[Foundation-l] Donation drive stopped early with insufficient funds collected

[Tim Starling]

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. 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.

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.

The Verein has nominated a few things that they would like to spend
money on, such as hardware within Germany, and that's all very well, I'm
sure it will help with our general mission. But those costs are not part
of the Florida Q3 budget, they are part of the Verein budget. So the
shortfall still remains.

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.

-- Tim Starling