[OSGeo Oceania] Funding for organisation development

[Trisha Moriarty]

+1 support. Great idea

On Thu, 15 Aug 2019 at 1:12 pm, Daniel Silk <dwsilk at gmail.com> wrote:

> +1 from me. Would be great to have that external advice to help guide us
> through these decisions.
>
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 10:24 PM 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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