Finance Committee

Briefing Documents for Board, WGs and Community

Briefing Document for Board and WGs.

The Finance Committee is currently preparing the budget for 2025. We are following a process which can be viewed in detail on https://hackmd.io/@craigallan/r1-J7IW5A
The steps of the process are as follows:

1. Design the process
2. Project the funds likely remaining at the end of 2024.
3. Project the funds we will likely raise in 2025
4. Decide on a guideline for the funds available for spending in 2025
5. Deduct fixed costs – salaries, admin, tech overheads, buffer funds.
6. Identify discretionary funds remaining
7. Distribute discretionary funds to Board and WG after negotiation
8. Finalise the budget and publish it.

The Budget cycle overlaps the Board election cycle so the earlier preparatory stages are done by the outgoing Board and the final distribution and approval stages in November and December are done by the incoming Board.

This timing is better than the previous timing when Board elections and Budget finalisation were all the responsibility of the outgoing Board and there was a big rush to complete the budget before the December shut-down.

At the time of writing we are beginning the process of negotiating the discretionary allocations to the Board and the WGs. Templates are being prepared for the structures to plan their spending in 2025. Each structure will be advised of a guideline amount to be allocated, but that is not a fixed allocation.

Structures will be asked to propose a work programme and an expenditure plan. Funds will then be moved and allocated accordingly.
We expect to be on time to get the draft budget approved during the final Board meeting of 2024.

ENDS

We have also prepared a publicity release on this topic. It is provided below:

Community Media Post

The OSM Foundation Board is currently preparing the budget for operations in financial year 2025. The work is delegated to the Finance Committee, which is implementing a plan for the relatively long process.

The early stages of budget planning required estimating how much money will be left over at the end of 2024. This was not an exact process as project and overhead spending can be unpredictable. At the same time our corporate and individual donors will be continuing their donations which tend to peak towards the end of the budget year – these too had to be estimated.

The other estimate required was how much money would be raised in the financial year 2025. This estimate was based on current funding sources plus a small increment for inflation and new donors. We estimated incoming funding conservatively as it is easier to spend more if we get a windfall than it is to cut budgets if we have a shortfall.

Once we had a reasonable estimate of the funds that we could spend in 2025 we divided it among fixed and discretionary costs. The fixed costs include salaries, admin costs and any long-term contracts we have already entered into. They are fixed amounts so there was not much to plan.

The stage we are at now is distribution to structures. The discretionary costs are allocated to projects and events that will be run by the Board and the Working Groups. Dividing the funds is done by a process of negotiation. Project plans and spending estimates are required from each structure and the discretionary funds are allocated accordingly. Very likely there will be some trimming of any ambitious plans as we have very little funding available.

The final draft budget will be circulated for checking and once it is generally approved and all changes are made it will be submitted for formal approval by the Board during its last meeting of the year 2024. The approved budget is then posted on the Wiki for all OSMF members to see.

ENDS