[Ambassadors] Budget Planning and Fund Request Guidelines in EMEA

[Jiri Eischmann]

Joerg Simon píše v Út 04. 09. 2012 v 20:09 +0200:
> Hi Jiří,
> 
> i decided to respond here, because i think my points are not about the
> content itself, but about some fundamental things ... and honestly i
> think it would not get attention by people outside of FAmSCo if i only
> reply on the wiki page ;)
> 
> On 04.09.2012 18:24, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
> > because we approved the last ticket of the "budget reform" at FAmSCo
> > yesterday, I decided to create drafts of two wiki pages that will
> > reflect the changes.
> > Fund Request/Reimbursement Guidelines for EMEA:
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/Reimbursement
> 
> Working on this topic is good and necessary, the situation at the moment
> was/is intransparent -  for certain reasons that does not matter anymore
> ... for the case that you have not done it yet, i strongly recommend to
> involve Ruth Suehle right from the start, because she is the person who
> has to shape the processes from the RH side in the future

Ruth is involved in this. Actually, she participated in our meeting last
week where we discussed the matter with her.

> i am sure FAmSCo is aware of the current existing budget and finance
> pages and considered the good content we have here and purged the bad
> things ...

> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Community_credit_card_process
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Reimbursements
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees
> 
> to have regional differences in the processes and the numbers is ok, but
> we have a central person at the RH side - so maybe we do not want to
> fragment it too much. If all the suggestions and changes are done
> regionally, a final central reimbursement page with a table to point out
> the regional differences would help keeping things transparent.

It hasn't been completely decided yet, but the initial plan si to create
a separate track for accounting where treasurers from each region will
submit funding requests with receipts for Ruth and cooperate with her,
so that she can have just one place to look into and doesn't have to
look into several tracs (FAmSCo, regional,...).

> > Main changes:
> > - each region will be given a budget and we'll be responsible for its
> > spending up to certain limits.
> 
> i always was advocating that FAmSCo should be a place for handling a
> regional but also a global Budget for the whole Fedora Project - i admit
> i got a bit tired about my fruitless attempts here ;) - (which means
> people did not picked up their new role so maybe i was wrong?) [1]

The problem is that FAmSCo's role is to steer the ambassadors project,
but instead of steering and solving long-term problems, we have to deal
with every funding request.
The goal is to free FAmSCo's hands to start solving long-term problems
and get regions and their ambassadors more involved in the discussion
how to spend money. We also like to show our trust (based on our
experience) in the regions that they can handle their budgets by
themselves, of source under some surveillance of FAmSCo.   

> In the current form by *only giving Ambassadors the right* to request
> budget - i do not think this is a good justification claiming a regional
> budget for all contributors and not a good signal as well.
> Only if we Ambassadors are transparent, visible and approachable for all
> contributors and give them a feeling that FAmSCo really represent them
> from the Budget Side, we will get requests from the valuable
> contributors who are doing the real development work!

I completely agree on this with you. I just took a draft that APAC
created because most points there were valid and I'd like to keep
regional guidelines as similar as possible. On the other hand, there are
some points, that I'm not sure about, and this is one of them. I agree
that limiting requests to ambassadors is not a good way to do things and
I'm not going to include it in the final version if others agree.

> > - there is a new role - treasurer (or budget wrangler if you will) who
> > handles the regional budget, maintains and submits records, ensures the
> > allocated budget is properly used, and makes sure that approved and
> > spent requests are quickly reimbursed. I've been appointed by FAmSCo as
> > a treasurer for EMEA for now.
> > Budget Planning:
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/Budget
> > Because EMEA will have to handle its own budget, we need to start budget
> > planning, so that we can tell Robyn Bergeron and OSAS how much money we
> > are going to spend. This quarter is transitional, it's already started,
> > so it's a bit too late to do planning, but we have to get the drill. So
> > I'd like everyone to add expenses he/she expects to have in this quarter
> 
> good that there is a role for doing this boring work - thanks for that
> ;) and thanks for seperate this role from the decission making itself.
> Btw. is this treasurer a informal role bound to a famsco member or not?
> Ah and here is some more boring data to include to your budget page draft:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Jsimon/community_credit_card_report

I know that the treasurer role is pretty much similar to what you've
been doing in EMEA - credit card holder. There is no official rule that
the role has to be bound to a FAmSCo member. Someone had to bring it to
life in the regions and it was up to us because no one else had been
involved in the creating the new rules that much.
In NA region, there will probably have more people handling the
treasurer's role, but I don't think it could work very well unless they
divide the role. There definitely has to be only one person to work with
Ruth on reimbursements. We can't have her working with several people in
every region.
If you find yourself having enough time for the role I have no problem
to give up that job for you. I didn't start it because I was so much
interested in it, but because Christoph appointed me and I knew that if
I don't take it there might not be anyone else to do it.
Or we can split the role: one working with ambassadors and other
contributors on budget planning, and the other one with Ruth on
reimbursements and reporting actual expenses.

Jiri