Re: Current state of Foundation finances

[Karen Sandler <karen gnome org>]

On 2014-04-13 01:43, Stormy Peters wrote:
> Don't we have reserves though? We should have 6 months of operating
> expenses as reserves.

I should leave maybe this to Kat and other board members but I'm 
recently enough gone that I can answer - the Foundation has adequate 
reserves for GNOME's ordinary operations but not for OPW, and the 
program has ramped up really quickly while the Foundation is still very 
small.

For a rough overview, the 30 participants in the round that just ended 
required around $170k in expenditures, and that's the smaller of the two 
rounds per year. The two most recent rounds together should have 
approached $400k. So OPW only accepts interns with confirmed funding for 
each intern but if there are delays in getting that funding it adds up 
to a big burden for the org to bear. As the FAQ states, the board is 
evaluating various solutions, including raising the admin fee already 
charged and putting measures in place to assure earlier payments. I 
think the program should also try to raise its own reserves, though this 
is very difficult on a short term basis.

GNOME would never have been able to support the program to date without 
the reserves it already had in place.

karen

> On Apr 12, 2014 5:26 PM, "Karen Sandler" <karen gnome org> wrote:
>
> On 2014-04-12 14:45, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
>
> No, it wasn't know. If it had been known, spending would have been
> frozen by then and a budget for the hackfest would not have been
> approved.
>
> For perspective, people actually call this a "success crisis."
>
> Thank you so much to the board and Rosanna for getting on top of this 
> situation and being transparent about it.
>
> karen
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