[OSGeo Oceania] Funding for organisation development

[Edoardo Neerhut]

+1 from me John. I support contacting both organisations for funding and
engaging professional advice to make sure our membership and election
process is fair and efficient and that we stand on a solid financial
footing.

On Wed, 14 Aug 2019 at 20:24, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm eager to kick off a discussion about OSGeo Oceania membership, our
> AGM, and the election of directors, so that we're ready to execute these
> things by the time FOSS4G SotM Oceania takes place. But in contemplating
> how this may play out, I'm seeing a lot of moving parts. It seems possible
> we'll need to make amendments to our constitution, and obviously we need to
> make sure we're fully compliant with relevant legislation.
>
> So, before we begin the membership etc discussion, I'd like us to consider
> engaging some professional help to make sure we do this right, and to offer
> timely guidance along the way. There are organisations that specialise in
> assisting not-for-profit organisations through processes like this, and I'd
> lean towards engaging one of these.
>
> I feel like once we begin the discussion, there will be a lot of questions
> we need to answer about what we can do, and having professional advice at
> the ready may keep us from getting bogged down.
>
> OSGeo (international) has part of their budget allocated to helping local
> chapters get off the ground, and this feels like it would fit the bill [1].
> I'd like to ask them for USD $2k.
>
> Also, Linux Australia recently launched a grant program [2], this might
> also be a good fit. I'd like to ask them for AUD $2500.
>
> With these two amounts, we'd have ample funds to seek professional advice
> in the short term to help fulfill our mandate in the OSGeo Oceania Terms of
> Reference [3], as well as have additional funds for specific accounting
> advice that we'll likely need as we bed down our accounting system.
>
> If one or both of these funding requests are unsuccessful, I would still
> see us engaging professional advice, but we may need to be more
> conservative with it. I believe we already have agreement that we should
> spend money on professional advice where needed, but this funding would
> give us latitude to get more help, move faster, get a better result, and
> avoid burning out our volunteer base.
>
> So, the motion: *We direct John Bryant to apply for funding from OSGeo
> and Linux Australia for funds to engage professional advice on developing
> our membership, AGM, and director election processes, and for additional
> accounting advice.*
>
> Thoughts? What say you? If I get the go ahead with this, I'll put in
> applications for funds right away.
>
> John
>
> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2019#OSGeo_Initiatives
> [2] https://linux.org.au/grants/
> [3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/13aZ6L08ke1-l32I7c00MahyEKgxeZkq8/view
>
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