Foundation Board Minutes for Tuesday, August 21st 2018, 15:30 UTC

Next meeting date Tuesday, August 28 2018, 14:30 UTC

Attending

Regrets

Missing

Agenda

  • Executive Director report (Neil)
  • ED remunerations and appraisals (a guest advisor with nonprofit experience dials in from 15:45 UTC - 16:15 UTC)
  • Foundation hackfest (Allan)
  • Formal thanks to Max Huang for his work on GNOME.Asia (Neil)

Minutes

  • Executive Director report
    • Neil sent a draft of a report, everyone please review it. It's quite verbose and took a long time to put together, so if we want to maintain that level of detail it should be monthly. If we are okay with less detail, it could be biweekly.
    • Carlos: This draft is great. Can we have this and also a shorter weekly update?
      • Neil: Weekly could be too short to properly give context for some things.
    • Nuritzi/Neil: This will also tie into our discussion with the nonprofit advisor later in the meeting.

    • ACTION - Everyone please review the report if you haven't already.

[ Neil and Rosanna leave ]

  • ED remunerations and appraisals (a guest advisor with nonprofit experience dials in from 15:45 UTC - 16:15 UTC)
    • The goal of the session is to review our current practices against the advisor's best practices, as well as California law which the Foundation is subject to.
    • The most important job of the board is evaluating the executive director's performance and setting their compensation. This is standard practice across many nonprofits but has not happened in a consistent way over the last few years.
      • We need to figure out if this is something we want to do, and if so, how.
    • Anything relating to the rest of the Foundation's staff, is the responsibility of the ED, not the board.
    • What's the best reporting frequency for the ED and what form should these reports take?
      • It's important to ensure accountability to the board, but on the other hand it should not be overly burdensome.
      • We decide that, going forward, the ED should aim to present a report in the first board meeting of every month.
    • Many nonprofit boards create a compensation committee to set the ED's compensation.
      • We think this is a good idea.
    • Points raised around the importance of continuity in the board as relates to accountability and accomplishing goals.
      • We discussed the pros and cons of having staggered board terms of 2 or 3 years with half or a third of the board turning over every year.

    • ACTION - Rob: Propose a charter for the compensation committee.

[ Neil and Rosanna return ]

  • Foundation hackfest (Allan)

    • https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Board/issues/75

    • Allan: 17-19 October (not including travel). Very likely going to be Cambridge, office space is booked, we just need to figure out who needs accommodation and when
    • (Info from Kat:) Cambridge accommodation options (e.g.):
      • £62 per room 1-2 people for Travelodge
      • £25 per person for 3 people per room in Travelodge
    • We'll look for an Airbnb or equivalent local large place as well
    • Nuritzi: Staying in the same place increases informal camaraderie

    • ACTION - Update the GitLab ticket with who needs and who doesn't need accommodation (provisionally assigned to Allan, Kat)

    • VOTE - Approve travel for the Foundation board and Foundation employees to attend the Foundation hackfest 17-19 October

      • +1 Nuritzi, Rob, Federico, Allan, Carlos, Philip

[ Carlos leaves ]

  • Formal thanks to Max Huang for his work on GNOME.Asia (Neil)

    • VOTE - The board expresses its thanks to Max for all the hard work he has put into GNOME.Asia and requests that Neil sends a formal thank you

      • +1 Rob, Philip, Allan, Nuritzi, Federico

Actions

FoundationBoard/Minutes/20180821 (last edited 2018-08-27 23:27:56 by PhilipChimento)