transparency about the fellowship

[Daniel Pocock]

On 09/07/18 21:31, Reinhard Müller wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> Am 2018-07-09 um 20:57 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
>> A single fellow also made a bequest of EUR 150,000 to FSFE and they were
>> not identified publicly.
> 
> Correction: We recieved a large sum out of an inheritance where the
> deceased explicitly wished to remain anonymous. We never claimed that
> this person was a Fellow, and to keep anonymity of the person intact, I
> will also not make any statement about whether or not the deceased was a
> Fellow.
> 


Would FSFE be willing to allow the elected fellowship representative to
know the facts about this person and see their written intentions?

>> Every corporate donor who contributes over 10%
>> is named publicly.  Does anybody feel that the same transparency
>> principle should apply in cases such as bequests?
> 
> We clarified this with "Initiative Transparente Zivilgesellschaft" whose
> rules we follow regarding transparency, and they confirmed that it is ok
> to follow the deceased's wish for anonymity.
> 
> Personally, I do not see a large risk of the deceased person trying to
> influence FSFE's policy in future.
> 

I think it may be useful in such cases for the fact this happened to be
in the list of top donors anyway, but with a statement there saying
"name withheld - bequest" and a brief note about how FSFE acts in such
cases.


>> The dissemination of the fellowship statistics on the team mailing list
>> stopped shortly after the extraordinary general assembly.
> 
> Huh? There hasn't been any change in this. The statistics is still sent
> each Sunday on 4:00 by a cron job.
> 
> For others reading here: the statistics shows the number of supporters
> by country and the development over the past months and years. It is
> sent to the "core team" mailing list so that people coordinating an
> activity can get feedback about the development of supporter numbers.
> 

Last email I saw was on 10 June, if it is a technical issue please let
me know


>> I notice that
>> the fellowship numbers had been increasing last year but in the last few
>> months it has been decreasing.  Personally, I suspect that two factors
>> may be responsible:
>>
>> [...]
> 
> Maybe it's the discussion currently happening on some public mailing
> lists which create the impression that FSFE is mainly busy with its own
> internals rather than doing actual work. It is unfortunate that such an
> impression comes up, because it does not match reality.
> 

Not discussing the issue runs the risk that things continue to slide.

I notice that our sister organization, the FSF, also produces an annual
report[1] with membership and supporter data.  They report having 9
board members with voting rights and 2000 volunteers.

Their report includes the amounts paid in some individual salaries and a
much more detailed budget.

The amortization report lists some of the hardware products they have
chosen.

In my role as representative, I'm keen to see a similar amount of detail
made available to FSFE's fellows and I wouldn't be performing my role
properly if I didn't ask questions like that.

Regards,

Daniel

1. https://www.fsf.org/about/financial