Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for Gentoo Council nominees: Gentoo Foundation - Treasurer Response!

["Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@gentoo.org>]

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On Mon, Jul 01, 2019 at 09:34:06PM +0200, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > > Yes, I understand that.  However, I still believe that a contract
> > > initiated between CPA and a single small-ish entity such a Gentoo
> > > involves more costs than fees taken by umbrella dedicated to multiple
> > > entities.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.
> > 
> > Nobody knows yet. Different umbrellas work differently.

The CPA we have engaged so far, Corporate Capital, has a standard
preparation fee of USD1500 per fiscal year. We do have some estimates of
Umbrella fees, plus the Financial Statements I prepared...

> 
> Sigh. I agree with the second statement. The first one, well...
> 
> Here's the example of SPI (disclaimer, we do not know if they would take us):
> * no direct costs associated
> * 5% deduction from donations for SPI's overhead
> 
> Big Hint, it helps to first research something and then talk / discuss. That's 
> however, rather rare on this list.

The Trustees HAVE previously done _some_ of this legwork on the major
umbrellas, I don't have a link to hand, but I do remember details,
because it was in scope of my work as Treasurer; and we can combine
these with the financial statements to compare against the CPA quotes to
date. Further would should take the longer list of Umbrellas and
comprehensively document their costs.

As further concrete example:
https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/
>> How much does it cost us financially to join Conservancy?
>> New Conservancy members are required to pay 10% of their revenue

The umbrella fees I've seen range:
- smallest: 5% of net revenue (income less expenses)
- largest: 20% of gross income

The exact definition of which expenses might be included/excluded by a
given umbrella might also vary, I didn't find a clear public
documentation on it.

Basing that on the FY2018 fiscal, with the additional caveat that I
don't have any value assigned to in-kind server/hosting services
received by Infra; That would increase gross & net values.

Gross Income: USD 28,600.15
Gross Expenses: USD 9,292.95 
- Depreciation: USD 3,659.64 (it devalued assets but wasn't something we actually spent)
- "Real" Expense: USD 5,633.31
= Net revenue: USD 22,966.84

5% of net: USD 1,148.34
20% of gross: USD 5,720.03

At an outward glance, this does imply that some umbrellas would be
cheaper than a CPA, while others would be more expensive; but the
equation is more complicated, because we need to be careful about the
accounting of services that the umbrella would provide.

The equation therefore should be more of:
Cost(Umbrella) vs [Umbrella baseline without umbrella-provided expenses]

Regardless of the scale of the numbers, the change would REDUCE the
expenses, and increase the net revenue number (and thus also the
Umbrella's actual fee).

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Treasurer
E-Mail   : robbat2@gentoo.org
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