Re: Mission Statement

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 6 August 2014 19:49, Michael Hill <mdhillca gmail com> wrote:

> > "crippling weight" [citation needed].
>
> "This hasn't only exposed us to substantial financial risks; it has
> caused actual financial problems for the project.  This year, GNOME
> temporarily ceased funding of hackfests in order to recover from the
> cashflow problems caused by the size of OPW." -- Ryan Lortie
>
> Result: day to day operations of the Foundation disrupted.

the disruption has been put in place to recover reserves that we
burned through; those reserves were burned through because of a
reduction in the cash flow of the Foundation in general — i.e. our
finances have been shrinking for the past few years. the OPW was an
expenditure to make up for invoices not being paid, but *any*
expenditure (hackfest, conferences, travel assistance) could have
caused the freeze.

in general, the freeze that has less to do with OPW and more with our
own issues in tracking payments and invoices, and handling our own
accounting. the whole issue could have just as easily happened if we
didn't have OPW, to be fair. in a way, the OPW growth and this whole
finance situation has forced the board to get a better handle on the
foundation's own funding and processes, to streamline them, document
them, and track them.

now that things are tracked properly the remaining effect of the OPW
growth is the administrative burden on our own administrative
infrastructure; that still needs to be fixed, and it would be good to
have ideas on how to increase our volunteer base.

we also still need to build up cash reserves, so that we can unfreeze
the expenditures of the foundation.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
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