On 14/08/17 11:25, Jonas Oberg wrote:
Hi Daniel,
I feel there is a bit of a gap between these two pages and it does not reveal how fellowship contributions relate to other revenue.
That's surprising to me, because if you click down to 2016 as an example, you will find the answer to your first question:
- what is the total sum from the fellowship program and what is it as a
percentage of total revenue?
https://fsfe.org/about/funds/2016.en.html gives fellowship contributions of 187,247.70 EUR compared to a total income of 649,194.75, so the percentage of total income is ca 29%.
Clicking the year wasn't obvious, it only underlines the "2016" link when the mouse moves over it. While looking at a laptop screen it is particularly easy not to notice the year is clickable.
- how many fellows contribute to the program?
That information is typically not published, but it's available to our core team internally, and you should have that information in the weekly reports you receive.
Is there a strong reason not to publish that?
- what is the total percentage of funds from the top 5 corporate donors?
- list the top 20 donors by percentage, without their names perhaps
We list information about our donors according to the German Transparency International's initiative "Transparent Civil Society". You can find more information here:
https://fsfe.org/about/transparency-commitment.en.html
This also means we list publicly those who contribute more than 10% of our annual budget. If you propose we go further in our transparency than this, I believe you should make a proposal for this to the members.
As fellowship representative, I'm keen to see how the top donors relate to the fellowship contributions: which group is donating more, or is it equal for example?
- are there any revenue sources other than direct donations to FSFE, for
example, revenue from the summit and legal network/workshop? Have these already been included in the public revenue figures? Are the total receipts or only the profit from such events counted as part of the revenue total?
As mentioned, on the detailed page for each fiscal year, you can find a breakdown of the income in more details including our income from merchandise and paid services. The latter is typically income rendered from speaker's fees and similar.
Could you provide a better breakdown of "Paid services"?
People then donate to the FSFE for a variety of reasons: some do it because they appreciate our internship program, others because they would like to support our legal work. I'm not aware of any donation which is earmarked for a specific purpose, and so regardless of *why* people donate, we list it as a donation.
Then, separately, we of course also list our expenses for our areas of work, including our legal work which then includes management of the legal network and our annual Legal & Licensing Workshop.
I agree that there are many different reasons for donations and it is not always possible to work out what they are.
However, if somebody makes a payment that is directly connected with participation in the summit, the legal network or the Legal & Licensing Workshop, is that money counted as part of the regular donations too? Or does it go under paid services? Or are any of those things accounted for through a different legal structure or set of accounts?
Regards,
Daniel