--- Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
I'm wondering why the donation drive was stopped
early, before the
enough money was collected to cover the Foundation's Q3 budget of
$198,000.
Er - the drive did not stop. I dont recall the sitewide message going down.
After our discussion in August about the German
chapter, I
thought it was fairly clear that those funds could not be used for the
general operating expenses of the Florida Foundation.\
That is a technical issue, not a policy one. My suggestion is for the German
chapter to act on one of their hosting offers, buy a bunch of servers to use as
squids and then we can work out the ownership issues later.
So the fundraising drive raised $220,849 - $36,866 =
$183,983 towards
the operating costs of the Foundation. This leaves a shortfall of
$198,000 - $184,983 = $14,017.
Not a shortfall. A squid in Germany will negate the need for buying one in
Florida. The budget is based on needs; it is even likely that if the Yahoo!
servers go online this quarter, then that will negate the need for buying a
whole bunch of servers. The money saved would then roll-over into the next
quarters budget.
This is really just an accounting error. What needs to
be done now is
the Florida budget needs to be revised downwards, by cutting out items
that might instead be purchased by the Verein. Then the Verein needs to
produce their own budget. Only then will we have a consisent story to
tell to our generous donors.
If we dont spend as much as we thought wed need, then the left-over amount
simply rolls over into the next quarters budget. Alternatively, the board
could pass a supplementary budget for special projects that the un-spent money
can be used on. It is my understanding that this is what was going to happen
for everything collected above the $198,000 budget.
So yeah, the budgeting is a bit weird. But that is necessary due to the fact
that we have global needs and more than one organization collecting money.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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