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

Mon May 9 00:22:32 UTC 2016

On May 8, 2016 8:14 PM, "Dave Neary" <nearyd at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Nate,
>
> Thank you for this email, it is great to see LGM continue to thrive, and
> these important questions getting attention.
>
> I originally proposed the GNOME Foundation because there seemed, at the
> time, a philosophical alignment with LGM. I always felt that we would need
> somewhere to keep money and have some administrative oversight, so I
> definitely think we need something.
>
> I would add SFC to SPI, if they are willing to have LGM as a participant.
>
> Thank you Nate!
>
> Dave.
> On May 8, 2016 6:41 PM, "Nathan Willis" <nwillis at glyphography.com> wrote:
>
>> 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>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Libre-graphics-meeting mailing list
>> Libre-graphics-meeting at lists.freedesktop.org
>> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libre-graphics-meeting
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libre-graphics-meeting/attachments/20160508/ee41238a/attachment-0001.html>