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

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Tim Starling <t.starling at 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 don’t 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
quarter’s 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 don’t spend as much as we thought we’d need, then the left-over amount
simply rolls over into the next quarter’s 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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