14 Mar 2018
Minutes of a Regular Meeting of the Board of Directors of NumFOCUS. All votes are reported in the form “(Y/N/A)” (in favor-Y‚ opposed-N‚ abstentions-A; e.g. “4-1-2” means “4 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstentions”).
Participating: Leah Silen, Andy Terrel, Didrik Pinte, Ralf Gommers, Lorena Barba
Not Attending: Jennifer Klay,
Approval of Minutes from last three meetings:
Minutes from:
- January 31, 2018
- February 14, 2018
- February 28, 2018
All approved (4/0/0)
Items Voted on by Email: -
Treasurer’s Report: -
Executive Director’s Report:
Financial update:
- We need a better system for expense claims and communicating with projects about the status of those.
- Karthik Ram has offered to implement the rOpenSci system for NumFOCUS.
- Should work for Lynn and Leah as well as for our projects.
Discussion Items
1. HR Update
- Severance Agreement is under discussion with Christie Koehler. Advice from the board: let the communication with Christie be handled by our lawyer.
- Sustainability report will not be delivered anymore, there was very little usable material that Christie had. Andy and Leah looking into what can still be done.
2. Sustainability Grant
Recap of Andy and Leah’s conversation with Josh Greenberg (Sloan Foundation) given. Josh comfortable with personnel changes, however he does need a clear plan for the coming year and be able to show at the end concrete results have been achieved.
Realignment of grant’s goals, calendar and budget in progress. Rough current idea for how to spend the budget is (a) funding for some time to resolve key internal administrative bottlenecks, and (b) fund key people in the community to work on the “basic draft” below and push it forward.
Basic draft of the “NumFOCUS 2018 Evolution Plan - Path to Sustainability, Q1 2018” was discussed. One key message: “there’s not enough trust”. The board needs to work on this: need a strategy to grow/mature NumFOCUS in parallel with the evolution of the “funding quilt”.
3. NumFOCUS Europe
- Trademark license: process ongoing with legal expert on exactly how to approve this trademark licensing.
- Process for organizations to split if the relationship isn’t
serving each party well
- Perhaps a renewable short limited term (1-2 year terms?).
- Probably need to have a joint board meeting to discuss