[OSGeo Oceania] Budget for FY 2021/2022

Tue Apr 6 08:04:04 PDT 2021

I am confused. All of the Perth Hubs expenses were paid by OSGeo Oceania as far as I can see in Xero. The Conference Committee asked that all Hubs, if they were charging a fee, to use Tito to collect funds. This was to insure the appropriate transparency, governance and ability to meet obligations around BAS etc. The Conference Committee asked each Hub to submit a budget, it was reviewed and approved/declined by the Conference Chair, and on production of receipts, expenses were paid. The Perth Hub did an excellent job (particularly in sponsorship) and raised more funds than was paid out. If they had run a deficit OSGeo would have still covered the expenses as per the submitted budget. 

I don't understand the comment 'budgeted and paid for with surplus from Perth ticket sales and sponsorship'. As per above the Women's breakfast was paid/reimbursed by OSGeo Oceania. Similar for this comment 'We had a small travel grant program, paid for by donations from Perth attendees' I can see $70 for Travel Grant was reimbursed. Yes funds were raised but that was on behalf of OSGeo Oceania

As a regional organisation we need to insure that we can support and fund initiatives across the Oceania region. From the below email it seems that the intention is/was to ring fence funds raised at the Perth Hub for Perth only activities. That is something I would not obviously support. It would be a very dangerous precedent in my mind, and be in direct conflict of the organisations aims in the region.

In terms getting access to Good Mojo funds there was lots of discussion but nobody formally submitted a request (as far as I know). As an initial Board member who worked with JB to facilitate the Good Mojo concept , and as a member who has contributed twice to the Good Mojo fund, I am more than comfortable that Good Mojo funds are used for such items as Women's Breakfasts. In my mind this directly supports diversity. Of course this could have been communicated much better, in consultation with the Hub managers. It would probably also make sense to have a 'Good Mojo' web page on the upcoming OSGeo Oceania web page that explains it aims and how to apply for funds.

I do agree that in this case it has got messy and that we do need to review how we account for such things as the Good Mojo Fund, and be more open and transparent about it (especially as it had separate fund raising commitment). We did discuss briefly in the last finance committee and I am sure it is something we will take on board moving forward. I reiterate Alex's comments in that the organisation are all volunteers, and yes, sometime things get dropped. We would always welcome more help on the committees.....

Greg.

On 4/2/2021 6:46:42 PM, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
No, this isn't accurate. All of the Perth Hub initiatives were funded locally. We were totally self-funded and didn't make any expenditures from the Good Mojo fund. I tried to get access to Good Mojo funds for Perth and other hubs but was unsuccessful.

We had a women's breakfast in Perth, budgeted and paid for with surplus from Perth ticket sales and sponsorship. We had a small travel grant program, paid for by donations from Perth attendees. Our accounting is here [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1adiSMW6O84_gLql33cD47kuHMN2Xdu4TWEJjG5jAsTM/edit#gid=127270298].

I recall Auckland had a women's breakfast, that might be where the $330.34 comes from.

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 14:37, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com [mailto:alexgleith at gmail.com]> wrote:

Hey Ed

And to others, I haven't quite weighed in on the comments included in emails yet.

On Good Mojo, there has been just over $400 distributed through John Bryant's initiatives. There was a women's breakfast and something coded as a 'grant' for the Perth hub, some kind of travel grant?

So yes, it's not quite accurate to say we spent $0. Profit and loss is included for this FY below.

Cheers,

[image.png]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2021 at 16:14, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com [mailto:eneerhut at gmail.com]> wrote:

@Alex Leith [mailto:alexgleith at gmail.com] can we get confirmation that the Good Mojo spend was actually $0. I agree that we should spend it how it was intended, as doing otherwise undermines our ability to collect interest/issue specific funds in future.

On Sat, 27 Mar 2021 at 23:57, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com [mailto:johnwbryant at gmail.com]> wrote:

Re: Good Mojo - when the board decides how to spend this fund, be conscious this money was collected from community contributors with the understanding it would be used to support diversity/accessibility/sustainability initiatives related to the conference. See the 2018 [1] and 2019 [2] conference websites to see how this was communicated to contributors at the time. I'm sure there's leeway to re-interpret how the funds can be used (eg. outside of the conference) but I believe it should be done very carefully, and communicated clearly to respect the contributors. I'm not sure microgrants would be an effective way to spend this money, without revising the microgrant guidelines to more specifically address diversity/accessibility/sustainability.

Re: conference - I understand conference planning isn't very far along yet, but I urge OSGeo Oceania to take an active role in any sponsorship drive that might take place this year, and get started as early as possible. It makes more sense to me that sponsor relationships would be developed and nurtured over years, rather than handing them off to an LOC to start anew each year. Re: financial risk, a strong sponsorship drive seems to me the clearest path to mitigating that risk.

Re: a deficit of $25k - if it means the 2018 & 2019 conference surplus funds are finally re-invested in the community, I'm all for it. My opinion is that the money is there to be spent, and if it's not replenished, so be it. This conference/organisation started without a cent to its name and made a big impact regardless. Community engagement is far more valuable than money sitting in the bank!

[1] https://2018.foss4g-oceania.org/attend/good-mojo-program.html [https://2018.foss4g-oceania.org/attend/good-mojo-program.html]
[2] https://2019.foss4g-oceania.org/sponsor [https://2019.foss4g-oceania.org/sponsor]

On Sun, 28 Mar 2021 at 11:55, Greg Lauer <gregory.lauer at gmail.com [mailto:gregory.lauer at gmail.com]> wrote:

Following on from the comments received so far...

Conference

We have not yet received a budget from the Conference Committee so it it is difficult to allocate a budget. I suspect we just carried over the proposed budget from last year. I am in agreement with JB's comments that there is opportunity to gain sponsorship etc. but at this time this is not in place. We do need an alternative source(s) of revenue. Sponsorship is one, grants are another. All involve significant amount of effort on an ongoing basis to continually engage with prospective entities. My personal opinion is that we illustrate the worst case scenario, allowing a certain degree of flexibility. Although the last conference nearly broke even, every conference is a financial risk to OSGeo Oceania and I feel feel the budget needs to reflect that. With the complications of Covid I feel we still need to take a cautious approach for 21/22. Would welcome further discussion on this as it is a major budget item.

Good Mojo

As I understand it (Alex feel free to chip in) we have ~$8000 'tagged' as for Good Mojo. I am not sure why we have tagged it $0, but I suspect that has to do with that Good Mojo Funds have been used to fund various activities that fall under other budget activities (for example Women's Breakfasts) So to be clear it is not missing. Maybe there is a better way to illustrate this within the budget? We have budgeted for Outreach and community support. Maybe make available some Good Mojo funds to this or Microgrants etc.

Microgrants

Eli presented an update to the Board and if I understand correctly we have 2 grants approved out of 7 applications (with 2 declined and 3 awaiting more information). Great to see the momentum growing. Yes early days but agree that budget should be revised for this. Maybe the best way to manage this is for the Microgrant Committee to submit a budget request? Then this can be considered as part of the budget.

SIGs

We have proposed a budget allocation of $2,500 to each SIG. (This is indicated in the 21/22 tab). As per Martin's comments I feel we should provide 'seed' funding to the SIG's on an annual basis, until such time that they are self-sufficient. The SIG's have been set up in such a way that any spending is transparent and can be wholly managed by the SIG committee. I would like us moving away from the Board having to authorise minor expenditure for SIG's and have them manage directly. By making available a pool of money to the SIG's the committees can mange in what ever way they see fit.

I feel the key issue for OSGeo Members is that we are predicting a deficit of up to $25,000 in 21/22 and are we happy to support that? We budgeted a similar deficit in 20/21 and it looks like an actual deficit of $6,000.

Please keep the comments and thoughts rolling in!

Greg

On 3/27/2021 4:14:13 AM, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com [mailto:eneerhut at gmail.com]> wrote:
Thanks for fantastic feedback.

Conference
I had similar thoughts on the conference to you John. From memory we agreed to keep tabs on how conference plans develop over the next month or so and incorporate that into conference expectations.

Good Mojo
Keen to hear from Alex here. I have been shamefully ignorant to the Good Mojo fund of late.

Microgrants
I think it's reasonable to increase this given it will be the second financial year of microgrants. This could be one we asterix and review monthly before we finalise the budget and allocate a final figure. It'd be great to see how current funds are used over the next couple of months.

SIGs
If new SIGs emerge, couldn't they be covered with the funds Outreach and Community support? That's what happened this financial year, and then the SIGs can get dedicated funding once they're established.

On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 at 22:14, Martin Tomko <tomkom at unimelb.edu.au [mailto:tomkom at unimelb.edu.au]> wrote:

I agree here with John,
I think we can be more optimistic than in the catastrophic plans we had mid last year, although I agree that being cautious is good.
I would also like to see a further expansion of the local outreach and community support/SIGs and potentially supporting transaltion of local academic OS innovations to the OS ecosystem ,as we have canvased over a year ago with John ( but then COVID hit and we could not take off). I do not see space for this, including any potential support for SIGs (I understand they should be self-financing in the longer term, but there may be need for some start up funds for new ones) – working groups are, as we know, a different story ( Communication and Finance and Membership).

Thank you all for the great job in planning ahead, great to see the community keeping momentum ( and apologies for radio silence for a while)!

Thanks,
Martin

From: Oceania <oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org]> on behalf of John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com [mailto:johnwbryant at gmail.com]>
Date: Friday, 26 March 2021 at 3:57 pm
To: Oceania community <oceania at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:oceania at lists.osgeo.org]>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo Oceania] Budget for FY 2021/2022
Thanks for the opportunity to contribute to budget planning. I have a few comments/questions.

1. Conference

The proposed budget includes an AUD $5000 loss for the conference, which doesn't align with past experience. Even last year, when plans were derailed mid-year and we had to create a new plan on the fly, we still turned a small profit overall [1], despite minimal focus on sponsorship.

FOSS4G 2021 (global) will be fully online, and they're running a relatively successful sponsorship drive. If we are running another hybrid conference, it feels like there's potential to find sponsorship. Last year's event was the largest in-person event we've ever organised, in terms of overall attendance, and with that experience behind us, I think there's a significant value proposition for sponsors. Since conference revenue has been the predominant source of income for OO, I feel this is a sensible place to focus. The assumption there won't be any significant income feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

2. Good Mojo

A question about Good Mojo expenditure: why reduce it to zero? I guess there's still ~$8k in the Good Mojo fund since the 2020-2021 budget has 0 under actual. I suggest this should be used, the people and orgs that contributed to it in 2018 and 2019 would probably like to see their contributions put to use. If there is an in-person event then maybe reviving the Travel Grant Program would make sense. Hubs could be enabled to have a local impact using these funds.

3. Microgrants

Last, re: Microgrants, I feel $2k won't be enough. There has been a lot of interest in the first few weeks of the program. $2k will only fund ~8 grants over the whole year. I suspect we could increase this to $6k, which would average 2 grants per month.

Cheers
John

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174P83K_AnDHrH-HbsJmAdXQfrdbTR9ElVcHtxQ1lrWw/edit#gid=1331367998 [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174P83K_AnDHrH-HbsJmAdXQfrdbTR9ElVcHtxQ1lrWw/edit#gid=1331367998]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 at 20:56, Greg Lauer <gregory.lauer at gmail.com [mailto:gregory.lauer at gmail.com]> wrote:
Hi All,

The OSGeo Oceania Finance committee met earlier this week, and one of the items discussed is preparing a budget for FY 21/22. Once we have done this we will forward it to the OSGeo Oceania Board to approve. We plan to present to the Board at the April meeting in approx. 4 weeks.

We would welcome input and discussion from OSGeo Oceania members and community around the budget. You can review 20/21 and the proposed 21/22 budget at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cbd3Rt5R688qrZ3eTCHxpRZ8HbII358_1UARf3m5qBs/edit?usp=sharing [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cbd3Rt5R688qrZ3eTCHxpRZ8HbII358_1UARf3m5qBs/edit?usp=sharing]

Too much? Too little? What should we be spending money on? Potential income sources? 

The key issue is that it is unlikely we will have any significant income for FY 21/22 as the Conference Working group is planning another hybrid virtual conference. We would hope this would not be the case in FY 22/23.

We are looking forward to your input

Many thanks,

Greg, Alex, Dionne and Ed
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