[Board] new Sponsors page draft

Fri Oct 16 06:23:36 PDT 2015

Hi Board,

I was surprised to read this morning that all sponsors had been removed 
right away with no effort to contact them. After all this has been on 
hold for about a year (since the IRS saga resolution), so there was no 
urgency to remove anyone from the website right away. It is our (OSGeo) 
problem if they were not invoiced, none of them are in fault for not 
paying their sponsorship invoice since they didn't receive one.

I think it would have been polite to contact each sponsor and give them 
a few weeks to confirm their intention to stay or not before removing 
them from the page. My personal apologies to Jeroen/GeoCat and other 
past sponsors for not addressing this situation and following up with 
invoices last fall before leaving the treasurer seat.

How about putting them all back online for now and removing only those 
who fail to confirm their intention to renew their sponsorship after a 
reasonable (few weeks) notice? Those who have already expressed their 
intention to NOT renew (I'm aware of at least one) should be removed 
right away of course.

With respect to the situation of sponsors billing vs IRS, etc, the "free 
ride" mentioned in this thread was only discussed offlist as a potential 
solution and never formally approved, but the overall situation was 
mentioned publicly in my treasurer report last year at the AGM and on 
the mailing list here, so this is not news and the whole community was 
aware of it:

https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2014-September/012066.html

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

...

- 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.
"""

All that being said, thanks a lot to the new board for grabbing the ball 
and addressing the sponsors situation, something that I/we should have 
done a year ago after the IRS situation got resolved.

Daniel

On 2015-10-16 8:47 AM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
> Hi Jeroen,
>
> As Jody mentioned, I am sorry for this confusion.  I will try to
> summarize the situation here, and OSGeo treasurers can correct me, but I
> think it is important that we speak of this openly (I don't think this
> has ever been publicly spoken of, since I've been on the board since 2009).
>
> I believe OSGeo's long battle to resolve the non-profit tax status
> (thank you Tyler and Daniel for resolving) affected our invoicing of
> sponsors in 2013.  We are now of course 501(c)(4) exempt, but that came
> in late 2013, and even then I remember there were some complications and
> further steps needed to clear up.
>
> It was then decided that existing sponsors would not be invoiced for
> 2013 to 2014 (a "free ride" so to speak).  The same I believe happened
> for 2014 (no new invoices were sent out to existing sponsors).
>
> So as far as I am aware, that brings us to 2015-2016.
>
> Yesterday during the OSGeo Board meeting, sponsors were discussed
> (search for "sponsor" text in the logs at
> http://irclogs.geoapt.com/osgeo/%23osgeo.2015-10-15.log) and the OSGeo
> board decided to update the sponsors page listing the current sponsor
> thinkWhere, and then list all past sponsors below that.  Then, late last
> night I updated the sponsors page as we agreed in that meeting.
>
> I believe we/OSGeo must now contact all past sponsors and possibly
> invoice.  Thankfully Jody is interested in championing this and will
> work with the current OSGeo treasurer Mike Smith.
>
> I hope this clarifies what has been happening through the years, and I
> am sure others will speak up now and correct me where I made improper
> assumptions, but it is good to speak about this publicly, and improve on
> it for 2015-2016.
>
> Jeroen I too don't like not seeing the GeoCat logo there.  Maybe we can
> fast-track all this and you can phone me today and we can work through
> this together?
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2015-10-16 2:55 AM, Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> I'm confused... GeoCat has always been a sponsor and to the best of my
>> knowledge still is. If this is not the case according to OSGeo it is
>> because no recurring invoice was send to us. We may not be the only
>> sponsor dropping off the list if this is the case. Can you put GeoCat
>> back on instead of on a list of previous sponsors? We've been sponsor
>> since GeoCat was founded in 2007 and will likely continue to do so in
>> the future.
>>
>> It would be nice to see a new plan where company size is taken into
>> account indeed.
>> Thanks,
>> Jeroen
>>
>>
>> GeoCat Bridge for ArcGIS allows instant publishing of data and
>> metadata on GeoServer, MapServer, PostGIS and GeoNetwork. Visit
>> http://geocat.net for details.
>> _________________________
>> Jeroen Ticheler
>> GeoCat bv
>> Veenderweg 13
>> 6721 WD Bennekom
>> Tel: +31 (0)6 81286572
>> http://geocat.net
>>
>>> Op 16 okt. 2015 om 01:43 heeft Jeff McKenna
>>> <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com> het volgende geschreven:
>>>
>>> Hi Board, all,
>>>
>>> As discussed in today's Board meeting, I've updated the Sponsors page
>>> to list our current sponsor (thinkWhere) and list all of the previous
>>> sponsors: http://www.osgeo.org/content/sponsorship/sponsors.html
>>>
>>> This would have to be verified by the Treasurer.  I tried very hard
>>> to list all past OSGeo sponsors, I went through many old documents,
>>> as far back as 2006.  Please let me know if I made any mistakes.
>>>
>>> I'd like to thank Alan Moore of thinkWhere
>>> (http://www.thinkwhere.com/) for their current sponsorship, and each
>>> and every past sponsor of OSGeo:
>>>
>>> 1Spatial
>>> 2ndQuadrant
>>> ASTUN Technology
>>> Autodesk
>>> Boreal-Information Strategies (Borealis)
>>> Camptocamp
>>> First Base Solutions Inc.
>>> GeoCat
>>> INGRES
>>> Institut Geographique National (IGN) France
>>> Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) Brazil
>>> Karttakeskus
>>> LizardTech, A Celartem Company
>>> Metaspatial
>>> Ordnance Survey
>>> PCI Geomatics
>>> WhereGroup
>>>
>>> -jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>
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-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
T: +1 418-696-5056 #201

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