Hi Vincent, First, congrats on having a budget, and getting it out into the public several months before I did last year, it's a big step forward on the past.
I have a fair few comments, though, both about the form and the content. Vincent Untz wrote: > (Note that the GUADEC budget is not included by default in the totals, > since we're keeping it separate.) Last year we included a line on GUADEC. It has almost always generated a surplus which has been used to fund other foundation activities such as the summit, and last year I included that estimate in the budget. The GUADEC team generated a surplus in excess of what I had included in the budget, way to go guys! Last year, we figured a surplus of $30,000. Given the reduction in the dollar value over the past year, I think that a surplus of $20,000 is more reasonable this year, but it's important that the expectations be explicit for all concerned. > Some interesting items: > > + currently projected income: $217,000 > + currently projected expenditures: $256,261 > => we're projecting a $39,261 loss so far I think that you should try to balance the budget. If you spend a little less or a little more so be it, but starting out with the goal of losing money is dangerous. > But: > + $40,000 are allocated for the business developer which we don't have > yet. This amount of money means (s)he'll join us around or after the > middle of the year, but this is most probably related to us paying a > head hunter... I would allocate the entire $40,000 to getting a headhunter on board, and getting advice on the bizdev/executive director hire. I would drop the sysadmin hire and sysadmin fundraising from the budget. The foundation will have to pay for a sysadmin from its income. As I suggested, I think that any fundraising which will be used to pay a sysadmin should be program-related. As I was saying to you on IRC, fundraising to pay a salary is a *very* hard sell. To fundraise in a non-profit you need to tug on heart-strings, get people worked up, or appeal directly to people's wallets. Paying a salary does none of those. So break it down: why do we need a sysadmin? What will a sysadmin achieve? How will that further the goals of the foundation? Fundraise against the end, not against the means. > + the budget assumes we'll have 3 $10,000 hackfests without any > sponsor. > => hopefully, we'd get some sponsorship I would drop one of the hackfests from the budget until the question comes up. In the case of the accessibility summit, for example, we're piggy-backing on the Summit. For GMAE meetings we have also done this. To this point, we have not yet drawn down money for either of these. I would like to see smaller focussed meetings like the GTK+ hackfest (great initiative), but I'm not convinced that there will be another 3 of those this year. I think that one of the 3 "hackfests" could be a board meeting. The idea was proposed in the past, but was awkward because the good time isn't really obvious. > + we'll likely spend a bit more (I'd say between $5,000 and $10,000) > for community development (Latin America tour is not complete, for > example) $25,000 on community user groups seems very generous to me already - I think it'd be better to tighten the purse stroings a little for everyone and ask local groups to supplement the foundation funds with local sponsorship, membership fees and merchandising sales (as GNOME-fr has done). Some further comments: Trademark applications: are there plans to do any of those this year? Friends of GNOME: community contributions have been ridiculously low for the past 2 years since we have not pushed them. This can be a source of problems for us if we get audited by the IRS, since we don't have enough community funding to justify our 501(c)3 status right now. I suggest overhawling FoG, figuring out how to set up annual subscriptions and establishing donation levels, and doing a big community fundraising push. Short version: I think the budget should be balanced, I suggest removing some of the aspirational items which might not happen, and I suggest focusing on one hire, preferably the bizdev/executive director hire, rather than the sysadmin hire. And Friends of GNOME should be a major source of income for the foundation for two reasons: we have a community who is passionate and rocks, and the IRS insists we pass a community interest test. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
