Hi Carl & Aaron,
I believe that we will be able to take this on. I've copied Sarah
Ryan on this email -- she's an associate in our NY office who plans
to work with a partner in one of our California offices on this.
She's been working through the internal channels to line everything
up, and should be in touch very soon. Feel free to email or call
her if you'd like to discuss. And let me know if you have any
questions or need anything else from me.
I'll look forward to seeing all of this when it's up and running --
sounds fantastic!
Rhett
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Carl Malamud <xxxxxxx@media.org> wrote:
Hi -
Any luck on finding Aaron a c4 incorporator?
Best regards,
Carl
On Jul 29, 2008, at 10:14 AM, Rhett Millsaps II wrote:
Hi Carl and Aaron,
This sounds like a great project, and I'm hopeful that we'll have
some folks here who can do this pro bono. The question is whether
we have a partner in one of our offices with experience with 501(c)
(4) incorporations. I'm checking around, and will let you know as
soon as I can. As you know, I just get involved when things get
messy, so I'm trying to draft some of our transactional folks to
take this on.
I actually know Larry Lessig from my Stanford days, but it's been
fun to go toe to toe with his folks on the HP case!
I hope to get back to you with good news soon, and will put you in
touch with the right folks here if and when I find them.
Thanks,
Rhett
On 7/25/08, Carl Malamud <xxxxxxx@media.org> wrote: Hi Rhett -
I'm David Halperin's friend. I used to be Podesta's Chief
Technology Officer at the Center, am now running a c(3) nonprofit
out of California that puts primary legal materials (e.g., court
cases) on the net called Public.Resource.Org.
I'd like to introduce you to Aaron Swartz who has created
Watchdog.Net. The advice they received from their first funder, the
Sunlight Foundation, was that they should be a c(4). I believe this
is Aaron's first nonprofit, but he has accumulated a distinguished
record in a variety of Internet enterprises. He wrote the "RSS"
standard which is what newsfeeds are based on.
He was also a founder of Reddit, a popular social networking site
that was sold to Conde Naste. And, perhaps most importantly, he's
been the technical smarts behind a lot of impressive operations for
Internet veterans such as Brewster Kahle and Lawrence Lessig (a name
you may remember from your recent Harry Potter suit. :)
Watchdog has some funding, but because they are early stage they are
definitely not flush, so I know Aaron would appreciate any reduced
fees or perhaps even pro bono representation for the initial C(4)
application. If it is helpful, I am happy to provide advice during
the process, but this is Aaron's gig and I'm not directly involved.
I'll let you two arrange a phone call with each other and you can
decide if this is worth taking the next step.
Best regards,
Carl
P.S. Aaron ... Rhett's URL, which you no doubt found already, is
http://web.omm.com/rhettmillsapsii/
A service of Public.Resource.Org.