Re: VMs: "The VMs Research Foundation"...?

[Dennis <tsalagi@xxxxxxxx>]

Nick Pelling wrote:

> I've been giving some thought to forming a charitable organisation whose 
> central aim is to improve our understanding of the VMs by sponsoring 
> targeted research and publishing the results openly.

	Do you mean a nonprofit organization to collect funds and
support for the work you mention?  It sounds like a good
idea!  Yahoo's category has a lot of stuff on this:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Issues_and_Causes/Philanthropy/Nonprofit_Resources/

	This looks interesting:

Action without Borders
http://www.idealist.org/

> In addition, the charity might also sensibly back a VMs conference, to 
> be held (say) either at the Beinecke (the VMs' physical home) or at the 
> Warburg Institute (probably the VMs' spiritual home).

	Dumb question: why is the Warburg Institute the VMs'
spiritual home?

> Does anyone here with experience of forming or running a charity have 
> any helpful suggestions? For example, are there particular advantages 
> over forming it in the US, in England, or elsewhere? 

	The USA has a long tradition of nonprofit and volunteer 
organizations.  That surely is an advantage.

	In French it is "une association a` but non lucratif" or 
"une association sans but lucratif".  Jacques noted that 
it's easy to set one up in France.  I didn't know before 
that there is a French Wikipedia:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_loi_1901

> A working title for the charity could simply be "The Voynich Manuscript 
> Research Foundation", a kind of 'virtual research institution'. Comments?

	Sounds good.

	It's worth noting that Dr. Mark Stamp at San Jose' State 
University did have one of his grad students transcribe the 
whole of James Hampton's diary, just on the strength of my 
web site.  He is a professor of computer science.  That 
shows that a lot of disciplines could take an interest.  It 
also shows that there are indeed people who would be 
interested in the kind of work you propose.

Dennis


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