[Osmf-talk] Operating reserves

[Edward Bainton]

Congratulations on your election, Jean-Marc.

I completely support these proposals. I'm sorry that I'm not financial
enough to have a view on the level of reserves required.

I will say that in the UK charity sector, reserves are usually quoted as
months of full expenditure in hand - so assume no mitigation is possible.
(If it is possible, that's great, but you think about your reserves level
as the number of months you could continue to operate at full expenditure
with no income.)

I think the point about perverse incentives for the sysadmin if their
salary depends on one or two big donors is well worth discussion.
(Influence of this sort is presumably part of many donors' calculations
when deciding whether to donate. That's stated as a fact of life, not
necessarily as an argument against their donations.)  In part, reserves are
for ensuring you have space to maneuvre if a donor goes sour.

I was the one who asked at the AGM about reserves (as a full member, not as
a guest ;-) and I also asked about a donations policy. At the risk of
diverting the thread, imo every donation-taking org should have a donations
policy, which details
- who we will and won't accept donations from;
- what conditions, if any, we're prepared to accept;
- approval & due diligence processes;
- how to avoid 'donor capture' by diversifying income streams (this last
being relevant to the peverse incentives)

That's another piece of work, but I think related.

Edward

On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 at 19:41, Craig Allan <allan at iafrica.com> wrote:

> Yes, noted.  Thanks Simon for the input.  The 'formal' version in the AoA
> is strangely vague. Now I know why.
> And let me respond to that anonymous board member that there will NEVER be
> enough open geo data!
> We have done so much, but have hardly scratched the surface of what we
> could achieve in the long term.
> CA
>
>
> On 2020/12/15 20:48, Simon Poole wrote:
>
>
> Am 15.12.2020 um 16:44 schrieb Craig Allan:
>
> ....
> THE FRAMEWORK
> Policy can be seen as a set of rules to implement our organisational
> strategy. Strategy is informed by our mission (Section 3 of the AoA) and
> the long term vision of the organisation (missing). So in any organisation
> there will be likely be a hierarchy of plans, each more detailed than its
> parent, ending eventually in a large list of short-term tasks.
>
>
> Sorry to jump on this in a bit of an off topic fashion, but I believe you
> are misunderstanding something there.
>
> The "Objects" section in the AoA, that is section 3, is legally required
> and deliberately vague and unrestrained because of that. When we were
> discussing the 1st revision of the AoAs many years ago there was a longer
> discussion if we should change 3. to limit the scope to OSM, but for the
> above mentioned reasons we decided against it. It is however clear that is
> not a sensible starting point for any kind of policy, setting of goals or
> anything similar.
>
> This has led to misunderstandings in the past, including a board member,
> paraphrased, coming to the conclusion that once there is enough open geo
> data we could let OSM die.
>
> A far more sensible starting point is the 1st paragraph of
> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement
>
> Simon
>
>
>
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