[gentoo-nfp] Re: [gentoo-project] Looking for ways the Foundation can accomplish its mission.

[Alec Warner]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 9:36 AM Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 08:47:05 -0400 Alec Warner wrote:
> > Dear Gentoo Community,
> >
> > I have recently become the President of the Gentoo Foundation Inc. The
> > Foundation's documents[0] provide fairly terse guidance on how the
> > Foundation is to be operated. The Foundation currently provides funding
> for
> > Gentoo Infrastructure, and very little else. Part of my job as President
> is
> > to determine what additional activities the Foundation can pursue (if
> any);
> > and to determine how the Foundation can improve Gentoo by investing in
> > infrastructure, while still meeting the spirit of the other restrictions
> on
> > Foundation activities[1]. So community, how do you think the Foundation
> can
> > assist the development of Gentoo?
> >
> > Some ideas might be:
> >  - Host a Gentoo Conference.
> >  - Host a bug-bounty program.
> >  - Fund talks about Gentoo development activities at industry
> conferences.
> >  - Invest significantly in Infrastructure spending to fund ambitious
> > projects.
>
> First and foremost the Foundation should focus on its primary
> goal: funding, its financial accounting and becoming non for profit
> organization.
>

> Current state of the Foundation's bookkeeping is concerning: we have
> not seen final annual financial report for years. Good news that
> finally preliminary reports are published (thanks robbat2!), but
> they are not final and there is still a lot of work to do.
>
> Tax status is unclear (it was discussed earlier that the Foundation
> may have to pay quite sufficient tax as a penalty for lousy
> accounting).
>
> And the Foundation still lacks non for profit official status.
>
> Lack of human resources is a long-standing problem for the
> Foundation and embracing more goals while failing with the critical
> ones is an unwise idea.
>


First off, I 100% agree we should do the financial accounting. Consider it
my first priority.

Regarding the funding; the main thrust of this thread is basically deciding
how much funding is enough; We have a bunch of money. Its expected that
post-finance cleanup we will still have money leftover; and we don't spend
very much money today. So given that, what could we spend money on? How
could the foundation put its funds to good use in its mission? That is the
question I'm trying to get input on; I think the answer in many ways
impacts what kind of financial plan we have for the Foundation in 2019 /
2020.

The foundation is already a not-for-profit organization. Did you perhaps
mean a *tax-exempt* not for profit, and if so, why do you think we should
be a tax-exempt nonprofit?

-A


>
> Best regards,
> Andrew Savchenko
> Best regards,
> Andrew Savchenko
>