Regular meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 10 February 2021, 16:00 UTC
Attending
Directors:
KatGerasimova (arriving later)
RobertMcQueen (arriving later)
Non-directors:
Regrets
Missing
Consent Agenda
- Approve minutes of 13 January
- Acknowledge receipt of February 2021 Executive Team report [1]
- GNOME 40 release marketing - #199
- DECISION: the board approves up to $4,000 for release marketing for GNOME 40
Discussion Agenda
- Executive Director's report
- Quarterly financial report
- Create standard board committees #195
VOTE: the board agrees to create the following committees, with the charters described at https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/195#note_1012920
- Board only discussion
Minutes
- Consent agenda
- Approved.
- Executive director's report
- GUADEC has been moved online once more. We considered moving it later in the year but there was too much uncertainty for that. If circumstances allow there may be a small in-person event.
- Kristi is looking at the chat infrastructure evaluation.
- Coding education challenge, phase 3 is ongoing now.
- Showcase in April
- Philip: I'm happy to see Kristi handling the chat infrastructure issue.
- Financial report
- Neil walks through the Q4 financial report.
- Rosanna: Note that we budgeted for 3 Outreachy internships and have had 2 of them in Q4.
- Shaun: I asked for an aging report on the accounts receivable, but that was just yesterday so I don't expect to have it yet.
- Rob: are we looking to revise the reserves policy?
- Neil: at the moment the reserve policy is to keep 1 year of operating costs.
- Shaun: 6 months is a common policy, but 1 year is not rare for a nonprofit dealing with a relatively small amount of money. I've advised 1 year in the past. With 6 months there's a short window to correct course.
- Rob: I wonder if there's a way to have a different policy for essential costs.
- Philip: what is the admin fee expense for the 2020?
- Neil: 10% cut for Neil's and Rosanna's time which we charge to orgs that we handle money for.
- Outreachy internships for May 2021 round:
- Neil: we sometimes find project specific sponsors for Outreachy.
- We budgeted for 3 internships in the FY, we've already spent 2 of those so have only 1 left. Marina is asking for 3 more.
- Allan: how did everyone feel about the variance report that Rosanna sent around?
- [board responds with their general feelings]
- Allan: we should explain the terms and give a bit more detail on what the columns mean in the report and highlight the important parts.
- Neil: this could be something the governance committee could look at
- Create standard board committees #195
- Charters are relatively standard format
- Bylaws say CFO, may want to capture that we are referring to the person responsible for finance regardless of their title
- Rob: should I be on any other of these committees?
- Allan: there's an argument for the president to be on the Finance Committee but have not seen this as standard practice.
- Allan: I can't remember why I put in maximum memberships for these committees.
- Kat: It seems useful to prevent the committees from becoming too large.
- Kat would like to join the governance committee.
- Shaun: How is committee membership established, procedurally?
- Neil: The board appoints members.
VOTE: the board agrees to create the following committees, with the charters described at https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/195#note_1012920 amending the composition of the Finance Committee to read "The Finance Committee consists of at least three and no more than five members, and must include the Treasurer, Executive Director and senior executive responsible for Finance, such as CFO, VP or Director of Finance or Operations."
- Executive Committee
- Governance Committee
- Members: Allan Day (ex officio), Philip Chimento, Felipe Borges, Kat Gerasimova
- Finance Committee
- Board only discussion
Reports
[1] GNOME Foundation Executive Team report, 8 February 2021
15 Jan meeting
- General update from Neil
- Feedback given to Neil, from the January board meeting
- Neil asked about when the compensation committee will meet next
29 Jan meeting
- Planning for the upcoming February board meeting: discussed the format of the finance report; contingency plans if we continue to have issues with our accounting system
- Reviewed charters for new board committees