Dear GNOME community members,
We want to provide you with an important update on recent developments at the GNOME Foundation.
What Has Happened
The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors has approved a budget for the coming financial year (October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025). In the process, we’ve had to make some tough decisions to ensure the Foundation’s long-term financial sustainability.
What Is Impacted
Staff Changes
Regrettably, we have had to reduce our staff. Caroline Henriksen (Creative Director) and Melissa Wu (Director of Community Development) are no longer members of the GNOME Foundation staff team. We sincerely thank Caroline and Melissa for their significant contributions over the past years and wish them the best in their future endeavors.
Operational Adjustments
Critical tasks will be redistributed among remaining staff and the Board. We will be reaching out to the community for more support in areas such as:
- Event organization and representation
- Marketing initiatives
- Fundraising efforts
- Graphic design
Reduced Travel
Unless additional funds are secured, there will be significant reductions on community, board and staff travel to events. We’ll be reassessing which events are most critical for staff attendance.
What Is Unaffected
Key Events: LAS, GNOME.Asia, GUADEC
We are hosting the Linux App Summit in partnership with KDE this weekend, on 4th-5th October in Monterrey, Mexico. Other events such as GNOME.Asia and GUADEC are continuing as planned and remain a core priority for our team. We’re very grateful to our event sponsors for separately supporting these important events to bring our community together.
Internships
We have secured funding to continue our participation in Outreachy at our previous level of four interns a year, two later this year and two early next year. Our participation in Google Summer of Code is supported by our greatly-appreciated Internship Committee and is also not impacted by these changes.
Externally Sponsored Projects
Certain other projects, including all of the infrastructure, staff, legal and operating costs of Flathub, and ongoing development work on Digital Wellbeing / Parental Controls, are fully sponsored by an existing grant from Endless. We are also working with our team of contractors to complete the delivery of the remaining elements of the Sovereign Tech Fund contract. We are not able to divert these funds to different purposes, but equally, they are fully funded to continue even though we’ve had to reduce spending in other areas.
Infrastructure & Operations
All of the gnome.org infrastructure remains fully funded and staffed as before, together with our core finance, operations and administrative functions.
Why This Has Happened
Our plan for the previous financial year was to operate a break-even budget. We raised less than expected last year, due to a very challenging fundraising environment for nonprofits, on top of internal changes such as the departure of our previous Executive Director, Holly Million.
The Foundation has a reserves policy which requires us to keep a certain amount of money in the bank account, to preserve core operations in the event of interruptions to our income.
In order to meet our reserves policy, this year’s budget had to reduce our expenditure to below expected income, and generate a small surplus to reinstate the Foundation’s financial reserves to the necessary level.
What’s Next
- Executive Director Recruitment: We are actively searching for a new Executive Director. This process is unaffected by the current budget constraints as we are exploring different ways to fund the role.
- Community Support: We’re asking for your support in several ways:
- Look out for opportunities to volunteer your time and skills in areas where we’ve had to reduce staff involvement.
- Share ideas on how to organize and improve our activities in this new context.
- Consider making donations to support the GNOME Foundation’s core priorities, if you’re able.
- Transparency: In the coming weeks, we’ll share a more detailed report of the current finances and the approved budget, including specific categories and the reasoning behind various decisions.
- Ongoing Communication: We’re committed to providing regular updates on our progress and welcome your feedback on how often you’d like to hear from us.
Through these difficult decisions, the GNOME Foundation is able to meet its reserves policy, ensuring sufficient funds for the coming year. Our budget for the new financial year is realistic and supports four full time staff, who are able to support key operations like finance, infrastructure and events. We are additionally contracting a number of other individuals on a short term or part time basis, to help with fund raising, websites and delivering on our project commitments.
We are going to be looking to the GNOME community to help with the areas that are most affected by our reduced staffing. If you would like to help GNOME with its events, marketing, or fundraising, we would love to hear from you. We would also welcome the community’s input on the best way to organize these activities, so please feel free to reach out to our Interim Executive Director, Richard Littauer (richard@gnome.org), or the Board if you have ideas.
Thank you all for your continued commitment to the GNOME community, and thanks to all of the existing donors, sponsors and advisory board members whose support year on year is essential to maintain the Foundation’s core operations.
The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors
This document was previously posted on the Discourse, and is mirrored here without changes (except adding Richard’s email, above). https://discourse.gnome.org/t/update-from-the-board-2024-10/24346