Re: [gentoo-nfp] [Discussion] Refiling as a tax-exempt nonprofit.

[Alec Warner]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 4:22 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:

> On Mon, 2020-07-20 at 15:50 -0700, Alec Warner wrote:
> > The board had previously discussed this opportunity (including talking to
> > the CPA about it) but I think we didn't really gather a consensus about
> it
> > in 2019. I have not heard much about it in 2020 and I want it to raise it
> > again as we begin fiscal 2021.
> >
> > I'm more open to this idea than I was in the past but I continue to have
> > concerns about recruiting board members who will execute the duties
> > required. While we could keep the current board when we create a new
> > Foundation I'm curious how we could recruit additional members in the new
> > Foundation.
>
> I don't know if it's worth the effort.  The effort is better put into
> disbanding GF and making Gentoo more sustainable, than making it harder
> to keep GF afloat when we have a very bad track record of dealing with
> the 'easier' variant.
>
> As I've said in the other thread, it looks that we're spending 7% of our
> cash donations on the CPA.  Our bookkeeping is suffering from a bus
> factor of 1.  We aren't really effectively spending our donations
> because we aren't really sure what we can spend it on.
>

Who is unsure? I'm pretty sure the board isn't insure (I'm the Foundation
president and I'm definitely comfortable spending the money.) Whats
stopping people from submitting funding requests? (but more on this below.)


>
> The way I see it, this will only become worse after the change.  Surely,
> we might get more money.  But will we actually spend it on Gentoo,
> or hoard it and spend it mostly on operational costs?
>

I guess I continue to not really agree with this narrative. Every year I
say the same thing.
 - The Foundation has money.
 - We are happy to spend the money.
 - Please file funding requests.

I want to spend the money! One reason why you constantly see the board
coming up with ideas to spend the money is *because* the community never
asks to spend it on anything. Do you know how many funding requests we get
a year? I think it's 2-3. Last year we bought some new sparc hardware[1].
That bug took *two years* not because we didn't have money, but because it
took a while to find a sparc dev to vet and submit a proposal (submitted
Oct 10, 2019, approved by the board on Oct 11 2019.)

So I will re-iterate. Please file more funding requests for stuff.

-A

[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/607622


> >
> > Some thoughts:
> >  - We could recruit outside members of the board who are not Gentoo
> > Developers, but had advocacy from other OSS projects.
> >  - We could try to recruit or modify the way individuals are recruiter as
> > Gentoo Developers, to make it easier to attract board members.
> >
>
> I don't really see how this changes anything.  If someone from 'outside'
> would like to help out with Foundation (were any voices about it heard
> so far?), I don't see why he wouldn't be able to join as an officer,
> then get membership in return for the services rendered.
>
> Unless your purpose is to lure people into becoming board members, so
> that the implied responsibility would make them have to do some work.
>  We all know how that worked in the last years.  I don't see how
> changing the pool from developers/existing foundation members to random
> people from outside would suddenly change the trend.
>
> The problem is finding people who *want to* and *can* help, not finding
> people who want to become board members and then maybe they will be
> forced to help 'or else'.  Because these people won't help out, they
> will only make things worse by blocking changes just so they could keep
> their position.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
>
>