[Board] Treasurer update - September 2014

[Daniel Morissette]

OSGeo board and members,

As my term as OSGeo treasurer is about to end, here is a quick update on 
some key points regarding OSGeo finances. This is a copy of the 
treasurer update that I delivered at the OSGeo 2014 AGM at FOSS4G 2014 
on 2014-09-11.

Recent developments:
--------------------

- 501(c)4 nonprofit status: The hilight of the last year is clearly that 
we finally got our 501(c)4 non-profit status approved by the IRS. The 
saga finally ended this summer!  After getting a first positive decision 
last year, we then received a revocation letter later in the fall for 
having not filed IRS 990's for more than 3 years while we were waiting 
for the IRS decision. We asked the IRS to review this decision, they did 
and we finally got confirmation that they reversed this revocation and 
everything is good now.

- Project Sponsorship Program: One impact of the 501(c)4 process is that 
we were forced to stop the project sponsorship program as directly 
funding coding/maintenance was considered unfair competition to private 
companies by the IRS (GDAL and OpenLayers were the main ones using it). 
However, organizing events such as FOSS4G and code sprints is perfectly 
fine and fits with our mission. If we want to directly support project 
development and maintenance with paid developers, we could do so using a 
separate for-profit corporation. Other foundations such as Mozilla use 
that model.

- The finances were in bad shape in 2011 3 years ago, but we are in 
great shape today: OSGeo has rebuilt its financial reserves in the last 
3 years thanks to exceptional surplus from FOSS4G Denver/2011, and 
Nottingham/2013, as well as FOSS4G-NA Minneapolis that contributed 50% 
of its surplus to OSGeo.

- My term as OSGeo board member ended with the last election in August, 
but I am still the Treasurer until the board appoints a new treasurer, 
quite likely at the next board meeting.


Short term actions:
-------------------

I may not have time to complete all the actions below before the end of 
my term, but I will definitely continue to be around and offer my 
assistance to the next treasurer to go through that:

- Finalize book keeping for 2012-2013 with Alan Strand (accountant). We 
have records of everything on paper and in the DropBox folder (receipts, 
invoices, payments, etc.). We "just" need an accountant to go through 
that, enter it properly in QuickBooks and produce yearly reports, etc. 
Alan is currently working on that and I am meeting with him on Saturday 
(at the Code Sprint location) to sprint on that.

- File 990's with IRS for the 2011-2012-2013 fiscal years since none 
were filed since 2006 while we were waiting on the IRS decision on the 
nonprofit status. That's also on the agenda of my sprint with the 
accountant this week.

- Put in place a smoother way to handle finances, possibly using an 
external resource (Alan?), to make the transition easier for future 
treasurers: book keeping, filings, quarterly financial reports, etc.

- Invoice sponsors for 2013-14. We have not invoiced sponsors while we 
were waiting on resolution of our non-profit status from IRS since it 
was not clear at the time if their contribution would be taxable, so I 
preferred to wait. Now that the non-profit status is confirmed it's time 
to get back on track with our sponsors.

- Prepare budget for 2015


Thoughts for the Future:
------------------------

Here are my *personal* thoughts on some future actions/directions that I 
believe OSGeo should consider based on my experience on the board and as 
treasurer. They are just thoughts and I will let the next board and 
treasurer make the decision to act on them or not:

- switch to a US-based bank (the current Canadian bank is not the best 
option any more for OSGeo as it is today)

- quarterly (or monthly) reports from the accountant and treasurer to 
the board and the community

- consider paying people (even if just a few hours per month) for some 
key tasks that volunteers cannot sustain in the long run 
(accounting/book keeping, systems administration, conference/event 
coordination, etc.)

- define a strategy to ensure a stable revenue source for the future: we 
first need to agree/decide if our main revenue sources should be 
sponsors, membership, or FOSS4G, and then plan accordingly by making 
sure we assign enough resources to sustain that revenue stream. (e.g. at 
the moment there is nobody looking after our sponsors, so we are losing 
some each year)

- I personally see FOSS4G as our main source of revenue and believe that 
we should take steps to ensure continuity in the planning and management 
of the event and facilitate the life of LOC's and avoid burning out a 
new team each year. What form this takes can be discussed, but we 
clearly need more than a lessons learned wiki page and volunteers doing 
all the work.


-- 
Daniel Morissette
T: +1 418-696-5056 #201
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000