[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] [SLOB] meeting reminder and some open issues to discuss

[Laura Vargas]

2016-05-07 2:25 GMT+08:00 Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org>:

> On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Karen Sandler <karen at sfconservancy.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2016-05-06 12:06, Adam Holt wrote:
>>
>> s/he tries to do that, SFConservancy has explained to me that they
>>> often take a month-or-so to get all receipts entered into their
>>> system, so the Financial Manager cannot in fact get hard information
>>> about January.  My understanding from SFConservancy is that on
>>> February 10th, we could only get hard info on December's financials,
>>> and even then there's no absolute guarantee, as receipts come in very
>>> late at times.
>>>
>>
> I meant to clarify above that SFConservancy has no possible way provide SL
> fully complete/accurate financial info when receipts are sometimes
> submitted ~90 days late?  What Karen says below, exactly!
>
> In short, the current/proposed Financial Manager job description (
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/16jIFuZ9bX-Bv675BpA1KmcEcRcX4PRCOUEX0ICRUkOc)
> needs more tuning of its operational mechanics month-by-month and
> quarter-by-quarter, for the reasons Karen laid out.
>
> If in the end SL will benefit from 10+ hours-per-month of professional
> financial consulting/reporting every month, we cannot make an underpaid
> Financial Manager and others' lives impossible, by imposing more accounting
> burdens than is in fact possible within 10
> hours-per-month-or-whatever-is-recommended, such that nothing happens in
> the end (back to square one worst case) if we ask for too much.
>
> PS on a more positive note (!) can someone help me publish SFConservancy's
> latest travel/expense/reimbursement guidelines and requirements directly
> off of https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance#For_funding_travel ?  Is
> there a public link somewhere already, or can we make one now, if someone
> has this/these document(s) handy?
>
> On the one hand it sounds ridiculous, in the age where most of us
>>> obtain live bank statements online, that we cannot get confirmed
>>> up-to-date financials until 2 months later!  But what other options
>>> are there?  Should we accept known-imprecise financial reporting in
>>> exchange for recency?
>>>
>>
>> It's great you're contemplating hiring a financial manager - increased
>> engagement from SL in its finances might solve some of the problems from
>> third-parties that are the root cause of delays in update to the books (we
>> cannot help the fact that travelers sometimes take a long time to ask for
>> reimbursement, for example). As Adam indicates, any faster financial info
>> would surely be less precise. As we hear in reports from others, we're the
>> fastest at getting our financial data up to date in the entire industry. We
>> keep books for almost 40 projects that have many transactions, and we're
>> doing it with only a staff of 3 who have a lot of other work too.  A
>> financial manager will be able to track the few transactions that haven't
>> processed in the interim so you have the granularilty when you need it.
>>
>> More realistically, it's worth reiterating that building an annual budget
>> is really what you should focus on.
>
>
I sent an email on April 17 with the Subject SL 2016 Annual Budget and a
draft based on the numbers published by Adam.

Dave made some interesting suggestions and I do agree that there is a need
for financial vision and evaluation (4 to 5 simple indicators of
Community's Financial Health).


> We will track spending against it on an ongoing basis. You currently have
>> a balance of over $80k that has not changed in some time
>
>
Latter on April 21, I attached an updated draft for the Budget including
the financial data of the 2016 approved motions by SLOBs so far.

So, without counting with any more income in the period, and reducing the
budget allowed for Chris Leonard's Internationalization tasks
(USD$12,000.00) and Walter Conferences Travels (USD$ 3,977.42), the net
asset value comes to ~USD$ 66,000.00.

I also considered the projected yearly fees for the conservancy (truth is I
am not sure how it is calculated) so I did estimate with the simple 4 year
average (USD$ 8,297,33).

Therefore the new estimated asset value would be something around ~USD$
57,600.00

Of course, someone from the SLOBs should confirm the figures.I am attaching
the draft here again.


> - are you contemplating undergoing expenses in a 2 or 3 month period that
>> would need exact amounts on a daily basis? For example, our own books
>> (which are much bigger) are updated at the same rate as SL's and it works
>> great for us as we build our budget and monitor income throughout the year.
>> A Financial manager could also save us time and heartache by vetting travel
>> reimbursement requests against the travel policy.
>>
>> Given the holistic discussion, it's also worth saying that while I (along
>> with everyone else at Conservancy) am a huge supporter of SLs and would be
>> happy for you to stay with us, we take a loss on our fiscal sponsorship
>> work for you. On average, you give back to us $36/week for *all* the
>> services we provide to you. That's less than $2000 per year when we must
>> pay our auditors $12k alone.
>>
>> As always you should definitely feel free to look for another nonprofit
>> home. We deliberately designed our termination provisions to be very easy
>> to leave. As I said, we're unaware of anyone doing it faster (and we hear
>> that most are far slower in updating books) but we'd have no problem
>> helping you to transition to another org.
>>
>> I don't always follow this list closely, but I'm happy to set up a call
>> or IRC chat any time.
>>
>> karen
>>
>>
>> Karen M. Sandler
>> Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy
>> __________
>> Become a Supporter today! http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
>>
>> --
>> <http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/>
>> <http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/>
>> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @
>> <http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/>http://unleashkids.org !
>>
>
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>
I do hope we - as a community - can get to build a coherent annual budget
that contemplates the vision and needs for investment on community members
needs.


-- 
Laura V.
I&D SomosAZUCAR.Org

IRC kaametza

Happy Learning!
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