Finance Committee/Minutes/2024-05-22

Minutes of the Finance Committee held on 22 May 2024.

Administrative Matters

Present

• Craig Allan, OSMF Board,
• Daniela Waltersdorfer, OSMF Board
• Guillaume Rischard, OSMF Board,
• Harrison Devine, Advisor,
• Roland Olbricht, OSMF Board,

Apologies

• None

Approval of Minutes

The minutes of 1 May 2024 were approved without amendment.

Fundraising Sub Committee

Fundraising Advisors

Craig has written to the current fundraising advisors, but not to Tyler Radford, as people have said that he has moved on from HOT.

We wrote but did not receive any reply from Maggie Cawley, of OSM-US, who is assumed to be very busy with other matters.

We may ask HOT and OSM-US for a representative each to develop synergies and avoid conflicting asks. No concrete decision made on who to ask.

Responses were received from Kate Varfalameyeva, Courtney Williamson, Allan Mustard and Allen Gunn. They were enthusiastic and positive.

Harrison Devine is a fundraising advisor who routinely attends these finance meetings. He was recently elected to the OSM-US Board and with a little more experience may be able to fill the fundraising co-ordination role. To be advised.

1. Action: Identify and ask OSM-US representative
2. Action: Identify and ask HOT representative
3. Action: Delete Tyler Radford from the list of Strategic Advisors.

Benevity

Craig advised that the application to Benevity to be one of their causes is proceeding well. We are now at the stage where we have to contribute text, logos and other material for our page on the site.

We need to choose a bank account where they will deposit funds. Decided to use the BOI dollar account if multiple currencies are not an option. There is a page on the Wiki listing account details.

Action: Further work will be done by Craig as time permits.

Open Technology Fund Funding Application.

The application has been submitted by Roland. The fund asked for further info on censorship and surveillance. Our response is that we distribute data freely which avoids any single chokepoint to control use of our data. Our data can be used offline. Many people are able to bypass their government controls on working with OSM data. We are really free to use. One example is that contributors have thoroughly mapped the PRC, despite state controls on mapping.

Action: No action needed.

Meta

We have been engaging with Meta but have nothing to report at this stage.

e Foundation

There is an opportunity to apply for grants through e-Foundation (https://e.foundation), Any proposal has to be open source and linked to mobile phones. This is not particularly good for OSMF, but there are many developers working in the OSM-Mobile space.

Action: No specific actions planned.

Development Seed

Dani met Mikel and people from Development Seed (https://developmentseed.org) at a GIS conference. Discussions were open and positive.

Action: No specific actions.

Grants and Foundations

Discussion on funds to be sourced from Grants and Foundations which hold a lot of untapped funding. Foundations have large resources. Much of it is in the USA, where our lack of 501(c)(3) registration as a public charity may inhibit some types of funding. We have no policy to guide sourcing funds from Foundations.

Action: Write our policy and guidelines for fundraising from foundations.

HOT support

It was suggested to ask for assistance from HOT for fundraising. Rebecca, the Exec director may be prepared to assist or advise. She is currently on maternity leave, but there may be others who can help.

Action: Identify suitable HOT people and talk with them.

Fundraising Plan

Craig talked about the draft fundraising plan he has prepared. It is at https://hackmd.io/@craigallan/H1Cf4hoX0 Dani has read the plan and has made some comments. Guillaume found it too long. No other discussion.

Action: Further comments are still welcome.

Using CiviCRM

Discussion on using CiviCRM to register our Corporate Donors, instead of using a spreadsheet. Once they are registered on the database we can use capture forms to track contacts and pledges, folow up on subscriptions and unpaid pledges, to administer memberships. Currently the admin of corporates costs about Euro 12 000 per year - this could be reduced by some judicious use of automation. Pledges and expected income would link to the budget and strat-plan planning tools.

1. Action: No concrete proposals on capturing Corporates were made.
2. Action: Craig is working on learning CiviCRM.

Accounting Sub-Committee

Doing the Books

The reflection of expenditure in the books has been slow, our financial activity is not hitting the budget closely enough. Costs, like the Frankfurt F2F take a while to be captured. However we have come a long way. We are presenting expenditure every month, which is a huge advance. We do need to understand the commitments. We have a plan to monitor commitments in the longer term - we can start to develop that soon.

1. Action: Look to improve the responsiveness of monthly reporting.
2. Action: Keep the commitments issue on the agenda.

Funds Expected but not received

Discussion on whether to reflect expected (but not received) funds in the budget. Generally we support a conservative approach of only reflecting funds that have arrived. Harrison supported this. However, a separate system for predicting cash-flow in and out is good and can use projected income. Plans to develop this are not identified.

Action: Keep planning income and expenditure on the agenda.

Report to the Advisory Board

Monthly reports were briefly mentioned in the last Advisory Board meeting - Mikel hadn't shown it to them in advance. The Finance Committee agreed that monthly reports can be emailed to corporate members, with the question on whether these are useful to donors, and if there were any amendments that they would like. We may want to make a narrative version for easy reading - no plans to do this identified.

Action: Keep upgrading of reporting formats on the agenda.

ENDS

Minutes prepared by Craig Allan 04 June 2024