Jump to content

Board/Minutes/2026-05-07

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Board chat about fundraising - not open to observers.

Draft minutes. Some sentences and links to board documents were redacted after request.

Thursday 7 May 2026 at 13:00 UTC.

Acronyms

Participants

  • Craig Allan (Chairing)
  • Dani Waltersdorfer (until 30' after start)
  • Héctor Ochoa Ortiz
  • Laura Mugeha
  • Maurizio Napolitano ("Napo", joined 7' after start)

Absent

  • Brazil Singh
  • Roland Olbricht (apologies)

Putting together a hiring team for the second sysop

Topic proposed by Craig.

Craig's main proposal: Have a three-person team for the hiring of the second sysop. Include:

  • Dani, who manages Grant Slater (OSMF Senior Site Reliability Engineer), and interviewed some of the people who applied for the OSMF core-software facilitator position, and
  • Héctor, who is on the Personnel Committee, and also interviewed some of the people who applied for the OSMF core-software facilitator position, and

Suggestions about the constitution of the team for hiring the second sysop

Other suggestions

  • Ask Grant's feedback on the a job description.
  • The person to be hired to have good communication skills.
  • Craig has drafted some notes on the culture of the OPS team, that should be taken into account by the hiring team. Most people on the Ops team are very technically skilled.
  • Not have on the hiring team anyone from the Operations side (Grant Slater, Tom Hughes, Paul Norman, Sarah Hoffmann).

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Dani has interviewed some of the people for Minh's position.
  • Craig prefers to not be on the hiring team, as he has prepared the job description.
  • Héctor had recently a meeting with Henk Hoff (former board member), who gave him an old award that OSMF won, and who was surprised that the Ops team members were the same after so many years.

Napo joined 7' after start.

Opening of Monetum account for BTC to fiat conversion

Topic proposed by Héctor. Internal board GitLab ticket #965 (accessible to board members).

Monetum have asked for a person from OSMF to operate the account. The board suggested Grant to be the person.

On the form

  • The form autofilled OSMF's details, once he entered OSMF's UK registration number. It also presented the list of Directors.
  • The form asks for the details (date of birth, ID number, etc) of the OSMF person to operate the Monetum account.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • If Monetum does not accept Grant as an operator, because he's not an OSMF Director, the board will assign someone else.

Peru payment situation

Topic proposed by Héctor. Internal board GitLab ticket #1039 (accessible to board members).

Roland (Treasurer) was absent.

Rubén López Mendoza - from Peru - has been working for OSMF for a couple of months on the GPS trace revamp, but has not been paid yet.

Issue: The Bank of Ireland, where OSMF has the main bank accounts, does not make transfers to Peruvian bank accounts.

Rubén, who was notified via Minh Nguyễn (OSM core software development facilitator), asked whether he should have the invoice in US dollars, as some payment providers use USD.

Suggestions

  • Use Yape. Proposed by Dani.
  • Use Xoom. Proposed by Héctor.
    • provided by PayPal and OSMF has a PayPal account. Additionally, Xoom can make payments to Yape.
    • Roland has mentioned that it does not allow business payments from abroad.
  • Use Wise. Proposed by Laura. (Post-meeting note by Dorothea: OSMF had a Wise account, but they terminated the banking relationship).
  • Dani could be, temporarily, an intermediary, for Rubén's payment.
  • Ask Rubén if Yape would be a possibility for business payments.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Direct bank payments have high fees, but could be considered.
  • Minh's weekly meeting with Rubén will take place just after this meeting, so interested board members could join.

Decision

Continue discussion on the chat and via emails.

Action item

  • Héctor to ping Dani, in case she can join the meeting with Rubén.

Recap of the finance committee meeting of 17 March

Link to board document redacted after request - will be shared at the May board meeting.

During the 17 March finance committee meeting the board members present agreed that OSMF is in good financial health, although there are some problems, as we started to dip into our reserves. Fundraising must begin immediately, to raise for the cost of a second sysadmin.

On salary ranges

  • <redacted after request>
  • Added cost: administration.

Four strategies proposed during the March meeting

  • Membership growth campaign.
  • Fundraising campaign, with the provisional name "Keep the map running".
  • Retail and community fundraising, directed at small membership.
  • Long term: getting funding from governments and European options by the to-be-created Belgian OSMF entity.

On goverments' engagement

Tim Treanor (former US government official, former director of the International Cartographic Association, and on United Nations Committee on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM)) who Héctor met at the 2026 Geospatial World Forum (GWF), made the following suggestions:

  • OSMF should present at UN-GGIM, which is a meeting point for the national media agencies of the world.
  • OSMF should put the resources, maybe not monetary, but develop the infrastructure further and get the governments more involved.

On companies' engagement

  • Big companies such as Carto and Uber are not OSMF Corporate Members, despite heavy use of OSM data.
  • Carto mentioned that they provide back to OSM, as they have a tile server with OSM data that gets used a lot.
  • Pointr seems interested to become a Corporate Member. Héctor met them at GWF 2026.

On Overture

  • The Carto CEO and an Uber employee mentioned at GWF to Héctor that they prefer to provide contributions to the Overture Maps Foundation, and that OSMF should ask funds from Overture.
  • Héctor spoke with Overture at GWF 2026 and they said they need something specific that they see value, in order to provide funding to OSMF.
  • Suggestion: schedule another meeting with Overture, such as the meeting that took place around a year ago.

Decisions taken during the finance committee meeting of 17 March

  • Hire a second sysop.
  • Begin recruitment process for hiring a second sysop - creating a team is in process.
  • Not hire an executive director.
  • Fundraising drive proposals
  • Proton donation to be turned to a Gold Corporate Membership - handled by Dani.

Communications

  • Talk with Mikel Maron and Courtney Williamson, both on the Communication Working Group (CWG).
  • Draft an ask document for Corporate outreach.
  • Publish a social media post thanking Proton for their donation - overdue.
  • Create a web page for the fundraising campaign with a human story and progress bar.
    • Human relations: Talk with the OPS team (Done).

Finances

  • Start the fundraising campaign immediately - has not happened yet.
  • Set up a designated account for the fundraising campaign on Xero - has not happened yet.
  • Create a fundraising document and provide it to all board members.

Fundraising action plan starting 7 May

Link to board document redacted after request - will be shared at the May board meeting.

Dani had to leave 30' after start.

Companies are saving a lot of money by using OSM data, but there's a risk that if we go down, then their operations fail. We can manage that risk and increase reliability by getting a second sysop.

Craig had shared with the board a second version of the fundraising plan document, with the strategies of:

  • Systematic corporate membership growth
    • Need to grow the number of corporate members and move them to appropriate tiers.

Action item

Craig to suggest to Héctor and Dani to form a team in order to talk with companies.

Communications

Need the Communication Working Group (CWG) up and running.

Suggestion: Contract a part-time PR person for the "Keep the map running" fundraising campaign, if the Board-CWG meeting next week does not work out.

This will be a fall back.

  • Estimate: 10 hours/week.
  • Temporary contract.

On work

  • Needs to be managed by the board.
  • Need a lot of publicity material.
  • Many use AI, which is quick and cheap.
  • Must have a sense to talk to communities.

Points to consider

  • what the person would do. Corporate outreach: the board will need to curate the information.
  • how long it would take for them to understand how the OSMF works, how it's structured, and then put together something.

Suggestions

  • Hire someone on a fairly lengthy basis to do communications work, even if not for all of their time, to get to know the organisation.
  • Hire someone from Eastern Europe.
  • Have someone for 1/4 of their time.

Other points mentioned during discussion

  • Having a fundraising person could be very interesting.
  • HOT has professional fundraising people and get a lot of money.
  • No particular need for a designer.
  • As soon as CWG is up to speed, we can stop the contract.
  • The board would need to provide the information to be included in the fundraising campaign.

Action item

  • Laura and the board to provide feedback to Craig's hack.md document.

On publishing the linked draft board documents and the minutes

Question by Dorothea.

Decision: Minutes can be published, with redactions. The board to make all the related draft documents public at the May 2026 board meeting.

Chat ended 40 minutes after start.

Retrieved from "https://osmfoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Board/Minutes/2026-05-07&oldid=14394"