[Board] Treasurer update - September 2014

Fri Sep 12 05:40:52 PDT 2014

Hi all,

First of all ,thank you to Daniel for his excellent service to OSGeo in his role as the Treasurer and Board over the years. 

I hope the Board will look into all the points raised in the "Thoughts for the Future" that Daniel put as these are all important points for the future of OSGeo.

For example, for the sponsors strategy, my humble suggestion is that we should have a task group  setup with the Tresurer and a Board member in charge to  put together and coordinate a team of charter members and volunteers covering every region to follow up this with sponsors in their regions.  That will make sure we have a good revenue stream in place over the long term.

Personally, I hope OSGeo membership is kept free for all (as we have now) and there is no membership fees to make it as inclusive as possible.

Anyway, just some thoughts to get the discussions and hopefully actions started :)

Best wishes,

Suchith

-----Original Message-----
From: board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Morissette
Sent: 12 September 2014 01:07
To: OSGeo-Board
Subject: [Board] Treasurer update - September 2014

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/
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