[foundation-board] Blog post to accompany publication of Board minutes

Tue Jan 11 09:38:28 UTC 2011

This is great to see - thanks so much for taking the time to do this Becky!

For what its worth, I would personally not be so inclined to emphasise
that we have a big surplus of funds that we are puzzling over what to
do with. Partly as this might increase external pressure to fund a
whole bunch of people's stuff, or even people asking us to hire them.
As we've not had a great deal of public discussion of money, and there
are now quite a few readers of the blog, this kind of discussion could
have a significant impact on the way people think about the OKF's
financial health and financial activities.

I guess my feeling is that even if we do have a surplus, as a
Foundation we are playing a long long game and want to still be around
in 5 or 10 years time. We have no idea what the future holds regarding
the continuation of funding from various sources from which we
currently receive it. E.g. we don't know what the next few years of EU
funding wil hold (I suspect there may be a bit less cash in the system
than there is at the moment), 4IP has just shut down, we don't know
what will happen to JISC, and so on. Furthermore, as has been
previously discussed, I don't think we want to build up a dependency
on having a certain general annual turnover to keep things ticking.
The big challenge in my mind is how to we make an organisation that
successfully run on empty (i.e. with next to no money) by default, and
still receive money from external parties to fund certain projects if
this helps to promote open knowledge in a given area (e.g. Farm
Subsidy or Access Info work), or accelerate work on something we
wanted to do anyway (e.g. CKAN with UK Gov, EU, etc.).

In any case, I'm starting to ramble!

All the best,

Jonathan

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:12 PM, Ian Brown <ian.brown at oii.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Agree with Jordan below. Becky, personally, I would remove about 75% of the below as a narrative that I'm not especially comfortable with, and simply state the facts of the situation.
>
> Cheers,
> Ian.
> --
> http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/brown/
>
> On 10 Jan 2011, at 20:22, Jordan S Hatcher wrote:
>
>> Hi Becky
>>
>> Thanks for putting this together -- really great stuff! My only comment is:
>>
>>>> discussed three promising looking income
>>>> streams: consultancy projects (whose operating profits could be
>>>> "tithed" back to the community), grants, and fundraising from the
>>>> network.
>>
>> Sorry to keep banging on this drum but can we please please erase "tithe" from our vocabulary?  "Profit" too as we are a non-profit.
>>
>> We do projects that generate a **"surplus"** (not a profit) that we then use to support the mission of the OKF to promote open knowledge. It is not a tithe. We are not supporting the church and clergy with one tenth of our earnings taken as a tax. We are doing perfectly reasonable and normal contracting work that meets our goals of open knowledge based on our expertise and using any surpluses to fund our unfunded open knowledge projects.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Jordan
>>
>>
>> On 10 Jan 2011, at 18:26, Rufus Pollock wrote:
>>
>>> On 10 January 2011 15:55, Becky Hogge <becky.hogge at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi everyone
>>>>
>>>> I've worked up a draft blog post to accompany the publication of the
>>>> minutes we approved last meeting. Comments and suggestions for
>>>> improvement welcome.
>>>
>>> Really great post -- and I really like the way it gives a sense of
>>> what has has happened too. Couple of minor comments inline below.
>>>
>>> Rufus
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Begin blog post//
>>>>
>>>> It is with a mix of regret and pride that today, on behalf of the OKF
>>>> Board of Directors, I'm publishing minutes of OKF Board meetings
>>>> dating back to May 2009. Regret because these minutes should have been
>>>
>>> Worth pointing out that we had published quite a few sets of minutes
>>> including some of the most significant (e.g. May 2009, Aug 2010)
>>> already up on the website. Not saying that we haven't been a bit
>>> delinquent but we shouldn't overdo it :)
>>>
>>>> made public much earlier than now, and it's just been one of those
>>>> items on the Board's to do list that has been put off and put off
>>>> again in favour of other items, either more immediately pressing or
>>>> more exciting. And pride because together this set of minutes
>>>> documents, if only from one rather dry perspective, the growth and
>>>> development of an organisation and community that has achieved rather
>>>> a lot in the last 18 months.
>>>>
>>>> It's a story worth telling. In May 2009, the OKF Board met face to
>>>> face in the Cambridgeshire countryside for a day-long brainstorming
>>>> session about how best it could contribute to the network's future.
>>>> Here, we outlined a shared vision for the organisation as one that
>>>> supports autonomous projects loosely joined by their endorsement and
>>>> promotion of open knowledge (as set out in the open knowledge
>>>> definition). We looked in detail at compliance issues, sketched out
>>>> projected outgoings, and discussed three promising looking income
>>>> streams: consultancy projects (whose operating profits could be
>>>> "tithed" back to the community), grants, and fundraising from the
>>>> network.
>>>>
>>>> That meeting defined much of the work that was to come. That Summer,
>>>> while Jordan Hatcher put in a lot of pro bono time cementing
>>>> compliance processes, I produced a selection of potential financial
>>>> plans, and Paula le Dieu worked up a more detailed reflection of the
>>>> OKF vision that would eventually be put out for consultation with the
>>>> community at the end of the year. In the meantime the OKF began
>>>> working with the Cabinet Office, 4IP and others (such as
>>>> farmsubsidy.org and aid.info), contributing legal and technical
>>>> expertise to realise various projects, including data.gov.uk and Where
>>>> Does My Money Go? Rufus Pollock maintained an overview of this work,
>>>> reporting financial and legal issues to the Board at monthly
>>>> conference call meetings, while Martin Keegan contributed accounting
>>>> expertise, helping prepare for the year-end accounts, submitted  in
>>>> February 2010.
>>>>
>>>> The following August, when the Board met again for an away day in
>>>> Cambridgeshire, the organisation it was discussing was in radically
>>>> different shape. Thanks to a number of ongoing consultancy projects, a
>>>> significant cash surplus had been accrued. And the profile of the
>>>> organisation had increased dramatically. Rufus Pollock was on the
>>>> verge of accepting a year-long fellowship at the Shuttleworth
>>>> Foundation to continue driving forward the open data agenda. The
>>>> number of potential consultancy and grant-funded projects had
>>>> multiplied, and now included significant EU grant funding on the
>>>> horizon.
>>>>
>>>> It was all good news, but it did present the Board with a number of
>>>> new challenges. Firstly, the proliferation of projects combined with
>>>> his new role at Shuttleworth made it clear that Rufus could no longer
>>>> act as liaison between the day-to-day operations of the various arms
>>>> of the OKF, and the Board. So we resolved to recruit for a new role -
>>>> that of Project Coordinator. Seen as a compliment to the excellent
>>>> work conducted by Jonathan Gray as Community Coordinator, the Project
>>>> Coordinator would keep an eye on all contracted and grant-funded
>>>> projects and report back to the Board so that we could continue our
>>>> legal and finacial oversight role.
>>>>
>>>> The second - and nicest - challenge was how best to manage the
>>>> operating surplus so that we could distribute it to those parts of the
>>>> community that could do with it most. Our attempts to address this
>>>> challenge remain ongoing, but at the August meeting we resolved to
>>>> take an incremental, experimental approach, devolving discussion of
>>>> the possibilities to the Coordination Committee, chaired at that time
>>>> by Board Member Jo Walsh.
>>>>
>>>> The third challenge is in some sense the driving force behind this
>>>> blog post. Since that meeting in May 2009 we have been acutely aware
>>>> of the qualities that set OKF apart from other organisations, and of
>>>> our duty as a Board to maintain those qualities. OKF is first and
>>>> foremost a community, and thus the Board's role in shaping OKF's
>>>> future should be limited to maintaining the financial and legal
>>>> viability of the organisation. The Board has consciously avoided
>>>> appointing anyone as its Executive Director. We feel that the
>>>> strategic direction in which the organisation travels should be
>>>> defined as far as possible by active members of the OKF community.
>>>>
>>>> It may seem odd, then, that we have not published these minutes
>>>> sooner. And it is odd - in fact, the number of times an ACTION item is
>>>> listed in these minutes to "progress publishing the minutes" is almost
>>>> comical, if it weren't, from the Board's perspective, so regrettable.
>>>
>>> I reiterate my point above. Not sure we really need this level of self
>>> flagellation. Some of our meeting minutes *have* been put up
>>> (including the 2 most significant meetings ...)
>>>
>>>> We have delayed publishing minutes of our discussions from the past 18
>>>> months not from lack of will, but from lack of time, as we have been
>>>> running to keep up with the pace with which open knowledge has
>>>> rocketed up the national and international agenda. As well as
>>>> resolving to publish the minutes as soonas they have been officially
>>>> approved and adopted, this year the Board will be focussing on more
>>>> ways to get the community involved in strategic decision-making at
>>>> OKF. We're already speaking with members of other collaborative
>>>> organisations, such as the Apache Software Foundation, about models
>>>> that we could adapt or adopt.
>>>>
>>>> As a read through of the last 18 months' worth of minutes will
>>>> confirm, governance is rarely sexy. But speaking as one person who has
>>>> been part of this Board during this exciting phase of OKF's
>>>> development, I think it can still be rewarding. I hope that if you do
>>>> take time to read through the minutes we've published, you're inspired
>>>> by the work that we've done. After all, the reason we come together
>>>> regularly to discuss VAT registration, financial compliance, and
>>>> contractual committments is because we're inspired by the work that
>>>> you do.
>>>>
>>>> //ends
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
>>> Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
>>> http://www.okfn.org/ - http://blog.okfn.org/
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> ____
>> Mr. Jordan S Hatcher, JD, LLM
>>
>> More at: <http://www.jordanhatcher.com>
>> Co-founder:  <http://www.opendatacommons.org>
>> Open Knowledge: <http://www.okfn.org/>
>>
>>
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Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

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