5 May 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”).

May 5, 2020

Participating:

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

Executive Director: Leah Silen

Not attending: N/A

Email/Github Voting: N/A

Discussion Items:

a. Logging into the meeting – Leah will post the zoom link in slack right before the meeting to help mitigate some of the login issues we’ve been having.

b. Sloan Grant Update

i.  We are applying to Sloan for just over 200K USD, with Andy and
    Lorena as the principal investigators.

ii. Funding from this grant would cover the first year of expenses
    for establishing an educational/event platform, including
    20-40% of 3 NF positions. It would not cover content
    development.

c. NF EU Update

i.  We are currently waiting for tax ruling and to register the
    bylaws.

ii. We can move forward with setting up bank accounts and
    establishing EU presence once these matters are settled.

d. JupyterCon update

i.  Legal grounds to recover expenses from covid-impacted events
    only cover expenses for events with greater than 1000 people.

ii. Our cancellation fee covers an event with 1000 participants, so
    we do not seem to be covered.

iii. Committee members in Berlin are working on this.

    1.  In practice an event with 1000 participants would have more
        people involved after accounting for organizers, staff,
        entertainment, etc. We may be able to clarify eligibility
        with local government in Berlin.

    2.  The likely outcome is that we split the losses with the
        venue.

    3.  For now we’ll ask for another two weeks to figure out how to
        handle this, while we try to negotiate a more mutually
        agreeable solution with the venue. (Original deadline to
        resolve was May 8, 2020.)

e. Grant Admin Fees/Indirect Cost Rates for Subcontracts/Subawards

i.  Need to establish a policy going forward that can both comply
    with grant stipulations and NF funding model.

ii. One option -- Could add a project management line for NF to
    grant budgets, to replace admin fee that would have been taken
    off a subaward (in the event that a funding agency does not
    allow for admin fees to be applied to subawards).

iii. Handling NumPy's CZI subawards 

    We are working on negotiating an outcome that works for CZI, 
    NumFOCUS, and NumPy (hopefully one that will also set a precedent
    consistent with new policies we need to establish).

f. New Project Applications

Board members can sign up to Champion and we will vote online and/or 
by the next meeting.