[Board] OSGeo Priorities: Should OSGeo act as a high capital or low capital organisation?

[Frank Warmerdam]

Cameron,

I certainly agree generally that I would like to operate in a
low-overhead manner in which takes a great deal of financial pressure
off us.  I think there is still room to discuss the priority of
various spending items, and what opportunities we think would be
strategic for us to support.

Things I want to avoid:
- Fundraising based on expensive professional assistance.
- Seeing OSGeo as the primary funding vehicle for open source geospatial work.

Things I hope to see:
- Strategic spending on promotional materials.
- Support for community infrastructure.
- Support for interesting initiatives (meetings, distributions,
community building).

Ah, meeting time, i'd better cut this short.

Best regards,
Frank

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 1:46 AM, Cameron Shorter
<cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
> In preparation for the OSGeo Board meeting in a bit over 24 hours, I'd like
> to suggest some talking points to help us frame what we should focus on as
> priorities.
>
> Should OSGeo act as a high capital or low capital organisation?
>
> Ie, should OSGeo dedicate energy to collecting sponsorship and then passing
> out these funds to worth OSGeo causes.
> While initially it seems attractive to have OSGeo woe sponsors, because we
> would all love to have more money to throw at worthy OSGeo goals, the
> reality is that chasing money is hard work. And someone who can chase OSGeo
> sponsorship is likely conflicted with chasing sponsorship for their
> particular workplace. So in practice, to be effective in chasing
> sponsorship, OSGeo will probably need to hire someone specifically for the
> role. OSGeo would then need to raise at least enough to cover wages.
> This high capital path is how LocationTech are setting themselves up. It
> might be successful, but OSGeo is currently not structured as a high capital
> organisation.
>
> The path which OSGeo is currently following is the low capital path. Our
> overheads are very low, which means we waste very little of our volunteer
> labour on the time consuming task of chasing and managing money.
> Consequently, any money we do receive (from conference windfalls or similar)
> goes a long way - and doesn't get eaten up by high overheads. I'd argue that
> this low capital path is something that is working very well for us, and the
> path we should continue to pursue.
>
> So what should be our financial priorities?
>
> 1. Our primary focus should be to back the major foss4g events, eg: the
> global foss4g, and regional foss4g events like foss4g-na.  This requires
> sufficient bank balance to guarantee conference loans. These events should
> also be our primary source of income.
>
> 2. Our secondary income priority is to cover all the costs of running osgeo.
> Bank fees, insurance, infrastructure hosting, etc.
>
> 2. Our tertiary focus should be to cover related smaller osgeo type events.
>
> 3. Then with any spare budget, we should use for incidental marketing type
> activities - paying for non-consumables at conferences (banners etc).
> If we have budget, we could possibly also subsidise consumables (eg LiveDVD
> printing), but we should not give away these things. We should be asking
> events to pay for these things, and we should not be paying conference
> organisors for a booth at events.
>
>
> --
> Cameron Shorter
> Geospatial Solutions Manager
> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
> http://www.lisasoft.com
>
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--
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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    | Geospatial Software Developer