26 February 2025

Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Admin 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”).

February 26, 2025

**Attending: **Sanket Verma, Julie Hollek, Rosie Pongracz, Andy Terrel

**Executive Director: **Leah Silen

**Not attending: ** Mridul Seth, Logan Kilpatrick

**Information: **

• Hiring Committee Update [Julie Hollek]
  • Final selection of Search Firm to happen this week
  • Blog Post about the search process to be published Weds
    • CTA asking folks “what question do you want to ask an ED candidate?”
  • Will start working on another post about the search firm selection and asking for candidates
• DISC Committee Update [Andy Terrel]
  • Working on March Unconference
• Infrastructure Committee Update [Andy Terrel]
  • Renegotiating OVH Contract. Binder moving off our infra, pandas needing servers for documentations
  • Two requests for AWS accounts, working with teams to help.

Discussion Items:

• crabfit for standing meeting
• Approve 2025 Budget
  • TCS update - Juan and Jacob had concerns. Budget approved from TCS. Wanted to convey - approving budget with hesitation wrt income goals. Fundraising goal is too optimistic for this year especially in the current economic situation in the US.
  • Meetup
    • JW is working to remove inactive chapters so cost will go down
    • Alternates considered
      • Lu.Ma - not that much cheaper
      • Github page
    • Some groups are asking folks to pay to cover the cost of meetup
    • Meetup features
      • Who attends? Who registers?
      • NF users it
        • Who is active?
      • Not sure if organizers are using it
    • Meet Up Chapters are worried about discoverability
    • *Put $22K for meet up or something like it. *
  • Small Development Grants
    • Could be cut in half (Alt Budget)
  • Need clearer plans for the income streams
    • Proposals for grants per quarter
    • Total grant application amount for 2025: ~1M Q1-2, 2025 goal is 450k
  • Staff is working on grants
    • Jon and MK in particular communicating to projects about what grants are available
      • Offering grant support
  • Quarterly report
    • Grants we’ve applied for, grants “in session”
    • People don’t think numfocus first when they think about getting grants for research
    • They can get a grant through us. We have successful grants and are managing this.