Based in New York, the Conservancy is a non-profit that helps promote, improve, develop and defend free and open source software projects.
The organisation's executive director, Bradley Kuhn, a well-known figure in FOSS circles, said in a media release that the campaign aimed to raise $US75,000 to fund a full-time developer for one year.
"In my 10 years of non-profit management experience, I've found that good free software for non-profit accounting is sorely lacking," Kuhn said.
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The developer who is chosen would initially re-evaluate existing free software solutions for their viability as a non-profit accounting system solution.
He or she would then build upon the best available system a solution that would help non-profits around the world manage their finances better.
"To keep their books and file their annual government filings, non-profit organisations (NPOs) often maintain complicated home-grown systems," Kuhn said.
"Further, most NPOs use proprietary software — fundamentally at cross purposes with their underlying missions of charity, equality, democracy, and sharing. Conservancy, as a non-profit charity dedicated to the advancement and improvement of open source and free software, seeks to address this problem."
Kuhn said that if the project succeeded, it would save the non-profit sector many millions every year. "But the more powerful effect of a free software solution will be to increase the agility and collaborative potential of the sector — a boon to funders, boards, employees, and the populations they serve," he added.
The initiative has been endorsed by Fractured Atlas, The Free Software Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, GNOME Foundation, OpenHatch, Open Source Initiative, QuestionCopyright.org, and Software in the Public Interest.
