There are plenty of ideas, visions and interests involved in this… I’d say the two main ones are
a) Securing the trademark.
A “Verein” is easily founded here in Germany, it could cover this aspect without a lot of costs.
Or why not consider an existing independent non-profit institution with common goals to be the warden?
b) Steering money & development to cover the interests of home users and small businesses
One way would be to crowdfund developers at Nextcloud GmbH and if there is enough transparency I think it could work. There are the advantages of using existing structures.
Another way would be to use another institution and it doesn’t have to be a new one. I just found out about https://techcultivation.org/ and although there is no detail information, it seems as if it might fit. Meanwhile:
It will take us a while to build a platform to allow projects to easily interface with their budgets, and before we can manage individual donations to projects. Leave your e-mail address and we will get in touch as soon as we’re there!
I’ll get in contact with them to see if it would be a scenario for them to manage a “side structure” (alongside Nextcloud GmbH) in order to support Nextcloud. Perhaps they have other ideas or recommendations.
In any case:
I guess we need to figure out about the “willingness to pay”. And if every dime is dependent on a specific bug report/feature, we won’t come far. So reliable and continuous financial support is what is needed.
Another important aspect regarding taxes:
If an institution is gemeinnützig (charitable), it can receive donations without having to pay taxes for it and the donator can make the donation tax deductable. This applies to Germany, I’m not sure how it is handled on an international level.