24 Mar 2020

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 24, 2020

Participating:

Board Members: James Powell, Sylvain Corlay, Lorena Barba, Katrina Riehl, Jane Herriman, Stéfan van der Walt

Executive Director: Leah Silen

Not attending: Andy Terrel

Email/Github Voting: N/A

Discussion Items:

a. COVID-19 Budget Scenarios Review

  i. Leah prepared two alternative versions of the 2020 budget that 
     account for varying levels of impact from covid-19 on our sources of 
     income and expenses. Even in the scenario where we are heavily 
     impacted by covid-19 and operate at a loss, we have sufficient 
     reserves in the bank to handle the expected losses.

 ii. We plan reach out to projects to reassure them and let them
     know their money is still there.

iii.  We’ll have a tweet going out soon to help make our donors aware
      of the ways in which our projects are supporting research and
      public health concerns related to covid-19. (See CHIME.)

b. Quarterly Strategic Planning Session: We want to present a unified front and ensure that NumFOCUS leadership is aligned. We’ve been reviewing metrics for decision making and other organizational values, vision, etc.

  i.  Leah will reword/rework some of the takeaways from the planning
      session

  ii. Staff retreat is next week. They will review the same goals and
      objectives for NumFOCUS.

c. We’re still on the hook for JupyterCon, but Leah has contacted the lawyer about this. We’ve paid about 93K USD and still owe ~150K USD. (The venue claims that they’re still able to “hold” events even though event organizers cannot.)