<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Dear all, It is my understanding that the debate is closed about the switch to another organisation to handle our finances. </div><div>Here’s a plan for that smooth transition. </div><div>Only 8 days after the deadline. Wow! </div><div> </div>In short, </div><div><div style="margin-left:40px"> We can act now, select the umbrella, sign the agreement with them, update our website. The only economic activity we have as of now is reimbursing and it’s under way. There is no more money coming in for this year’s LGM. As soon as we have sponsors or donators and money coming in to put in the bank, from now on, we use the umbrella. Once the reimbursements are completed, whatever is left will be sent to the umbrella. Meanwhile, all sponsorship activities can be organised; one very important step being to put together our long awaited annual report. </div><div> </div><div>In details: </div><div> Introduction Structuring the finances using an umbrella organisation implicitly means structuring our organisation. This does not mean we have to legally constitute an organisation ; it means we, as a group, should establish the rules we want to follow, just like we have a Code of conduct. We suggested the creation of a board years ago but apparently people where not too keen about this word. Any word that suits will do. The result is there has to be an identifiable head to LGM. Why? Because we want to be able to administrate a budget and this means formalities. The good news is the work is already half done. What we do already is a good start. Each year at LGM, we have a meeting at the end of LGM. Provided it’s a bit more formal (keeping the joyful tone of the meeting but at the same time keeping in mind we need to keep track of certain decisions in a more official way), it’s in fact our annual general meeting (AGM). What we could do to formalise things and make them official to our sponsors, umbrella organisation and whoever is interested in LGM: nominate (or elect if necessary) a president of AGM who will help run the discussions according to the agenda, a secretary who will write the minutes of that assembly. The agenda should be on line at least a month prior to LGM. We can follow simple general meeting rules that already exists. </div><div><ul><li>Opening of meeting</li><li>Confirmation of quorum</li><li>Nomination of the meeting’s officers (at least 2 people: president and secretary)</li><li>Reading of the agenda, adding to it if necessary </li><li>We are presented the previous year financial state.</li><ul><li>We vote it so it becomes official. </li></ul><li>We discuss what’s on the agenda, point by point, and make decisions </li><ul><li>We vote when necessary</li></ul><li>The next venue is agreed and officially voted (if possible).</li><li>The next budget is presented, discussed and made official by a vote. </li><li>We welcome and vote for new board members when necessary.</li><ul><li>Board members have a 2-year mandate and can be re-elected (endlessly?), for 2-years mandate.</li></ul><li>We can create as many committee as we need.</li><ul><li>People are free to offer their help.</li><li>Committees that are asked for present their report, if any. </li></ul><li>Since a budget is involved, the board has to be officially voted so LGM can speak with authority to our umbrella organisation and in turn our umbrella organisation is assured that it handles money that have a specific goal that is agreed upon by who represents the LGM community. </li><li>The committee members do not require to be elected unless we think so. </li><li>The minutes are kept for the next AGM when they will be made official.</li><li>The meeting finishes </li></ul>Tasks <ol><li>Create the Committee of Finances, determine goals, tasks, etc.</li><li>Find people for this committee (eg. Frank, Suzan, Nate, Louis, etc. I would suggest that this committee should always have on board the local organiser of the next year.) </li><li>Select the umbrella organisation (responsible: LGM organisation) </li><li>Get the infos from them about the nuts & bolts of invoicing (who does what, when, how is this handled, controlled), getting the money (there must be a follow-up mechanism that LGM org agrees upon), using the money (how orders to reimburse an expense are given by LGM org, who is entitled to give such orders, who controls what, how.) </li><li>Update the sponsorship page on the website with the new infos. </li><li>Put together the annual report for 2016 — this is a collective effort from all the teams and should definitely include stuff about previous years. I suggest we ask specifically some of our best writers to help at least once with this task (Prokoudine? Nate? Greg?). The structured frame of this report will be used in the following years. </li><li>Be ready to print n copies and to make available the report on the website as a PDF. The report by the way should be made using either Scribus or Libre Office, as a suggestion. (My offer to print it for free is still on the table)</li><li>This report should be available to translators. </li><li>Create a follow up on line document for sponsors’ contacts.</li><ul><li>Gather all the possible contacts from all our networks</li><li>Establish a list of past and present sponsors</li><li>Enrich that list, update it regularly, make it accessible to the members of the committee.</li></ul><li>Start the sponsorship process asap (immediately after the umbrella association has been chosen and everything has been agreed upon — say, weeks from now). </li><li>Pursue and conclude the discussion about membership and attendance fees (or, if we do not like the idea of a membership or an attendance fee, a voluntary contribution — basically, people who can afford it, based on their sole evaluation, pay whatever they want and we can help them with some hints numbers).</li><ul><li>In my view, this discussion is inevitable</li><li>A few comments cannot terminate that discussion. It’s not enough data.</li><li>We must gather a much larger array of facts and opinions about that idea.</li><li>A poll would greatly help gather this valuable info.</li><li>In addition to the ideas already proposed, a "project membership" could be envisioned. This means for instance that active contributors to projects could see their membership fees paid by their own organisation and not them personnaly + a bonus paid by the organisation itself. We can discuss that. </li><li>Or else, someone urgently needs to step in with a better idea to secure an annual budget, sustainably and high enough to cover needs that can go between 10K and 30K annually (and, once we get organised, these needs might increase). </li></ul><li>Complete the 2016 reimbursements and any pending request before end of June 2016 (LD) </li><li>Final financial report (LD) by the end of July</li><li>Umbrella org invoices AQDPLL for the remaining amount so any money remaining after the last reimbursement is done will be transferred to the umbrella organisation. (This is how it was done between GNOME and AQDPLL in 2010). </li></ol></div>Things to consider </div><div>On site expenses (the local organiser) (eg. renting of some equipment, printing, t-shirts, local transport, etc.) </div><div style="margin-left:40px"><ul><li>The local organiser should be reimbursed just the same as a traveller.</li><li>The local organiser could use a personal credit card or cash or debit card, gather the invoices or receipt and submit a final expenses report and get reimbursed just the same as a regular submitter</li><li>The expenses are reviewed and accepted (the expenses should be agreed and accepted beforehand, so the local organisers are sure to be reimbursed if they pay from their personal credit card, for instance).</li></ul></div><div>Off site expenses (the travellers) </div><div>They need to file themselves in, on the online form, and provide the relevant documents. </div><div> </div><div>Reimbursement process in detail (task of the Committee of Finance) </div><ol><li>LGM organisation gives a one month delay after the termination of an LGM to participants who need financial support to provide their proofs of purchase.</li><ul><li>Reason: since we pay in proportion of the budget and the needs, we need to gather all needs before we start reimbursing.</li><li>If we want that situation to change, we need to secure a budget that will be over our needs prior to LGM.</li><ul><li>We would then be able to start reimbursing right away</li><li>In some cases, hand out the money before people buy their tickets. </li><li>A risk exists that the traveller cancels the trip and owes us money. </li><li>The money must be in the bank before LGM starts. </li></ul></ul><li>Each year, we must recreate from scratch the online form to gather the information from the participants at LGM in need of financial support to cover their travel only expenses to and from LGM (round trip).</li><ul><li>The fields are all a necessity but there could be many less if the LGM organisation would decide to reimburse using Paypal only (thus, no bank address, no account numbers, no IBAN/SWIFT). </li><li>This is a discussion to have because some participants to LGM has expressed clearly they do not want to use Paypal. The actual proportion of submitters is more or less 50/50 depending on the year. </li><li>Paypal is by far the most efficient and simplistic way to transmit money anywhere in the world, to anyone.</li><li>Paypal handles more currencies than regular banks.</li><li>Paypal have no restriction on the time of the transaction as compared to banks where the transactions that need a currency rate are bound to the opening time of the markets, in the country we send the money from and also to the access to a rate, so, no holidays in the other country, no week-ends. This can become tedious. </li><li>Paypal is the cheapest mean, by far (10 times cheaper than the bank). Our money is better used when we use Paypal. </li><li>Paypal is the fastest mean, by far (up to 1000 times faster when things go wrong with the bank and average 10 times faster) because there is basically no form to fill, aside from the email address attached to people’s account. </li><li>We could ask Paypal to find out whether there are restrictions for some countries.</li><li>However those restrictions do not compare to those of the regular banking system which are very tight. </li></ul><li>Once submitted, the form displays a message on the web page telling the submitter that the data has properly been sent.</li><li>The organisers receive an email.</li><li>The submitters should receive the same email (it was the case in previous years but not in 2016 — this needs to be fixed)</li><li>See if it is possible, from one year to another, to keep the form and move it to the new website. This would avoid errors and delay, and extra (unnecessary) work. </li><li>One member of the Committee logs in the website and downloads the CSV file from the on line form and all the uploaded documents.</li><li>The CSV is put in a calc sheet and submitted to the LGM local organiser who must check if all listed people are actually entitled to a reimbursement, if they showed up at LGM and if there is no-one missing in the list. </li><ul><li>We don’t want administrative rules to push aside someone who made a mistake or who simply forgot.</li><li>We can make a reasonable attempt to communicate with that person if the case occurs. </li></ul><li>Once checked, the list is returned to the Committee who can now check the documents for compliance, make all necessary recalls for documents, stamp them as OK to process, sign them and prepare the reimbursement orders. </li><li>The orders are transmitted at once to the Umbrella organisation by the mean of the same calc sheet. All relevant infos show on that list. </li><li>The documents are scanned, named following a strict name nomenclature to be established with the umbrella organisation and made available on a server to the umbrella organisation who will need those as a proof that the expense was actually done. They can download those documents at any time. </li><li>Reimbursement can take place.</li><li>Once done, the Umbrella organisation transmits the Committee a report that includes the real cost for each reimbursements (transaction fees and currency rates, total amounts).</li><li>The Committee reviews the report. If anything, we sort them out with our contact at the Umbrella organisation.</li><li>The Committee is ready to transmit the final report to the LGM board.</li><li>This report will be part of the annual report made to the General Assembly at next LGM, for its official approval by the Assembly. </li></ol>About black listed countries: If we know ahead of time that it will be problematic to transmit money to a certain country, we can reimburse on site in cash, provided we have all the relevant documents. A signed receipt attached to the invoice is all the accountant needs. We need to have access to cash, one way or another. This is a simple process. It can also be that the local organiser takes the money from an ATM and pays the participant, then gets reimbursed by electronic mean, by the Umbrella organisation.About official receipts for tax deduction:I think we should not care about the capacity of our umbrella organisation to emit official receipts for tax. My opinion is based on the fact that an organisation is tied to a specific jurisdiction. Hence, what is fiscally possible in one country or state has only an effect on the residents who pay their income tax in the same jurisdiction. This is why multinational corporations have companies in every country. The same would apply to us if we would care so much about emitting receipts for tax deduction. We would need to create a non-profit in every country where there are donators to LGM. Do we want that? I don’t think so. The amounts we will gather from individuals who donate are small (ie, below 500$ and even much less). The fiscal benefit (tax deduction) will be in proportion of that amount. So, if this becomes an issue, it’s an issue of principles. Not a significant impact on the financial situation of anyone and in any case we would be favouring people from one single country. For larger amounts (say, from 500$), the corporate world asks for invoices. To them, fiscally, it’s an expense, so, before their bottom line. It reduces their revenues. It reduces their income tax. On the part of the umbrella organisation that is a non-profit, there is no income tax so invoicing is not an issue. However there are rules that apply when an organisation reaches a certain level of financial activity. We should be informed at the very beginning of such rules and their effects. About non-profits organisations:Non-profits organisations have basically the same fundamentals in many countries but there can be quite a few differences from one jurisdiction to another as to the rules that apply to those entities. There is a fiscal law (generally, the most complicated law in each jurisdiction, hence the necessity for highly skilled tax experts) in every country and if the countries share grosso modo the definition of non-profit organisation, the rules that apply to them can be of a great diversity. So, it is advisable not to try to make general assertions about those organisations, from one country to another. The rules that run non-profits in the USA are not the same that rule them in Belgium, for instance, or in any other country. Wikipedia has a good article on that subject.Hope that helps. Louis </div>