Re: Proposed resolution: Waive SPI 5% administrative fee for 2020 associated project conferences

Greetings,

* Daniel Vetter (daniel(dot)vetter(at)ffwll(dot)ch) wrote:
> My worry (from X.org project) is that if we drop the 5% from
> conference sponsorships (which is the biggest chunk of income for
> X.org right now), then will SPI have enough money to run solid
> services?

That's definitely a great question and one which we haven't got a great
answer to right now. There's no doubt that conferences involve a lot of
expenses for SPI, particularly when SPI is handling travel
reimbursements but also through running down sponsor payments and
dealing with invoicing and other bits and pieces. We're starting to get
better tracking of what those costs are now, thanks to having a
contractor to handle those parts, but we are only just now getting an IT
contractor hired to work on updating our ancient and aging IT systems
which are causing problems in other areas.

Then there are other expenses, such as the annual external audit, having
our contractor agreements reviewed by counsel (including in other
countries as needed), that need to be considered.

> 5% is already at the very low end, and I believe with the size of SPI
> and all the projects it needs professional staff to keep track of all
> the book-keeping, invoicing and everything so that projects can focus
> on their missions. From the X.org side I think we need more of that,
> not reduce SPI's budget here to support projects.

We're certainly working to do more of that and hope to have some good
news on these areas in the (very) near future. We're glad to have your
support.

Thanks,

Stephen