[VisCom] T-shirts

[Gary Lang]

Frank is correct with respect to board and FunCom functions.

I don't mind doing the duty for now or the foreseeable future. I will
definitely be the first to flag when the workload is too high. That
would be a nice signal to me of OSGeo success, I suppose.

Gary

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:fwarmerdam at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Frank
Warmerdam (External)
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 8:01 AM
To: Arnulf Christl
Cc: Gary Lang; Michael P. Gerlek
Subject: Re: [VisCom] T-shirts

Arnulf Christl wrote:
> So we worked out the consensus that - yes - we want to sponsor 
> t-shirts for OSGeo. Phew, step 1 successful.
> 
> Basically I just wanted someone to throw some money into OSGeo so that

> we start to learn how this can work and build up a stock that we can 
> spend - on whatever great important things people will come up with 
> (fx my air fair to SFO... :-). My naive deliberation being that FunCom

> might start to work out a strategy on how to handle this in future 
> once there actually is money in the pot - not just lurking somewhere.

Arnulf,

Note that the FunCom's job is to raise money, not spend it.  Well,
perhaps a bit of spending in pursuit of more money.  It is up to the
board to budget spending, and perhaps committees such as VisCom will
eventually have much freedom on how to spend their budgeted alotment.

> The current development of the billing going directly to 
> Geo-Consortium or Autodesk (if that is an option you are suggesting 
> with "flip for it") somewhat thwarts my intention - but if some 
> t-shirts come out of it - fine by me.

OSGeo does have a bank account.  I would like to see us "practice"
putting money through it at some point.  Gary is the treasurer and holds
the keys to the account.

> mpg's request is still open:
> 
>  > Umm, what is OSGeo's billing address?  :-)

Since billing and related stuff would need to go through the Treasurer I
guess that would be Gary's work address.

> Ideally I would have wanted to transfer the money to an OSGeo banking 
> account and then OSGeo would have paid its first bill by itself.

Likewise, I prefer this approach.

> This is an all crappy strategy I know. Better ideas? I'd like to kick 
> some asses to get going but dunno how to without kicking some asses 
> that have definitely not deserved being kicked at (kicked in, kicked 
> by - those prepositions do me in).
> 
> :-)
> 
> President oh my president - don't you have a great solution?

I can't say that I have been following the t-shirt discussions closely
since they seem to have been well handled.  Was there a specific
question?

Getting collection and payment working smoothly will certainly be
necessary.  I have no special experience in this department other than
having watched how the SPI (Software in the Public Interest) handles
funds.  SPI handles fund collection and dispersement for a variety of
projects including Debian.   They make a substantial effort to keep
things
very transparent with detailed (to the penny) treasurer reports monthly
and a clear authorization process.  Hopefully we can do the same.

One thing I have seen from SPI is that being Treasurer can be quite a
substantial job and at some point we may want to consider a professional
bookkeeper parttime (hopefully something like 10 hours a month or
something) with Gary acting in an oversight role instead of having to
write every
cheque and so forth.   In SPI's case the treasurer frequently became
overloaded, and reports would be late, or deposits not made before
cheques become stale-dated.  Of course, given the keys to the kingdom,
we would need to trust the bookkeeper.

PS. I think this discussion should be distributed on the board list.  I
don't really have a special role in financial matters beyond as a board
member.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF,
http://osgeo.org