warrants for certain tasks

Hello,

since voting on each and every single expense during the BoD calls is a bit tedious, but required by the statutes, I would like to propose an alternative solution to make the daily operations a bit easier.

In a nutshell, I would like to have the board appoint responsibilities to not only, but mainly, BoD members. As an example:

  - Thorsten and Florian for administrative issues
  - Alex (from the admin team) and Florian for infrastructure topics
  - Michael and Caolan for development resources
  - Italo for marketing projects

and so on. Every area gets a fixed budget, either per month, quarter or year, and if the goals fit into the statutes, the tax law and the foundation's objectives, upon approval of one of the responsible parties, the money can be spent without the need to have a formal BoD vote.

Excluded should be long-term contracts and anything that is not part of the daily operations, like entering 10 year contracts fors infrastructure, signing exclusive advertising deals and so on - you get the point. :wink:

Real life examples: Signing the contract with a new domain registrar, buying a bunch of new domain names, ordering the SMS gateway, or buying one additional machine is something the board could leave at my discretion for infrastructure. Making expenses for the tax advisor is something the board could leave at Thorsten's discretion, and buying one development machine or buying required software is something Michael and Caolan could decide.

Things like capital investments, trademark registrations, establishing a certification program and other non-daily operations would still require the approval of the full board.

While the above is no readily written proposal to formally vote upon and issue warrants, what do you generally think about it? I think if we limit the amount to a senseful value, and have the budget on the radar, this is something that would ease our daily operations and give people a bit more flexibility, so we can focus on work rather than administration.

The German FrODeV e.V. has a similar rule in their rules of procedure ("Geschäftsordnung"), but they forsee a "veto time" of four working days, which I'd like to either shorten for TDF or even avoid at all.

By the way, this is something that should not go into our community bylaws or the rules of procedure, since changing it then has some hurdles, so an individual decision of the BoD that can be changed or revoked anytime makes sense.

Florian

+1 . May I add my humble self for a liaison and membership budget (membership fees to other orgs)?

Best,



<br>-- <br>Charles-H. Schulz<br>Co-Founder & Director, The Document Foundation,<br>Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany<br>Rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts<br>Legal details: [http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint](http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint)<br><br>



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2012/5/3 Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>

Hi,

+1 . May I add my humble self for a liaison and membership budget
(membership fees to other orgs)?

sure, that list was just a quick example, no concrete proposal - ideally, everyone in the board has the responsibility for one area, and thus at least a little budget. :slight_smile:

Florian

Hi,

since voting on each and every single expense during the BoD calls is a
bit tedious, but required by the statutes, I would like to propose an
alternative solution to make the daily operations a bit easier.

just as an addendum: It might make things more safe if we require two people per area, and both need to agree on expenses, and maybe even make it mandatory that one of the members must be in the BoD.

But that's just brainstorming, I'm not determined on that. :slight_smile:

Florian

Florian Effenberger wrote:

since voting on each and every single expense during the BoD calls
is a bit tedious, but required by the statutes, I would like to
propose an alternative solution to make the daily operations a bit
easier.

In a nutshell, I would like to have the board appoint
responsibilities to not only, but mainly, BoD members.

Hi Florian,

yes, generally agreed, wasting meeting time with approving
small sums for completely uncontroversial things is pointless.

For the while, I see the biggest churn in those daily-operations
issues, like hosting, and administrative things. So I would suggest
to start with that, setting a fixed annual budget, and e.g. grant
you authority to shuffle machines, domains, IP address ranges & what
not as you see fit, as long as it stays within the budget. And maybe
a 100 bucks a month for random misc office supplies or somesuch.

For the remainder of your list, I'd probably prefer to run the first
few decisions manually through the whole board.

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi,

yes, generally agreed, wasting meeting time with approving
small sums for completely uncontroversial things is pointless.

indeed. Even voting on the list is a bit tedious for each and every expense.

For the while, I see the biggest churn in those daily-operations
issues, like hosting, and administrative things. So I would suggest
to start with that, setting a fixed annual budget, and e.g. grant
you authority to shuffle machines, domains, IP address ranges& what
not as you see fit, as long as it stays within the budget. And maybe
a 100 bucks a month for random misc office supplies or somesuch.

Sounds good. Let's talk about it during the next call and maybe vote on it, so we have less to vote upon in the future. :wink:

For the remainder of your list, I'd probably prefer to run the first
few decisions manually through the whole board.

So you mean posting to the board what someone would decide if he had authority, and if that fits, we switch to a fixed budget for those areas in the future as well?

Florian

Florian Effenberger wrote:

>For the remainder of your list, I'd probably prefer to run the first
>few decisions manually through the whole board.

So you mean posting to the board what someone would decide if he had
authority, and if that fits, we switch to a fixed budget for those
areas in the future as well?

Hi Flo,

yes, why not. I had our earlier process in mind, with a random
request to the board and a vote, but yours is really just the same
but for the requestor always being the prospective budget holder.

Cheers,

Hi,

yes, why not. I had our earlier process in mind, with a random
request to the board and a vote, but yours is really just the same
but for the requestor always being the prospective budget holder.

ok, let's discuss and vote on this Wednesday. :wink:

Florian