[Debconf-team] Discussing our budgeting and sponsorship situation
Hello everyone,
I was talking with some people last night, and it seems that I'm not
the only one worried about our budget. After I got home last night, I
tried doing some more budget calculations, based on our knowledge of
current costs, the state of sponsorships, and rough approximations of
the unknown other costs. I did some work to get better estimates on
how much food and accommodation costs will be and our expected
attendee fees, and Pablo updated the fundraising numbers.
There are a few hard decisions that we need to make, but we also need
to get realistic about the state of affairs and how that does and does
not cover sponsorship. We need to start thinking realistically about
the sponsorship situation, and make a plan that will work regardless
of how much extra funds we manage to raise.
Things aren't as bad as we originally were thinking last night, but we
are not in the clear yet. We are currently promising more money than
we have, which is a bad idea, especially when it is two months before
Debconf. For our summary, see
http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Budget
There are a few areas where the numbers can fluctuate by +/- $10,000
due to unknowns. This makes getting a clear picture very
difficult. These areas are:
* Money from Debian: last year $20k was given to Debconf from Debian,
the years before no money at all came from Debian. Ideally, no more
than 20k would need to come from Debian.
* Additional sponsors: at this point, it would be unlikely to get more
than $10k in additional sponsorship coming in. If we get even that
much, we are lucky.
* The line that was drawn for 100% bursary amount is currently at
$20k, but the ideal line would be $32k.
So that leaves us in a few different spots, depending on different
things: we are somewhere between $-31,260 short or $10,740 ahead. That
is quite a range.
The best-case scenario would be to not have to rely on money from
Debian, and provide $32k in busary funding. However, that would mean
we would be between $-19,260 and $-31,260 short depending on if we can
pull in the (not guaranteed) $10k more in sponsorship.[0]
I should also emphasize that all of the attendee costs and fees are
fuzzy. Not all of the data is correct, so this could suck a fair
bit out, too.
In terms of for fiscal responsibility (not suck so much out of Debian,
save some for future years, maintaining due caution) we should to
discuss a how we want to proceed:
Future plans
============
Here's what might be realistic to do this year, based on the current
late stage of the game:
- We reword the reconfirmation emails to say "accommodation
sponsorship decisions forthcoming". This is highly non-ideal, but
maybe necessary to be honest.
By SOME_DATE that is real soon now, if our fundraising activities do
not report any substantive improvements:
- Decide how much to reduce sponsorship. Perhaps we'll decide to
sponsor 50%, instead of 0%.
- Establish a team to review Debcamp work plans, and make decisions
about if we can afford to sponsor those people. Possibly look at
alternative accommodations (hostels, MrBeige's place), ask that they
pay their own way. (expected savings: ~4,000-10,000 )
- We look through DebConf attendees food/accommodation sponsorship .
This is harder to tell who deserves sponsorship or not, since we
want it open to as many people as possible. Our proposed starting
point is to allow food sponsorship to everyone, and limit
accommodation sponsorship to those with some preexisting
relationship to Debian (being very flexible here), and a team would
have to be dispatched to make these decisions (expected savings:
???)
- As our money situation gets better, we can add more sponsorship for
people. Some people won't be able to make it under this system,
since it'll be too late, but that's better than risking bankrupting
ourselves.
As a side note, I realized today that if there was insufficient money
to reconcile our bills with Columbia at the end of the conference, it
is _my_ reputation on the line more than SPI's (even though it is SPI
who is on the line for paying). As such, I'd like to ensure that he
can say "we can pay" in good faith, which doesn't necessarily mean
having all the money already, but at least having had a real
discussion about the budget.
Now that we have all the information in front of us, it would be good
to know how many other people strongly oppose some of the ideas
expressed above, and how many favor more discussion. If anyone has any
other ideas, please let us know them, too.
So, what do past global people think?
- Richard
[0] Please see http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Budget for
details on the numbers of our current budgetary situation, as best
as we see it from querying penta and Pablo knowing about
sponsorship.
--
| Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 313 days, 19:59
| http://rkd.zgib.net - pgp 0xBD356740
| "Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free"
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