2016 X.Org Annual Report

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 29 March 2017 at 08:41 AM EDT. Add A Comment
X.ORG
The 2016 X.Org Treasurer's Annual Report was recently released concerning the state of the foundation and expenses incurred for the 2016 fiscal year.

The report has yet to appear on the X.Org Wiki but rather just a quick ODP presentation from last year concerning the foundation's activities. The big X.Org change of 2016 was their decision to merge with SPI (Software in the Public Interest, Inc) and to dissolve their 501(c)(3) organization.

Below is the report that was mailed out recent to X.Org Foundation members. Kudos to Bryce Harrington as treasurer for getting the report out, as in some past years they have not published any annual report and/or been very belated in doing so. As a reminder, the 2017 X.Org Elections are happening now.
2016

BEGINNING BALANCE (Jan 1, 2016): 38,448.79
X.org Bank of America Account 38,448.79
SPI Account 0.00

Income
Donations: 551.00
GSoC 2015 Stipends: 3,000.00
TOTAL INCOME: 3,551.00

Expenses
EVoC 2015 Sponsorship: -4,500.00
XDC Sponsorships: -2,959.44
NRAI (X.org Foundation): -518.82
BofA Fees: -79.00
SPI: -27.55
PayPal Fees: -2.12
Click&Pay Fees: -20.94
Chargeback: -56.00
TOTAL EXPENSES: -8,163.87

ENDING BALANCE (Dec 31, 2016): 33,835.92
X.org Bank of America Account 391.53
SPI Account 33,444.39



== Financial Management ==

This year marked a major transition for the X.org treasury. The X.org Foundation moved from being an independent organization to become a member project within the Software for the Public Interest (SPI).

Over the course of the year, we first established financial management within SPI, initiating our SPI-managed accounts with Click&Pledge and PayPal, then transitioned the bulk of X.org's cash assets from the organization's Bank of America account to SPI. We are in process of filing for dissolution of the X.org Foundation legal structure with the State of Delaware, and then will close out the Bank of America account and transfer the remainder of funds to SPI.

Along with this transition, we have also restructured our handling of X.org's financial data. The project's historical financial documentation has been organized into an encrypted repository shared and managed by X.org board members; this should help ensure X.org's 'institutional memory' is easily accessible to future board members. A Ledger CLI instance has been established in this repository for registering all monetary transactions.

With these steps taken, X.org's financial management should be much more streamlined and its legal costs significantly reduced. Having SPI to handle tax filing and cash accounts management removes a big time burden from X.org.


== Fundraising ==

Google's Summer of Code program remained the principle source of income for X.org this period, however the addition of SPI's PayPal and Click&Pledge donation services in the 2nd half of the year augmented X.org's income via numerous individual donations. These services now registered and in place to support future targeted X.org fundraising activities as needed. Member projects can link to the donation forms from their own website, and SPI also maintains a multi-project form to allow donors to distribute their donation across several projects.


== Funded Activities ==

The primariy expenditures for the project in 2016 were sponsorships relating to its 2015 Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC) and 2016 X Developers' Conference (XDC) programs. The EVoC sponsorship occurred in 2015 but due to complications related to international financial transfers, the payment was finalized only in 2016. For XDC, sponsorship was for travel expenses for three attendees to Helsinki.
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