Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 17/11/2007, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
Endowments and contingency funds are nice, but right now that's all academic.
After 26 days this drive is at $725k. Even running the drive for the planned 2 months, nearly 80% longer than the longest previous drive, it will be a huge surprise to come anywhere close to the $4.6M the foundation wrote down for their "budget". Rather than talking about how to put money away for the future, the immediate discussion needs to be A) how to raise money more effectively, and/or B) how to make do with less.
A good point. The easiest way I can see to spend less in the short term is to delay the move to SF.
Even if it were possible, it would be a bad idea. First point is that it is not really possible; we are in the middle of the move already. Second point is that we precisely need to move also to get nearer to those potential donors. We were simply too isolated in Florida.
I haven't done the sums, so I don't
know if that would be enough, but it would help. There are a lot of benefits to the move, but right now it would appear we simply can't afford it unless things greatly change. The other big expenditure is the appointment of an ED, but I'm not sure delaying that would be a good idea - we're never going to have a stable foundation until we sort out the governance.
We have such a person and we are already spending money to pay her. So, the only way we can actually decrease this cost would be by removing her or cutting down her salary (and most presumably, to be significant, the cut would have to be quite large, so it is probably not an option). I believe NO one on the board and on the staff would like to see a vacuum in that position again.
I have also been wondering what we could cut down. And to be honest, very little.
Tech has been reduced to the minimum, however, additional positions have been planned. So I could expect we can save on some of the additional developers.
Office of the ED. the office of the executive director covers salary of the ED, salary of the assistant, relocation to San Francisco (eg, travel to SF to select offices etc...) and consulting (eg, fundraising consulting, communication consulting, branding consulting etc...) I do not know if a full time assistant is really necessary. Relocation is already ongoing. Consulting... in the absence of staff in certain areas... is pretty necessary, but we can be more careful on this. Not sure how wise it is in the long run.
Board expenses. I included in that budget, board meetings (4 a year), advisory board meeting (minor expense), wikimedia chapter meeting, other travel by board members and minor other expenses (communication stuff, registration to websites...) I do not think cutting down the number of face-to-face board meeting would be reasonable. Wikimedia chapter meeting was already delayed. We can stop reimbursing board members of their travel expenses, but that would be a very sure way to make sure to lose hours of effective free of charge work. A better direction is to not hesitate to ask waivers for expenses when we can. Honestly, little to cut down here.
Wikimania has never been a cost to the Foundation in the end. Sponsors have always covered it. We might consider trying to make it a revenue source perhaps ?
Finances and administration look pretty high. But I do not think there is much to scratch here. A significant part of it is simply financial fees (paypal etc...), audit, accounting costs etc... We do not have a big fancy office. etc...
Overall, I think the B) how to do with less, is not really a sustainable option. A) is certainly a much better direction of thinking; As well as C) other sources of revenue.
And yeah, concepts of putting money aside for the future are very nice on the paper. But reality is that we need that money now. I have been told at the beginning of the fundraiser that we had two "promises" of a big matching donation. Not sure when they will show up really. Or even if they will really show up a matching donations or regular donation. What I do know though, is that we are not counting propositions of big donations by hundred, nor even dozen. I have been asking a lot around me in the past few weeks and bottom line is that every big foundation giving money just do not want to spend it on "infrastructure" and for all those people, we are just this, infrastructure. You might always try to argue that "servers" are not "infrastructure", but really "our core program", that does not matter. In the mind of philantropists, "servers" or "bandwidth" are just infrastructure, that's not sexy, they do not want to fund this.
And to be fair, I do not think that "we are saving languages" is the right pitch either. It is more sexy, but what those guys want to see are rationale, timeline, figures, proof of concept, partnerships etc... So, what we need to really work on in the near future are a "collection of grant propositions", which we can show around to philantropists. "What you will invest in" and what do you get in exchange.
Ant