07 March 2019

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”).

March 7, 2019

Participating:

Board members: Lorena Barba, James Powell, Katrina Riehl, Andy Terrel, Jane Herriman, Stéfan van der Walt

ED: Leah Silen

Board Members Not Attending: Sylvain Corlay

Approval of Minutes from last meeting: Approved 5-0-0

Resolutions Voted on by Email or Github: NA

Executive Director’s Report:

NumFOCUS’s attorney has finished reviewing bylaws for NumFOCUS EU. James and Sylvain will discuss some requested revisions before the board can vote on the bylaws.

NumFOCUS has two new employees: Walker Chabbott, our Event and Digital Marketing Coordinator, and Lisa Martin, our new Financial Administrator.

Bloomberg has renewed their corporate sponsorship. NumFOCUS is considering managing Jupyter workshop logistics.

The 2018 annual report is in preparation.

Discussion Items:

a. Tabled from Last 2 Meetings

i.  SciPy’s Application for Fiscal Sponsorship

    We discussed and then approved SciPy as a 
    fiscally sponsored program by a vote of 6-0-0.

ii.  Strategic Direction - vision, mission, values:

    The board first discussed a few options for 
    wording that we think best relays the NumFOCUS 
    vision and then voted on and approved the 
    preferred wording.

iii.  Corporate Sponsorship Updates:

     The question of how to manage admin fees on 
     corporate sponsorships will be brought to the 
     Advisory Council and otherwise tabled for now.

b. Affiliated Project requests

i.  pvlib - Champion: Stéfan

    This looks like a good fit for NumFOCUS so far. 
    Stéfan will review put together an issue on 
    GitHub so the board can vote.

ii.  DONUT - Champion: Jane

    After discussion by the board, we have decided 
    we cannot accept DONUT as an affiliated project 
    because it is not well aligned with the NF mission.

iii.  CVPM - Champion: Stéfan

     We received a new application from CVPM and
     Stéfan will also champion this.

c. Sponsored Projects Survey Results

Results reflect issues with our financial services 
(especially reimbursements), which should hopefully 
be resolved by Rocket and the addition of Lisa to 
our staff.

Additional steps to be taken to improve our 
financial services include: (1) track when each 
reimbursement comes in and is paid, so that we have 
data on mean times to reimbursement and can report 
that data, (2) have the board or a member of the 
board review this data (initially perhaps every 
month, and perhaps quarterly thereafter), and (3) 
provide an additional point of contact for people 
with issues, such as the NumFOCUS Treasurer.

d. John Hunter Fellowship

We decided to form a subcommittee to decide on the 
structure of the fellowship. NF will reach out to 
the matplotlib project to see if they have 
recommendations for who might sit on the committee.

e. Advisory Council Meeting

We have an upcoming Advisory Council Meeting on 
March 11, 11am CT.

Resolutions:

a. SciPy: Approved as fiscally sponsored project, 6-0-0

b. Approval of NumFOCUS Mission and Vision, 6-0-0

c. DONUT: Rejected 1-5-0