Regular meeting of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors, 10 March 2021, 16:00 UTC

Attending

Directors:

• KatGerasimova

• AllanDay

• RobMcQueen

• PhilipChimento

• FedericoMenaQuintero (joined later)

• ReginaNkemchorAdejo (joined later)

Non-directors:

• NeilMcGovern

• RosannaYeun

• ShaunMcCance

Regrets

• FelipeBorges

Missing

Consent Agenda

• Approve minutes of 10 February

  • https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoardPrivate/Minutes/DraftMinutes

• Internship funding

  • The board notes that, since its last meeting, it voted to increase internship funding by $13,000, to allow the Foundation to offer 3 Outreachy placements for Spring 2021. See https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/200

• The board acknowledges receipt of:
  • Executive Committee minutes, dated 19 February 2021 [1]
  • Governance Committee minutes, dated 3 March 2021 [2]

Discussion Agenda

• Executive Director's report
• Strategy update
• Board only discussion

Minutes

• Consent agenda:
  • All three items approved
• Executive Director's report
  • We are transitioning the website to a new version of Wordpress.
  • Ramping up for the upcoming release - video on its way

  • Linux App Summit & GUADEC preparations in progress

  • Projects submissions for the final round Coding Education Challenge - showcase on April 7
    • Allan: eager to see the community as a whole engage with the challenge showcase.
    • Neil: there will be some presentations around it at GUADEC
  • Chat platform assessment: in progress, almost 100 responses to the survey. Will be followed by evaluation and report to the board.
• Strategy update by Neil
  • Our mission means that we want to have GNOME widely recognised - what is the community's appetite for GNOME growing? We need to try and grow our income to USD $1 million per year to be able to continue making significant impact. Two ways to approach: run/spin off a commercial arm of GNOME which may not be compatible with our 501(c)(3) status or we need to find large philanthropic donations which we can continue to use to fund work on GNOME.
  • The board discussed the pros and cons of the two strategies available, including the GNOME project's prior experience of both.
  • The board indicated that it is supportive of the effort to grow the foundation's income by pursuing philanthropic donations. It believes that the GNOME community will be supportive of this strategy.
  • Next steps: Neil will be developing concepts for potential initiatives we could run, as part of the ongoing strategy process with John Lass.

Reports

[1] GNOME Foundation Executive Committee minutes, 19 February 2021

• Passed on board feedback from February's meeting
• Ongoing discussion about strategy direction

[2] GNOME Foundation Governance Committee minutes, 3rd March 2021

Attending: Allan Day, Kat Gerasimova, Felipe Borges, Neil McGovern, Philip Chimento

Minutes:

• Committee chair selection: Kat and Philip sharing duties.
• Secretary selection: Allan and Felipe sharing duties.
• Review purpose of the committee: ensure the board is fulfilling its functions and ensure performance improvements over time. This includes training and onboarding (Neil has taken the lead on this previously), documentation, assessement of the board functions, development and training, recruitment (including compiling a list of desired skills and seeking out potential new board members around elections).
• Neil will attend at least the first few committee meetings.
• The committee members will review available documents before the next meeting, including:

  • https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/Committees/GovernanceCommittee - Governance Committee charter

  • Form 990

  • https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Board/-/issues/193#note_986139 - proposed committee responsibilities]

  • https://boardsource.org/board-support/membership/board-support-nonprofits/ - BoardSource resources,specifically on the parts of self-assessment: https://boardsource.org/board-support/assessing-performance/board-self-assessment/ parts about self-assessment

  • https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources - Council of non-profits resources

  • Handbook for Directors of Nonprofit Corporations In the United States of America
  • Slide deck on board governance (to be shared by Allan)
• Next meeting: we will start with roughly monthly meetings, next one to take place on March 17th at 18:00 UTC. Philip will chair, Felipe will take minutes.
• Meeting minutes will be published in board minutes under "Reports".
• Will use the board project on Gitlab with a governance label to track tasks. Philip to set up.