[foundation-board] follow up questions

Mark Gibbs mark.gibbs at okfn.org
Thu Sep 21 15:30:10 UTC 2017


Jane

I just wanted you to know that I am working to update the Cash flow forecast for, I have my working doc, however due to the criticality and after being away for a few weeks I need to ensure that nothing has been missed and align with the project teams.. 
If you don’t mind I will get this out to you and the board by the close of business Monday. 

Kind Regards

Mark Gibbs


On 20/09/2017, 09:08, "Jane Silber" <jane.silber at canonical.com> wrote:

    Hi Mark, Pavel -
    
    A couple follow up thoughts after a night of tossing and turning:
    
    1. One thing that wasn't clear to me in last night's conversation is 
    cash flow - specifically, when is the cliff (at current spend rate)?
    
    This is different than the date by which we would need to make cuts, 
    which needs to be well in front of the cliff (to Tim's point about not 
    waiting until it's too late to cut).  But I think clarity on the cliff 
    (i.e, "we can't pay bills or employees any more") will help bring focus 
    to the speed at which we need to get the financial health on a better 
    track in order to back away from that dangerous cliff edge.
    
    2.  I spent more time with the 2018 spreadsheet, and I can't understand 
    the connection between the Income Pipeline tab and the income section on 
    the OKI Planned Budget tab.  I don't see formulas which link the two 
    tabs, nor do I see a clear correlation between the numbers.  Can you 
    explain exactly how these two tabs are related?
    
    3. Related to #2 above, I can't tell how large the funding gap is. The 
    budget has a deficit of -366K.  Does that mean we need to find an 
    additional 366K in SAG, which implies additional 2018 overall funding of 
    2.4M (at 15% rate) beyond what is in the budget?
    
    4. The other thing I'd like to mention with regards to the "safe" 
    scenario budget you are preparing is that (in my opinion) we only want 
    to make one round of cuts, as opposed to multiple rounds of shaving 
    smaller pieces off.  The latter is much harder to recover from in terms 
    of trust and morale. And while the former is much harder initially, it 
    should ensure safety and provide an ability to regrow when finances 
    allow.  If we end up in that scenario, I think we have to stomach deep 
    cuts to ensure the future of the org rather than optimistic shaving of 
    costs.
    
    thanks
    Jane
    
    
    





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