal fees will come to, could be less, could be more. However, once we have proper accounting, if there is money left over this will support CCC”
I’m not familiar with German governance for quasi not for profits, but I suspect the idea that funds are conditional for one specific purpose probably breaches governance, and returning funds to donors if certain conditions are/are not met could be problematic from a tax point of view. I know this would be the case in other European jurisdictions with which I am more familiar.
an e.V. is by its very nature very non-profit-y. I am not an expert, so I encourage you to look up e.V. aka "eingetragener Verein", but basically, its similar to a nonprofit and a lot of rules and laws apply. Its not formally a non-profit in any country because e.V. is a specific German thing. You can, however, rely on that being very rock solid and not for-profit.
That’s a fair point and I had to re-read that sentence multiple times to understand what they are saying. They should indeed say how much money towards this cause has been received.
That is one sure way to make people not donate to the cause. I want to support the people, but I don't want my money to go elsewhere, and there is no way of knowing how much has been raised to date or guarantees to get the funds back when the legal costs eventually get covered by Newag. The only guarantee stated is that they will definitely use money for something else. Not OK.