[LGM] finances

[Louis Desjardins]

2017-11-27 20:45 GMT-05:00 Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>:

>
> That’s for both receiving the money and sending it out to reimburse
> people’s travel fees.
>
> Right - but not doing the actual administration, which is getting access
> to and tracking the lists of people who
>
> - applied for a bursary to be paid before the event
> - applied for a bursary to be paid after the event
> - got their bursary approval
> - submitted an expense report with receipts
> - got the payment
>
> and doing all the work to move people from list to list. This is a lot of
> work.
>

What you describe is precisely what we had to do when GNOME was taking care
of our reimbursements. We had to gather all that info, check who showed up
and who was entitled for a reimbursement, gather the documents and send the
list. The reimbursements took nonetheless months before they were done. And
when we took care of ourselves, the mechanic was just the same. And while
the majority of the reimbursements could occur within a few weeks, some
took months and even years to solve.

I don’t expect this is going to change a lot, no matter what the umbrella
is.

At some point, the LGM has to determine who’s entitled for what. The
umbrella org cannot determine that.

I agree this is a lot of work.

Louis

>
> Soenke, will K8 do that work as part of their 15% fee?
>
> ...
>
> LGM is the “order giver” here (cannot be otherwise, in fact) and the
>> umbrella org acts as the accounting dept.
>
>
> The way I see it, someone can manage the administration and connect with
> someone else who represents LGM as "bursar" and is the key decision maker
> who makes the bursary approvals, but only that.
>
>
>> If needed, I can make the first steps with SPI and keep you guys informed
>>>> of how it goes. However I will not be the responsible person further than
>>>> establishing the contact and maybe a few steps further. At some point,
>>>> somebody else will have to step in. But this would at least require a
>>>> formal decision (or the apparence of a formal decision) by the LGM
>>>> community.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think (a) that decision was already made and (b) Frank has already
>>> stepped in :)
>>>
>>
>> I only mentioned this because Frank seemed to have a bit too much on his
>> shoulders. But of course, if there is one in the kitchen, no need to crowd
>> the room!
>>
>
> The SPI membership is a longer term thing, and I think Frank has some
> motivation to get it set up :) If the cost of not doing it sooner is 10% of
> the early sponsorship money, that seems to me like a fair price to pay.
>

I agree that at some point, getting more than we ever got before from
Google and cut a percentage of it still let us with a big pie.

We definitely cannot let go this opportunity.

>
> Which is to say: I am pretty keen on the Plan A - K8 - if indeed it
> includes the administration as I've described, because I have faith that
> they will administer things quickly.
>

Let’s wait on their answers to that precise point.


> If there is no material difference between K8 @ 15% (or 15+19 = 34% in the
> worst case) and Python España or a US 501c3 @ 5%, then obviously the latter
> is more competitive. But it carries the risk of delays: When we've relied
> on dedicated and generous volunteers like Louis, the bursary recipients
> have experienced long delays.
>

This is true for any organisation dealing with the same kind of procedures,
as I mentioned above. It’s not the majority, but when there are issues, it
can really be time consuming and then there are delays that can be very
long.

Also, bear in mind that when we’re systematically short of money, we have
to gather all the needs prior to start reimbursing because it’s not first
come first serve but to the prorata of the total needs against the total
budget (minus the bank fees and the admin percentage cut).

>
> On 27 November 2017 at 18:59, Joao S. O. Bueno <gwidion at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> So, I just emailed the associason Python España in an attempt for a
>> "plan D". As they Associação Python Brasil could handle exactly what I
>> needed for this year, and this is just a message asking for their
>> help, I think it was on topic.
>>
>> Let's wait and see what is their say  - at least the are based in Spain
>> already.
>
>
> Sounds good! Thank you for being proactive Joao :)
>

This is marvelous!

Louis

>
> --
> Cheers
> Dave
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/20171128/87496bd4/attachment.html>