Re: GNOME Foundation Budget

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

[For informative purposes of the foundation, I figured I'd answer
these as best as possible for the previous three years.][This would
all have been easier had the data been presented as a .gnumeric file
instead of pdf :)

On 8/12/05, Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com> wrote:
> * what percentage of our money goes towards administration?

including payroll taxes and the payroll service:
2004: 47.8%
Average since 2002: 48.9%

> Other major expenditure categories?

GUADEC is the only other very large category, but is hard to break out
separately because of changes in accounting over the years. We did
finally get the budgeting right (which is hard in this case) in 2004,
so we'll be better off there in the future.

In 2004, non-admin GUADEC expenses were 24.6% of our overall expenses. 

Also in 2004, non-admin bounty expenses were 7% of overall expenses,
and about 16% of revenue.

The other ~20% of expenses went to a variety of things- in order of
size, insurance, GIMP, 'supplies', postage/shipping, etc.

> * what was our surplus/deficit for the year? (in other words, how
> vulnerable are we if one or two major sponsors pull out?)

Our average surplus over the past three years has been ~$23K. So if we
lose an ad board member (we have reason to think we'll be adding at
least some in the near future) we're still OK.

> * what percentage of revenue comes from different sources? (FOG,
> GUADEC, Advisory Board, etc.?) 

in 2004, Ad Board was a little under a fifth of our revenues; down
from a little under half in 2003 and 2/3rds in 2002. [Though I think
perhaps in 2002 GUADEC donations from our board was lumped in with the
Ad Board fees?]

FOG has been much smaller, though in 2004 it was nearly 1/2 as much
money as Advisory Board (~$15K as opposed to $30K). I expect that
revenue from both this and merchandise sales should rise in fiscal
2006.

> And what types of revenue do we have-
> in-kind, recurring pledges, one-time pledges, etc.?

'unearned' revenue- i.e., revenue that in theory is unpredictable from
year to year, unlike our ad board pledges- was 76.0% of revenue last
year, up from 32 and 37 the years before. I guess that much of that
leap is probably because of changes in how GUADEC revenue is booked,
though. Tim, is that correct?

> * what are our assets? Our balances? do we have outstanding
> liabilities? (i.e. what resources can we draw on in a pinch, or if a
> great idea comes to the board?)

These I still have no idea about, though our ongoing surplus suggests
we should have a large positive balance on hand, which is great to
see.

> * what are the trends on all of these? Are we making more money, less
> money? more or less of our revenue coming from FOG? spending
> more/less? are we saving money for a rainy day or big opportunity, or
> are we draining our savings?

Because of the changes in where/how GUADEC is accounted for, I decided
not to generate too much of these. The overall trends, though, are
obviously increased expenditures and increased revenues, mostly driven
by GUADEC.

Throwing out some data- 
Luis