Please see this email: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-cascadia/2015-January/000351.html. Additionally, I will note that I signed up for trial subscriptions of Xero and Quickbooks Online for testing purposes, and I felt that Xero was considerably easier to use. One important consideration in the choice of accounting software is that we want it to allow for full online read-only access for our officers and board members who are widely geographically dispersed.

(3) In line item 4, why is a trade name fee required?

New businesses, including new nonprofits, are required to register their trade names with the State of Washington. See http://bls.dor.wa.gov/tradename.aspx and http://bls.dor.wa.gov/forms/700028.pdf. Note that a trade name is different than a Federal trademark registration.

(4) In line items 6 and 7, why is local registration occurring in multiple jurisdictions?

Short answer: tax registrations in multiple jurisdictions are necessary if we intend to operate legitimately throughout the Seattle area and throughout the Cascadia region.

Long answer: Cascadia includes a wide geographic area: British Columbia, Washington State, and Oregon State. We intend to have events in multiple jurisdictions to try to maximize participation and ease of attendance for our members. In the Seattle metro area, our participants reside in many cities other than Seattle; the geographic size of the Seattle metro area and its notorious traffic problems (which rank the 8th worst in the nation according to one analysis of 2013 data; see http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ehmk45mihf/8-seattle-wa/ and http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2014/03/04/the-most-traffic-jammed-cities-in-the-u-s/) make it a very practical idea to have events in multiple locations. Perhaps not known to outsiders is that the Seattle metro area (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_metropolitan_area) includes numerous smaller jurisdictions, perhaps the best known of them being the cities of Redmond (where Microsoft is headquartered), Renton (where Boeing manufactures 737 aircraft) and Everett (where Boeing manufactures 777 and 787 aircraft, and the location of Naval Station Everett). In 2014 we had events in Seattle and Kirkland, which are on opposite sides of Lake Washington. Bellevue is immediately south of Kirkland, and it is often far easier to transit between Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond than any of those eastside cities to or from Seattle. Conveniently for us, Impact HUB has offices in Seattle and Bellevue, and we will take advantage of the ability to apply our single rent payment to use Impact HUB's services on either side of the lake. Later this year, and not directly relevant to this this startup grant request that we are making to WMDC, we also intend to register and spin up operations in the City of Portland in Oregon where our board member Another Believer is active. We may also have events in Kirkland again which would require a Kirkland registration (although we may discuss whether it's necessary to register in both Bellevue and Kirkland if we can consolidate our activity in Bellevue, or if the City of Kirkland will grant us a de minimis exception). Our longer-term goals include operating in Vancouver BC, which will require cooperating with the Canadian authorities. Cascadia's geographic reach necessitates that we operate and register in multiple jurisdictions if we intend to have broad programmatic reach, facilitate ease of access for participants, and operate in a legal manner.

BECU offers only one kind of high-security check through its check vendor, Deluxe. Given that we intend to request a substantial PEG from WMF soon, it seems prudent that we would want to protect CWUG's funds from check fraud to the maximum extent reasonably possible.

I'm cc'ing this email to Alex in case she and GAC are interested in any of this information as well.

I hope that this email answers all of your questions and concerns. Please let me know if you have any additional inquiries.