Re: Current state of Foundation finances

[Ekaterina Gerasimova <kittykat3756 gmail com>]

On 14 April 2014 10:02, Dave Neary <nearyd gmail com> wrote:
> Hi Kat,
>
> Has any thought been Hi en to charging an administrative handling fee for
> Women's Outreach? Clearly it is taking a lot of time to administer, it does
> not seem fair that the GNOME Foundation shoulder all of the financial burden
> of managing it.

Yes, GNOME charges participating organisations $250-500 per intern in
administrative fees, of which at least $100 usually goes on bank
charges. Most organisations pay $250.

When the GOPW started, the administration involved sending 30-60
payments per year. Once the OPW expanded to take in other
organisations, the administrative overheads included invoicing
sponsors in addition to sending payments. For example, in the 2014
financial year, I estimate that the Foundation would need to send
around 250 payments and send around 30-35 invoices. It was or will be
the Foundation's first time invoicing some of those companies, which
entails extra work in figuring out how to do it.

In practical terms, the money itself comes close to covering the hours
that our administrative assistant needs to spend on the OPW. Our
administrative assistant was at full capacity when sending an extra
30-60 payments per year, but the extra work which resulted in the
program expanding put her over capacity. The board is currently taking
on some of these tasks and other administrative tasks to ease the load
on our administrative assistant. This would normally be done by our
Executive Director, but we currently do not have one.

> Cheers,
> Dave.
>
> On Apr 12, 2014 1:32 AM, "Ekaterina Gerasimova" <kittykat3756 gmail com>
> wrote:
> > Dear Foundation members,
> >
> > Due to a shortfall in the budget, the Foundation board voted on
> > 2014-04-08 to freeze all expenditure which is not essential to the
> > running of the Foundation. This freeze affects sponsorship expenses
> > which are unpaid at this time, but it does not affect the funds which
> > we hold for other organisations.
> >
> > By keeping our expenditures to a minimum while we regain some delayed
> > revenue, we aim to have things back to normal within a few months. All
> > Foundation members who expect to receive reimbursements within the
> > next three months have already been informed of the issue and most
> > have responded positively. The board will prioritise these pending
> > reimbursements over other expenses.
> >
> > The issue has been caused by a number of factors. These include
> > increased administrative overheads in the last few years due to the
> > increased turnover which has been caused by to the Outreach Program
> > for Women (OPW), and the associated payments going out while the
> > associated income has been slow to come in.
> >
> > The board expects that you may have some questions or would like to
> > know more details about the problem, please read
> > https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/CurrentBudgetFAQ and contact
> > the board at board-list gnome org if you have any further questions.
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