[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G 2014 Budget Sharing

[Paul Ramsey]

On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 at 6:15 AM, Andrew Ross <andrew.ross at eclipse.org> wrote:
>
> I've always wondered how this worked for past events as it seemed quite
> secretive. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in the community in this regard.

With the exception of South Africa, in which a joint agreement was
arranged ahead to time to share with GISSA, all the other "OSGeo era"
(2007+) FOSS4G events have returned all profits to OSGeo. The profit
"targets" in the RFP are to make explicit that we don't necessarily
want to-the-bone break-even budgets, we want budgets that will, under
reasonable assumptions, return revenue to the organization. They are
not the maximum or average profit we want, they are the minimum
planning threshold. The organization still expects to receive the full
profits of the event, RFP numbers notwithstanding.

Though a familiar industry group (GITA) helped organize FOSS4G 2011,
they did so as a standard conference organizing organization: their
fee structure was known ahead of time and was in the budget from the
start. That they also knew our industry as well as event organizing
was a handy bonus, but not germane to the financial arrangements.

I would expect that if the Eclipse foundation is looking for a profit
sharing arrangement like GISSA, it should be included in the proposal
with some precision (X%), and if they are going to act, like GITA, as
an organizer, their fee schedule should be in the budget.

P.