Senator Paula Simons🇨🇦Out of curiosity- what instances are y’all on - and why? What are the pros and cons of the various instances you have chosen?
erin@Paulatics prior moderator with mstdn.ca. Swapped to ottawa.place earlier this year due to my own personal issues with the instance. Out of curiosity, why can't we get a canada.ca instance for government officials? This way you have complete control over the instance’s operations and governance.
Andrew Dunham@erin @Paulatics I've offered a few times, but I'll say it again: if anyone in the 🇨🇦 government wants some assistance setting up an official Mastodon instance, I would be very happy to do so. There's even a non-profit for this instance (spoiler alert!) that we can do this through, if it would make that any easier!
@andrew amazing offer!
And if you need any help with the nonprofit or community development side of the instance, this is where my experience lies. Happy to volunteer my time to support any current or future initiatives.
@erin (dropping Senator Simons so as not to flood her with notifications)
I do actually have one question, if you don't mind... Leigh and I have a nonprofit that we're in the process of transferring the infrastructure / assets for the instance to (federal corporation # 1652828-7 if you're curious). One of the things we want to do is set up a bank account specifically for the instance, to help keep the funds separate from our personal cards/accounts/etc.
Do you have any suggestions or recommendations on banks here in Ottawa that are good for nonprofits? In my (very limited) searching, all I've found so far are accounts with pretty high monthly fees, in some cases a good percentage of the total operating cost of this instance 😵💫
@andrew Without knowing the instance's cash flow and transaction needs, have you looked into any credit unions? Alterna and Meridian come to mind. I'm familiar with Alterna (as a personal user).
Alterna: https://www.alterna.ca/en/business/community/resiliency-program
Meridan: https://www.meridiancu.ca/business-banking/accounts/community-not-for-profit-account
You could also look into Tangerine. They don't explicitly state they offer a nonprofit but their business accounts may include the option.
The big banks all look like they have a low-cost account for non profits however it seems very dependent on cashflow and monthly transaction usage.
If EQ bank ever offers a non profit account (they currently do not) I would likely recommend them.