wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/20140506
= Minutes for Tuesday, May 6th, 2014, 16:00 UTC = == Next meeting == * Tuesday, May 20th, 2014, 16:00 UTC == Attending == * Andreas Nilsson * Marina Zhurakhinskaya * Tobias Mueller * Joanmarie Diggs * Ekaterina Gerasimova * Emmanuele Bassi * Rosanna Yuen * Sriram Ramkrishna == Board Meeting Agenda == * Conference sponsorship * Marina, Tobi, and the GNOME.Asia local team have been hard at work to find sponsors * Kat proposes that GUADEC and GNOME.Asia discounted sponsorship is by default split proportionately and that it's officially recorded for future reference * For instance: GUADEC sponsorship is 10k, GNOME.Asia is 5k; if the combined donation is 12k, we split at 8k/4k, maintaining the same proportion * The proportion depends on the sponsorship levels between the two conferences * Improve ability to plan a conference budget * The board can still override this on a case by case basis * Can this be left to the board discretion? * Better to document this as part of the process for organising our conferences * '''ACTION''': Kat to document the GUADEC/GNOME.Asia combined sponsorship on the wiki * Finances * Kat sent a to-date budget/account summary to review on board-list * USD ~160k reserves * Removing the funds that are earmarked for reimbursements, GNOME.Asia, expected invoices and OPW we have around USD 30k to spend on operational costs * GUADEC is also coming up and required a travel budget * Publish up-to-date projected budget on the wiki * We usually publish only the account summary as part of the annual report * We don't publish the operating budget for the current year * We used to do that with a fairly complicated spreadsheet * It could lead to more PR issue because people will not take the time to properly understand it * Once we unfreeze the expenses we could summarise our budget * We should revisit publishing a summarised budget monthly, quarterly, or yearly * The board should have access to more financial updates * Increase accountability of the financials for board, advisory board, and membership * Consider doing from the new financial year so that there's a clean break * Receiving Donations in the EU via the Wau Holland Stiftung (WHS) * Went through various rounds of reviews * Comments on the board mailing list * Tobi, Karen had a meeting with WHS last year * Advantages for the foundation * Allow bank transfer in the EU * Disadvantages * Administrative fees * Does it impact GUADEC? * Not really * We have local organizations that handle the money closer to the local team * '''ACTION''': Tobi to draft a new agreement after the feedback from the board * We will vote as soon as we have a reply * Travel sponsorship processing and reimbursements * New process has been in place for 9 to 10 months * Has not been very successful * Burden imposed on the event organisers and the board * Vetting by the board has not been up to par * Board assigned more funds than the travel committee used to, and to fewer people * Re-evaluate the travel sponsorship process * The travel committee is now four people strong (soon to be five) * Options * Allocate a fixed budget every year/quarter * Have the travel committee ask for a budget for each event * Mix between the two * Allocate a fixed budget and allow for extensions on a case by case basis * We need to properly document the whole process * '''ACTION''': Kat to draft a new policy for the travel committee and send it to the board for review * Handling Friends of GNOME gifts * We should investigate having gift vouchers or print-on-demand from online printing web services * '''ACTION''': Andreas to investigate the GNOME gifts situation * Visa fees reimbursements * We usually did not reimburse visa costs * We want to reassess this situation * Visa costs can be fairly expensive, especially for students * If we're willing to expense travel we should probably expense the visa cost in case it was rejected * The Foundation does not benefit directly from reimbursing visa costs, so they cannot be treated the same as travel * In some cases, we invited attendees * Travel committee guidance rules say that the visa will not be reimbursed after the fact * [Discussion of this item was not finished in this meeting, will be continued at a later timeā¦] * Upcoming events * GUADEC 2014 * We will need to decide how much resources should be allocated for the travel expenses * EUR 30k (42K USD) is the usual budget * We should wait until we receive more payments == Discussed on the mailing list == == Completed Actions == * Kat and board to review the tax return form * Tobi to follow up the GNOME.Asia budget issue with the local organisers * Board will review the agreement for collecting funds in Europe == Pending action items == * Andreas to put together a GNOME supporter card for our donors * Andreas, Joanie to draft thank you letters to our donors * Andreas to investigate the GNOME gifts situation * Emmanuele to send Zana and Tobi an update on FoG donors gifts * Emmanuele to send hackers up for "adoption" the list of donors that want a postcard * Emmanuele to draft a date and time for the post-release meeting * Emmanuele to send a proposal to foundation-list about possible IRC meetings * Emmanuele to ask the adboard members for help with Bugzilla update * Joanie to draft a proposal for the photography policy at GNOME conferences to discuss on foundation-list * Joanie and Karen to meet and discuss about the photography policy for GNOME events * Joanie to go over Michael Schumacher ideas on the Gimp funding processes and merge them with her ideas on the wiki * Kat to create a private wiki page on the web services accounts holders and passwords * Allan and Kat decided to go for a private git account instead for security reasons * Kat to draft a proposal for a privacy policy for review * Kat to document the GUADEC/GNOME.Asia combined sponsorship on the wiki * Kat to draft a new policy for the travel committee and send it to the board for review * Karen to write the Privacy policy for GNOME services * Karen will look at gnome-software privacy issues from a legal standpoint * Tobi to continue pursuing the fund collection in Europe * Tobi to talk to Andrea to move the !PayPal data extraction scripts over to the GNOME infrastructure * Tobi to follow up with Alexandre and Karen about the contract for the GUADEC local organisation * Tobi to draft a new agreement after the feedback from the board * Sri to investigate better uses of adsense/adwords on the GNOME websites * Sri to communicate to Rosanna and work on the donation for the West Coast hackfest * Zana to check the inventory of merch she has in storage (low priority) _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list