In my experience[1] with this it's almost impossible to be prescriptive about this with sponsors in this manner, and therefore (a) and (d) are complete non-starters. The typical issue is that person A has a budget (in USD / EUR) for sponsoring events, and they can offer that. Actual payment is handled by their accounting department, so you have to then invoice $COMPANY for the agreed amount in USD (/ EUR), which then gets passed back to person A for sign-off, and (eventual) payment. In some cases there is added complexity when the *actual* payment is handled by a second company, and then the real pain begins. So while you might be able to get the 'small change' amounts of sponsorship paid in CHF, or paid in a timely manner so that they can be converted to CHF and known, for the big amounts you will just have to cope, and you're stuck with (c). This need not be quite *so* terrifying, however, as to allow for 30% change in currency rate. I wouldn't think it likely that relative currencies will shift more than 10% in real terms, and as they do you will occasionally recalculate your budget shortfall. Option (b) is what effectively *does* happen, in that the conference happens, everyone tries to make a budget that has a small surplus, and over the many years of Debconfs sometimes SPI (or equivalent) has had to fund the shortfall and sometimes they have received the benefit of a small surplus. Cheers, Andrew McMillan. [1] I've been fairly closely involved in a number of DebConfs, but more specifically I also ran sponsorship for LCA for 2010 and 2011. On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 19:11 +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: > > > There was some discussion on #debconf-sponsors about sponsors wanting to > pay USD instead of CHF. > > If a sponsor is saying this, it probably means they don't want the > uncertainty of exchange rates hitting their budget. So if a large > sponsor can't afford that uncertainty, can DebConf? > > I'd propose that if such agreements are going to be accepted, then it > would be on one of these conditions: > > a) the sponsors pay all the money immediately so we can convert to CHF > using current exchange rates > > or > > b) SPI or somebody else lends DebConf the USD amount for immediate > conversion to CHF, and then the loan is repaid when the sponsor gives > the USD money in future > > or > > c) the budget needs to include an exchange rate buffer, maybe 30% or > even 50% of any foreign currency amounts that are unpaid. So if there > is $US50,000 coming in July, we only count that as CHF 35,000 in the > revenue forecast > > or > > d) sponsor must sign a contract for CHF amount > > _______________________________________________ > Debconf-team mailing list > Debconf-team@lists.debconf.org > http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com +64(272)DEBIAN I don't wish to appear overly inquisitive, but are you still alive? ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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