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Board/Minutes/2026-01

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Participants

["talk" time*] Director's name

  • [01'] Brazil Singh
  • [22'] Craig Allan (Chairing)
  • [10'] Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • [03'] Laura Mugeha
  • [12'] Roland Olbricht

*Includes time when the microphone was activated due to noise.

Absent

  • Maurizio Napolitano
  • Dani Waltersdorfer

Officers and Board Historic
Board member biographies Historic
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.

Guests

  • 4 guests

Open to all OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) members. (Become a member of the Foundation, even for free if you are an active OSM contributor)

You are welcome to ask questions or to comment (via voice or on the chat) at the end of the meeting.

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Administrative

Approval of previous minutes

  • 2025-12-18 Approved, with a request to highlight that, while only the Treasurer has access to the OSMF Bank of Ireland accounts at the moment, it is a temporary measure.

Circular Resolutions

2026/Res01 Approve active contributor membership application #2026011710000042

The Board currently decides on active contributor membership applications based on non-mapping contributions on a case-by-case basis.

Approved on 2026-01-30 with 5 votes in favour: Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Maurizio Napolitano, Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht, Brazil Singh ([redacted name] is wonderful , [they are] helping promoting OSM through HOT in Asia Pacific Region).
2 did not vote: Craig Allan, Daniela Waltersdorfer.

Application initially processed by the Membership Working Group.

Chairperson's report

Craig has been dealing with family tragedy, as a family member has passed away.

Craig will complete his preliminary report on the board's plans for 2026. The report will be reviewed by the board and probably discussed during the February closed board chat.

Secretary's report

The Secretary's report was skipped, as the Secretary was absent.

Treasurer's report

The Treasurer's report was skipped, as it was covered by agenda topics.

Status of bank accounts and delayed payments

Topic proposed by Héctor. Internal board GitLab ticket #942 (accessible to board members).

On access to the Bank of Ireland accounts

  • Roland has access to the Bank of Ireland account in EUR, but not to the GBP and USD Bank of Ireland accounts. The EUR account seems very full, so the Bank of Ireland might have lumped the accounts together.
  • Roland is temporarily the only one who has access to the accounts, until more people get added.
  • We have a Bank of Ireland credit card, and its status is unclear.
  • Plan to sort some of the minor issues later, in case they trigger any access restrictions.

Other actions

  • Roland started to rebalance our bank accounts, so that we can have more leeway in a similar situation.

On status of pending payments

  • Roland is working through the backlog.
  • Salaries and the contractors' invoices: We have paid the invoices received so far. Some contractors are 1-2 months behind in submitting invoices, which is normal.
  • Purchase of (second-hand) server for Nominatim in USA: Roland will contact Grant Slater (SSRE/OWG), and the provider. A new invoice, which will likely mention a higher price, needs to be created by the provider.

Fire-EU bank account

Only Michelle Heydon (OSMF bookkeeper) has access to the Fire-EU bank account.

Credit card in Paypal

The PayPal credit card is operational, but we don't have much money in PayPal.

Triodos bank account

The Triodos bank account is useful for UK payments. However, it is difficult and expensive to make international payments, as they have indirect access to international banking.

Suggestion

Create a bank account in Belgium, once OSMF has an entity there.

Next step

Determine the OSMF's banking strategy and the desired access rights for all our accounts. Suggestion to discuss this during the February board chat.

Other points mentioned during discussion

Craig emailed the Bank of Ireland that he lives in Africa and asked if they could accept his electronic signature, instead of a wet signature sent with a courier company. The bank already had Craig's passport and his signature. The bank accepted, and that saved us some days and costs.

Thanks were expressed to Craig for signing the banking documents.

2026 budget

Topic proposed by Roland. Internal board GitLab ticket #923 (accessible to board members).

2025 budget

In 2025, the Foundation had been projected to run into a huge deficit of GBP 80,000, but instead it looks like OSMF has achieved a surplus of GBP 30,000. We are waiting some invoices for 2025, so the 2025 accounts will be open until these invoices get processed.

2026 draft budget

Roland has based the 2026 draft budget on last year's draft budget, and incorporated feedback from some of the Working Groups (WGs).

Decision needed: Engineering Working Group (EWG) Microgrants

  • 2025 EWG Microgrants: These were awarded in November 2025, when we lost access to the Bank of Ireland account. Therefore, OSMF had been unable to make the payments at the time, and these got carried over from last year.
  • 2026 EWG Microgrants: The EWG would like to run microgrants again in 2026, and it would be hard to argue not to have them.

The board should decide about whether to ask the EWG to have the next round of EWG Microgrants in 2026 or 2027.

Comment by board member

  • Now that the EWG microgrants system has been set-up, it is easier to run another round.

Decision needed: OWG increased spending

The Operations Working Group (OWG) asked the board if there are plans for increased spending related to Strategic Plan actions. Roland added a line of GBP 15,000 to indicate that the OWG could go forward with increased spending. The OWG might seek an additional employee, which would mean that in 2027 the OSMF would spend around additional GBP 100,000.

The board should decide whether to encourage the OWG to increase the workforce, or hold for another year/indefinitely.

Comments by board members

  • Agreement for getting a second person to help Grant Slater (Senior Site Reliability Engineer).
  • Grant and the OWG have been lately very busy due to bot scraping attacks.
  • Suggestion: OSMF should create a job description that everyone is happy with. The work description should not clash with what Grant is doing.

Decision needed: 2026 Fundraising campaign

We are expected to run into a deficit, even if we run a middle-sized fundraising campaign.

For 2026, Roland added a line of expected GBP 16,000 from the fundraising campaign. This includes the ~ GBP 15,000 which we received last year, even without a fundraising campaign. The last donation drive was in 2023, where we achieved around GBP 19,000.

Comments by board members

  • Agreement for a fundraising campaign.
  • Getting a second person to help Grant could be proposed as a goal for the fundraising campaign.

OSMF subsidiary in Brussels

Roland has kept a line item for spending related to lawyers and paperwork for OSMF's proposed move to Belgium.

Other suggestions

We need money for the Strategic Plan, which has been abandoned so far.

Vote to approve the 2026 budget which Roland created

Motion: Approve the 2026 budget1 which Roland has created.

Approved on 2026-01-29 with,

  • 5 votes in favour: Brazil Singh, Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha, Roland Olbricht.
  • 2 did not vote: Maurizio Napolitano (absent), Daniela Waltersdorfer (absent).
Motion proposed by Héctor, seconded by Brazil.

1 The 2026 budget was shared with board members before the meeting, and a part of the budget was screen-shared with the meeting attendees.

Working Groups' statuses and needs

Topic proposed by Héctor.

Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG)

Update by Laura, as LCCWG's board liaison.

  • Meetings: No meeting in 2026 yet. The last meeting took place in December. Next meeting in a week.
  • 2026 plan: The LCCWG voted and approved providing microgrants to communities for organising OSM activities.
  • Local Chapter applications: Some have progressed well with discussion on community.osm.org. The processing of some applications seems stuck.

State of the Map organising committee (SotM WG)

Update by Laura, as SotM WG's board liaison.

  • Meetings: 1 meeting in 2026 so far.
  • SotM 2026 planning: ongoing. The call for logos ended a week ago.
  • More calls opening in the next 2-3 weeks.

Membership Working Group (MWG)

Update by Laura, as MWG's board liaison.

  • Meetings: No meetings yet in 2026.
  • Activities: There is ongoing activity and processing of active contributor membership applications.
  • Pending: In 2025 they had requested to contract someone for CiviCRM work. Laura plans to start discussion, as there is a backlog of CiviCRM tasks.
  • Suggestion: call for volunteers to help the MWG.

Comments by board members

  • The MWG has a very small number of active volunteers.
  • On CiviCRM: There's money for work on CiviCRM, as in 2025, which was not spend.

Data Working Group (DWG)

Update by Craig.

  • They get the work done very well.
  • No problems known.

Engineering Working Group (EWG)

Update by Craig, as DWG's board back-up liaison.

  • Working fine.
  • Roland and Héctor are involved as liaisons.

Communication Working Group (CWG)

Update by Brazil, as CWG's board back-up liaison.

  • New volunteer: Mila. Dorothea has onboarded her.
  • Discussions on:
    • reducing costs, e.g. discontinuing the subscription to Buffer.com. Buffer is used to post on social media.
    • purchasing a Canva subscription for graphic design.

Comments by board members

  • The CWG has been quite inactive.
  • Intervention needed.

Suggestion

Come up with a plan of action regarding the CWG and MWG during the February closed board chat.

Roland disconnected due to a power cut.

2026 Fundraising campaign

Topic proposed by Héctor. Internal board GitLab ticket #902 (accessible to board members).

Not discussed, beyond the comments during the budget discussion.

Creation of a Coinbase account to handle BTC payments

Topic proposed by Héctor. Internal board GitLab ticket for the recent 2 BTC donation #950 (accessible to board members).

OSMF received a 2 BTC donation.

Previously, Grant Slater (Senior Site Reliability Engineer) would change the BTC to EUR and transfer them to the OSMF bank account. However, Grant is limited by his bank on the payments he can make. Additionally, Grant's job does not include any financial responsibility, so OSMF should have its own Coinbase account.

Héctor is the OWG's board liaison and the proposal for an OSMF Coinbase account was a direct request from Grant.

Roland rejoined 36' after start.

Decision

Topic to be added to the February mid-month board chat, in order to decide who will be in charge of the Coinbase account and how to set-up a corporate Coinbase account.

Any other business

EU Commission request for comments on open source - Deadline 3rd February 2026

Topic proposed by Héctor. Related to community.osm.org post: Request for Comments for the European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy. Internal board GitLab ticket #956 (accessible to board members).

Héctor:

Héctor was thanked by Craig for involving the community, and it was noted that the board should always operate in such a manner.

Guest comments or questions

Question on publication of the 2026 budget

Imagico (guest) asked whether the 2026 budget is going to be published.

> Yes, the budget will be published, as the board published everything very transparently. The board will ask Roland to write a report, explaining the budget.

Question about public reporting on the actual spending on the 2025 EWG Microgrants

Imagico (guest) asked whether there is going to be any public reporting on the actual spending on the Microgrants (who received what amount at what time).

> The EWG has created a public calendar linking every milestone, linked from a pull request at https://github.com/osmfoundation/ewg_bidding

Comment on information not shared by the board with the community

Simon Poole (guest, former OSMF and LWG chairperson) noted that a lot of information is, and seems to continue to be, on the boards private issue traffic with no public access. And that obviously there are some things that should be private, but lots are likely not.

Comments by board members
> The board's public GitLab repository is underused (post meeting note: the board in the past year had decided to discontinue the use of the public repository for action items and track them internally)
> In the past, the Secretary was going through the items on the board GitLab and bringing them up for public attention - which we should do.
> Suggestion to triage the board's GitLab issues and put some of them on the public GitLab tracker. Héctor has been triaging his GitLab issues.
> We are a transparent organisation and we have nothing to hide, except salaries and legal advice, which are justifiably hidden.

Simon was thanked for his feedback.

Next meetings

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Mid-month board chat: 12 February 2026 at 13:00 UTC, unless rescheduled

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Open board meeting: Thursday, 26 February 2026, at 13:00 UTC, unless rescheduled

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Meeting ended 47 minutes after start.

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