[LGM] Request For Comments - reorganizing financial tasks for LGM

Sun May 8 22:40:46 UTC 2016

0. Request for Comments

0.1 Preamble

Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) succeeds and thrives as an event because
it brings a diverse assortment of people who care about free software
and graphics into one place: teams as well as individuals, artists,
designers, end users, and developers.

Although we often do not talk about it publicly, making this happen
every year requires that we raise funds and this disperse those funds
to cover costs - primarily, reimbursing attendees for their travel
expenses.

It has been a while since LGM took a conscious look at how the
nuts-and-bolts of those fundraising and dispersal processes work, so
we held a voluntary discussion session at LGM 2016 to consider a range
of options.  We'd like to present the outcome of that discussion here,
to the list, and ask for comments.

Since discussions on mailing lists can occasionally run ad infinitum,
however, and we face a looming practical deadline by which we must
make some sort of decision in order to start work on LGM 2017, we want
to ask that everyone who wishes to contribute to the conversation do
so by MAY 20, 2016.

The proposal arising from the discussion session was that LGM should
partner with a free-software "umbrella" organization that would provide a
fiscal sponsor role only, leaving governance-style decisions to the LGM
community. Software in the Public Interest (SPI) was thought to be the
leading candidate among "umbrella" organizations.

0.2 Questions

The questions posed to the LGM community, therefore, are:

A. Should we try to make a change in the way LGM currently fiscally
operates?

B. If so, what umbrella organization should we work with?
(current proposal: Software in the Public Interest)

C. What specific conditions should be met by the umbrella organization?
(see: https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/LGM_Funding_Notes)

What follows is a more detailed examination of those issues as discussed
at the session in London.

1. What can we improve

There are two halves to our financial operations: raising donations
and reimbursing attendees for their travel.

1.1 Reimbursing

Years ago, LGM had an arrangement with the GNOME Foundation through
which the Foundation's accountants would handle the paperwork and
red-tape of sending out reimbursements (be they checks or electronic
payments of some sort).  LGM always retained the decisions about who
(and how) correctly qualified for those reimbursements.

GNOME Foundation no longer does this for us, though, and so for the
past few years, the task of processing all of the travel documents and
financial information has been left up to volunteers in their spare
time.  It is a grueling and thankless task, far more so for a
volunteer.  Every reimbursement request has its peculiarities, and
everyone has a sense of urgency.

If we can find a way to forge a new arrangement where the processing
work could be offloaded to a professional bookkeeper, but one in which
we as LGM still retain the decision-making part of the process, we
believe we could speed up the reimbursement process and make it less
painful over the long haul.

1.2 Fundraising

An arrangement of that sort would also allow our volunteers to spend
less of their time juggling competing bank-routing-system details and
more of their time talking to potential donors.  Here again, in recent
years, the job of soliciting donations has been left to a few
volunteers, and it is a time-consuming process -- even for
long-standing friends of the event who are strong supporters of free
software.

A corollary to the fundraising equation is that, since we no longer
operate in conjunction with the GNOME Foundation, it is substantially
more difficult to convince potential corporate donors to support LGM.
This is because corporate financial officers prefer to work with
established, well-known entities when significant sums of money are
involved.

This puts LGM, which is a loose coalition of like-minded projects and
individuals, at a disadvantage.  Corporate donors expect to deal with
"known quantities": organizations with an easily-verifiable public track
record.  They also expect standard accounting practices: invoices for
their donations that conform to generally accepted business rules, the
ability to accept donations as bank transfers or corporate credit
cards, and so on.

Our volunteers often have good contacts at potential corporate donors,
but as the sponsorship requests move up the ladder internally, personal
contacts mean less and less to those people who make company-wide
decisions about marketing budgets, and legal formalities mean more and
more.

If we can forge an accounting arrangement under which an official
non-profit organization (or for-profit company) can accept donations
on behalf of LGM, our fundraising efforts will become easier and, in
all likelihood, more successful.

2. Options

2.1 Requirements

In essence, we would ideally like to find an arrangement that provides
us with two things:

- a legal entity that can accept donations on behalf of LGM.

- access to a bookkeeper or accountant who can process reimbursements.

Moreover, it was generally agreed upon that we do NOT want to enter
into an arrangement that imposes additional structure or requirements
on the LGM organizing team or participants (e.g., a sophisticated
governance model or formal membership requirements for
participation).  However, the primary issue is filling the fiscal
requirements listed above.

2.2 Some alternatives

Several options were discussed, including

- partnering with an existing, friendly free-software organization.

- working with an organization that specializes in running
free-software events.

- associating with an "umbrella" organization that serves as fiscal
sponsor to member projects.

Options for partner organizations include the GNOME Foundation, KDE
e.V., the Python Foundation, the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE), and several others.

Options for event-planning organizations include The Linux Expo of
Southern California (SCaLE), DevConf, and the Linux Foundation Events
program.

Options for umbrella organizations include Software In The Public
Interest (SPI), Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), the Apache
Software Foundation (ASF), and the Linux Foundation (LF).
In the subsequent discussion, several additional partner-organization
options were asked about, including Constant VZW.

3. Recommendation

3.1 Umbrellas

>From a strictly structural standpoint, opinion favored the
"umbrella" organization option.  Several of the umbrella organizations
offer flexible agreements for new member projects, under which the
project can agree only to a specific set of services (e.g., accepting
donations and processing reimbursements).

These umbrella organizations' membership rules also, generally speaking,
allow member projects to end their association with the umbrella
organization
voluntarily. This was seen as a plus, because it would allow us to try
working
with an umbrella fiscal sponsor but allow us to change to a new model if
that
arrangement proves unsatisfactory.

3.2 Potential partners

There was interest in SPI and SFC as potential umbrella fiscal sponsors, in
particular, due to their flexible service-and-membership rules.  Other
umbrella organizations, including ASF and LF, are substantially more
rigid in their structure.

Between the two, SPI was thought to offer some advantages, such as its
existing relationship with Freedesktop.org, its association with X.Org
(which,
like LGM, is an organization that exists only to provide collaboration and
conferences),
and its broad international experience (through Debian and other large
member
projects). But the participants believed we should remain open to other
umbrella
organizations, too, if more options are suggested.

3.3 Asking questions

The discussion ended with participants agreeing to formulate a single,
shared list of questions we would like to ask potential umbrella
organizations about how they function and about how a membership for
LGM would operate.  That list of questions is available online at
https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/LGM_Funding_Notes

4. Reaching a decision

The LGM organizers (including those at the event and others who
participated via email) believe that we should reach out to one or
more umbrella organizations and, if all of our questions are
satisfactorily answered, start the process of joining the most
appropriate umbrella organization in the next few months.

However, because LGM is fundamentally a community event, we want to
solicit the comments of everyone who participates.

Please take some time to review the subject matter, and reply to the list
with your thoughts on the three discussion questions.

Again, we would like to have all responses by MAY 20.

After that date, we will determine the next stage of the process, assuming
that
the community favors moving forward.

The questions, again, are:

A. Should we try to make a change in the way LGM currently fiscally
operates?

B. If so, what umbrella organization should we work with?
(current proposal: Software in the Public Interest)

C. What specific conditions should be met by the umbrella organization?
(see: https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/LGM_Funding_Notes)

[Writing on behalf of the LGM organizing team and those who contributed to
the
discussion session in London,]

Thank you!

Nate
-- 
nathan.p.willis
nwillis at glyphography.com <http://identi.ca/n8>
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