[OSGeo Oceania] Funding for organisation development

[Bruce Bannerman]

+1 Bruce

However, I see this as initial advice only.


If we are serious about establishing our community, then we will then need to actively contribute to our community's development, including to the non-sexy process and administration aspects.

This is about setting the ground rules about how we want to work together as a community.

We have a wealth of experience from many international open source communities amongst us. 

We also have a healthy parent organisation within OSGeo that we can use as a starting point to borrow, adapt and improve processes. We don’t have to start with a clean slate.

That said, I acknowledge the requirements to be compliant with relevant legislation.

Kind regards,

Bruce




> On 14 Aug 2019, at 20:23, 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 <https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2019#OSGeo_Initiatives>
> [2] https://linux.org.au/grants/ <https://linux.org.au/grants/>
> [3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/13aZ6L08ke1-l32I7c00MahyEKgxeZkq8/view <https://drive.google.com/file/d/13aZ6L08ke1-l32I7c00MahyEKgxeZkq8/view>_______________________________________________
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