Hello,

having started to regularly publish our monthly ledgers, [1] and having published the grants page, [2] the next step is to have a regularly published, rolling budget, which is currently in the works. The board is currently working on optimizing the budgetting process, and here's a first draft, based on the work of Joel, Norbert and myself.

Feedback welcome!
Florian

[1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/06/19/publication-of-tdf-ledgers/

[2] http://www.documentfoundation.org/grant-request/


Process

Step 1: 3 Months

* Individual board members and/or staff add items to the budget “Voting” page
    * This will include all requested information including:
        * Short Name;
        * Description;
            * Detailed enough to make us know what is going on;
        * Added By;
        * Owned By;
            * Who will own the project if approved
        * Type
            * Reoccurring or One-Time Cost
* Optional: Tender yes/no [if something should be tendered or rather not] * Category [these might need some fine-tuning, but can always be changed/extended later on]
            * Development;
            * Marketing;
            * Quality Assurance;
            * Infra;
            * Documentation;
            * UX
            * Other
* Requested Amount, it should contain all costs, including VAT, taxes, fees, postage, insurance, social security etc. -> if in doubt, please ask Florian for details * Optional: Man Hours [in case we tender, that might help in comparing rates or at least getting a rough overview] * Optional: Staff doable [in case there's a task that can possibly be done by staff members, so it, depending on other pending tasks, will be transformed to a staff task and the sum removed from the budget] * Optional: Duration [is this a longer tasks we might have to split up to two fiscal years] * Optional: Redmine URL [in case this is already in Redmine, can be added later during the process when approved, of course]

Step 2: 4 Weeks (2 Meetings)

* Review all projects listed
    * Add questions
* Vote Individually Prior to 2nd Meeting
* Rank: The 1-5 is flawed because there is absolutely no limit that we put on ourselves in terms of how many 1's or 5's we give. By this method basically someone can give everything a 5 which gives us absolutely no information as to that person's actual preferences. * Instead: Over the course of a quarter people add items to the projects page. At the end of the quarter each director/deputy ranks them. * For example if there are 15 items on the list, we give a rank from 1-15, no repeating.
            * We give ourselves 4 weeks to vote and ask questions.

Step 3: Vote

* By end of 2nd Meeting we vote – going down the list based on average ranking
* Once we get to the first down vote, project voting ends
* Exception: If there is a low cost item that we want to specially approve because there is the budget for it, of course this is fine.

Step 4: Organization

* Florian organizes the document
    * Approved items
        * Reoccurring approved items go to “Approved Reoccurring Items”
        * One-Time Projects items go to “Approved One Off Projects”
    * Non-Approved
        * Everything else gets moved to “Non-Approved Projects”
* If the person who added it wants to put it back to projects _later_ they are more than free to do this, but at the end of voting the projects page should be clean. * If items are put back – all voting should be deleted as these were ranked based on what was there, they would have to be reassessed after new items are added again
* Redmine
* Florian + staff make tickets for any items that need one and assigns it to the people who said they would own the projects

Step 5: Tracking and Documentation

* Whoever owns a project is responsible for keeping everyone up to date and can be requested at any time to provide an update; * Florian will provide an overview of the following on a regular basis (no less than once a quarter)
    * Total amount needing to be allocated by End of Year;
    * Current amount allocated
        * Reoccurring;
        * One-Time
    * Current Amount Spent
        * Reoccurring;
        * One-Time
    * Amount Allocated but not spent
* Can discuss any concerns here and individual directors/deputies may be requested to answer questions;
    * Amount remaining
* A single amount that highlights how much we need to allocate by end of year. * Florian can highlight any areas where he thinks money is needed or where we've overfunded/underfunded.
* Document will be _standardized_
* Joel more than happy to work with Florian to create a standardized form that will be emailed out no less than once a quarter.

--
Florian Effenberger, Executive Director (Geschäftsführer)
Tel: +49 30 5557992-50 | IRC: floeff on Freenode
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

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