Subject: rfc: foundation administrative employee
From: Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com>
Date: 27 May 2001 17:51:25 -0400
Hi,
The board of directors would like to move forward with hiring a
full-time administrative employee for the GNOME Foundation. We're
giving this issue a high priority because an excellent candidate for
this position happens to be available right now, and we don't want to
miss the chance to hire him. For obvious reasons (the candidate is
currently employed elsewhere) I can't post his name.
Would like to bring this issue up for discussion before we make a
final decision.
This employee would have several duties.
* Administration (surprise)
- accounting, financial records, accepting and disbursing funds
- the annual IRS audit for nonprofits, tax returns, etc.
- help organize GUADEC each year, provide some continuity there
* Shows & Conferences
- organize attendance (booths, T-shirt sales, volunteers)
- decide which to attend in light of marketing plans
- get people to volunteer to speak; be sure we have speakers
at important conferences
- investigate speaking opportunities outside the standard "Linux show
circuit"
* Advocacy
- In our candidate's words, ensure we develop "a concerted marketing
effort. Not representing a single company or two, but the whole
platform. Work with the marketing committee, companies and
volunteers on promotion year-round. Develop a strategy."
* Fund raising
- We are hiring on a "you raise your own salary" basis. Our candidate
has an excellent track record in fund raising, and feels he could
pay himself and go on to develop a substantial fund for supporting
GNOME.
* Fund spending
- We aren't raising money just to look at it, so it would be used for
example:
- to have events, such as "hack-ins" where we get 30 people in a
room for a week to hack
- getting people to conferences who couldn't attend otherwise
- brochures, stickers, etc. at conferences
- computers for hackers that need them
- getting good conference booths instead of ".org ghetto"
etc.
* Advisory board communications
- Be sure we're communicating to member organizations what they can
do for GNOME and what GNOME can do for them.
Caveats: We are all very concerned about avoiding the Open Group
situation. We do not want a foundation that has its own misguided
interests competing with those of the hackers or the member
organizations. This is the primary risk people have identified.
There are several factors that help out here:
1) there's no revenue source (i.e. license fees) to support an
autonomous GNOME Foundation in the absence of good will from
those the foundation serves
2) our board is elected by contributing hackers and makes
decisions in the end, so hiring anyone else would
require their buy-in
3) we have a strong volunteer base and depend on that to get
anything done; our administrator would handle a lot of details
such as bank accounts and calling conference organizers that
are hard for a distributed bunch of people on the internet to
deal with, but ultimately we are still depending on
volunteers and member organizations to help out with
shows, write code, write docs, do the web site.
Another risk is that we won't be able to raise enough funds to
support an employee. Because our candidate is willing to take
responsibility for raising the money to support himself this is
mostly a risk that he's taking rather than a risk the foundation is
taking.
To minimize risk, we're currently tossing around the idea of hiring
him for a 90-day trial period, and then reevaluating after that time
to see if both he and the board are happy with how things are going,
before making a longer-term commitment.
So, please comment. I think everyone on the board recognizes that
there are substantial risks here. However, we think there could be
some big benefits to having an excellent presence at
shows/conferences, having more in-person meetings between the GNOME
contributors (hacking events, summits, etc.), having someone with an
accounting clue watching the books, having someone respond to
inquiries in a timely manner, active evangelization to
people/organizations who may not be familiar with GNOME, etc. A lot of
these things are slipping through the cracks at the moment.
Given that we have a candidate we really like who's available now, it
seems like a good moment to take the plunge.
Let us know what you think about this step.
Havoc
