Various OSGeo update tidbits

Financial

I've been working on getting a process in place for reporting on the financial picture behind OSGeo. We are currently moving to an online system for tracking our accounts as well, so reporting and tracking can be done collaboratively with those managing the finances.

We continue to receive more project level sponsors (i.e. GDAL/OGR sponsors) as well as additional Associate level sponsors for OSGeo (i.e. Firstbasesolutions). There a few others sponsors waiting in the wings.

Having a good picture of historic and planned finances is required for our pending charitable status application. As we dug into this application process it brought up some questions that we have yet to address - i.e. plans for generating revenue.

We've never had any real commitment to revenue targets - how many donors, how much from grants, who is responsible for doing it all, etc. - so it is hard to show that we have a plan for meeting our budget expenditures. Autodesk is still committed to helping fund the start-up of OSGeo in the short term but to be truly sustainable we must augment that with additional funds.

Update: my mistake, we do have an Income Projection developed by the Fundraising Committee

Fundraising

Now is as good a time as any to start thinking about strategies, options and alternatives for raising funds. If you have some ideas you want to contribute, I encourage you to join the Fundraising Committee mailing list and share them with the group.

When we get through the 501c3 (charitable tax exempt status) application process, it becomes more feasible to pursue non-profit or government grants which often require the 501c3 process to be started. This means planning ahead for the kinds of revenue we believe we can generate. It doesn't have to be a complicated plan, but it is worthy of a conversation amongst the membership and the board.

We must show that we are not only daydreaming about meeting our budget requirements, but that we have some real targets in mind. Over the remainder of the year, I am hoping that the Fundraising Committee (and the Board?) can focus on finding new sponsors and donors. Then when we are done the charitable status application I can focus more directly on applying for grants.

Early on we spun fundraising into its own committee, but others have been telling me that it is a primary role for a non-profit board. While staff can focus on the more labour intensive grant applications. Perhaps having it as one of the board's main tasks would help put more weight behind fundraising. What kinds of experiences have others had in this area?

I have spoken to several members who have grant-writing experience and I believe we have some great opportunities out there - especially for developing educational material and developing/delivering workshops across many domains.