(Updated 18th September 2025)
The Betterbird project receives roughly half its donations from North America and the other half from Europe, predominantly Germany. At first glance, it might seem logical to register Betterbird as a charitable organisation. However, there is no single legal form that works across all jurisdictions: if Betterbird were charitable in Germany, that status would not automatically apply in the United States, and vice versa. A choice would have to be made, leaving half of our donors without tax benefits.
At present, the project has its fiscal residence in Spain (with a sea view). Registering a charitable organisation in Spain is particularly challenging: you need substantial start-up capital and at least three founding members. Even then, the benefits would be limited to the comparatively few Spanish donors, and not extend to those in Germany or elsewhere.
Looking ahead, Betterbird may shift its fiscal residence to Germany. There we have explored several possible structures:
- a registered association (eingetragener Verein, or e.V.)
- a charitable limited liability company (gemeinnützige GmbH, or gGmbH)
- its smaller sibling, the gemeinnützige Unternehmergesellschaft (gUG).
Even the simplest of these, the gUG, comes with hurdles. The administrative overhead is high, especially with many small donations. Some people give as little as €1 per month — which is wonderful support, but from an administrative perspective it means Betterbird would have to track these payments, and issue an official end-of-year tax receipt for €12. Multiply that by hundreds of donors, and you can imagine the paperwork nightmare.
There are also restrictions on how donations can be spent. In Germany, charitable organisations are expected to use the vast majority of funds directly for their charitable purpose. While staff can be paid, salaries must be “reasonable” and proportional to the organisation’s income. In practice, only part of the donations can go to staff salaries — a common benchmark is around 70%. If nearly everything went into the CEO’s pocket, alarm bells would ring with the tax authorities. The remaining funds are supposed to cover infrastructure, contractors, community outreach, or similar costs. For a lean project like Betterbird, that would mean spending donations on things we don’t really need, just to satisfy bureaucracy.
For now, the most practical solution is to keep Betterbird simple: run it as an independent project funded by voluntary donations. That allows us to spend more time improving the software rather than satisfying bureaucracy.
In the long term, if donations grow and the administrative investment makes sense, Betterbird may well adopt a charitable structure in Germany. But today, given the modest level of income, a charitable structure would add more overhead than benefit.
Let’s keep in mind that Thunderbird’s fiscal home, Mozilla’s wholly owned subsidiary MZLA, is a for-profit company. On its donation page, the term “donation” is often replaced by “gift,” for example: Gifts to Thunderbird are not tax-deductible as charitable gifts, but are greatly appreciated!
This article was partly created with the help of AI, however, manual adjustments were made where needed.
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