Foundation Board meeting minutes for Tuesday, November 13th, 2018, 16:30 UTC

Attending

• AllanDay

• CarlosSoriano

• NeilMcGovern

• RosannaYuen

• NuritziSanchez

• PhilipChimento

• RobMcQueen

Regrets

• FedericoMenaQuintero

• KatGerasimova

Agenda

• Conflict of interest policy

  • https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/ConflictOfInterest

• Budget updates
• Sponsorship committee liaison

Minutes

• Conflict of interest policy
  • Neil has sent an email with a conflict of interest policy for the GNOME Foundation. This is a requirement for nonprofit organizations, in order to avoid legal sanctions for the organization or for individual directors in the case where a conflict of interest were to occur. We are not voting on it today, as not everyone has had enough chance to read it; we will vote next time. This week is for questions.
  • Nuritzi: Is there a timeline for signing the statements?
    • Neil: No particular timeline, but as soon as possible.
  • Carlos: What happens if the majority of the board has a conflict of interest and there is no quorum?
    • Neil: Quorum is 3 in that case, but that case seems quite unlikely.
  • Carlos: Do we have a strict policy on what constitutes a conflict of interest? How about personal connections, e.g. if you know someone who is involved in a decision?
    • Neil: Conflicts of interest can be financial or not financial. There are examples in the policy.
  • Carlos: All the examples in the policy are financial, can we add another example of a non-financial conflict?
    • Neil: I would prefer to answer the above question by email, and any others, so that I can answer more comprehensively and the people who aren't present can refer back to the answer as well.
  • Nuritzi: If a director has a conflict of interest, does it enter the minutes as such?
    • Neil: It should be stated publicly.
• Budget updates
  • Nuritzi: Did anyone else have an area in the budget that they wanted to revisit?
  • Nuritzi: I wanted to revisit the marketing budget.
  • Neil: If anyone has anything they want to revisit, please reply to my email.
  • Rob: Kat had something to revisit as well, I believe for an internship. I had an idea for a hackfest involving the Developing Nations donation.
  • Nuritzi: On the hiring front, does the board get the announcement before the community?
    • Neil: There will probably be notice periods involved, so they cannot be announced to the community immediately.
    • Nuritzi: And will we announce the hires all at once?
    • Neil: If we do it one at a time, you can introduce people a bit more individually.

      • Helpful link for decoding work weeks: https://whatweekisit.com/

• Sponsorship committee liaison
  • We will defer the discussion of the committee structure and the liaison until the development coordinator is hired. Rob will continue to be the liaison for the moment, although he will not have time to contribute much, and once the development coordinator is hired we will work out with them what the new structure of the committee should be.
• Kat would like the record to state that the meeting time shift due to daylight savings time was not adequately communicated in her opinion, and is not missing this or next week's meeting frivolously.