11 June 2025
Minutes of a Regular 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”).
June 11, 2025
**Attending: **Julie Hollek, Sanket Verma, Rosie Pongracz, Mridul Seth
**Executive Director: **Jim Weiss
**Not attending: **Andy Terrel
Discussion Items:
- Meeting minutes
- Follow ups
- Z suggests that we should have a communications function, not necessarily with a committee. It is actually marketing (for externals) but some groups in this community may have an adverse reaction to that moniker. This is a critical and often misunderstood and necessary part of a business structure. This is key to getting fundraising and awareness back on track.
- This would include communications to:
- external stakeholders such as potential and current funders and donors; familiar and not familiar, (aka marketing)
- internal stakeholders like projects and staff
- Z realizes it has been a long standing challenge to get this done at the level we need. Rosie agreed and has been offering to help at a higher level, perhaps more concerted effort with the new ED.
- Z would like to advise and help given his experience with organizational structures.
- Technical Steering Committee
- Whether TSC even needs a charter? Are we required to have a charter bylaws? (The concern is that TSC doesn’t want to spend time on something which will be just another document)
- Recently scheduled monthly meetings. 2 of them for all timezones
- We don’t have a charter. Do we even need a charter? They don’t want to spend time.
- We’re trying to define what the TSC is enduringly. Having something that codifies this.
- A committee should require a charter (see Article 5 Section 3 Committees section of Bylaws)
- Arliss is available to help create a charter
- TSC would very much like to know the current status of the new website development and would like to get involved in the review process
- We’re working on the copy. There are technical things that are on the website that we communicate. TSC would be helpful to review/give feedback
- Nicole is project managing the content update
- Developer isn’t working on the content piece of it.
- Supposed to be on github, but likely not there yet.
- There is supposed to be an interface that works with github and staff can make updates easily.
- Content is probably in google docs.
- What is the stack?
- New projects - 3 applications
- This was news to TSC. Just heard it recently
- In previous conversation, when we accepted 2/rejected 1, TSC was not sure about deadline
- Application dates are on the website. https://numfocus.org/projects-overview
- Sanket to sync with Arliss
- Meeting logistics
- June 18
- Mir present introduction overview required reports to board using May as Mir is closing the books this week.
- June 25
- Need to cancel for ED hiring loop
- July 2 - do we want to meet or will people be out of town / on PTO
- July 9 - cancel because we are all at SciPy
- Budget review calendar
- July 16
- Q2/midyear report released to Board
- Mir to share proposed changes to budget- give whole board a heads up
- 2 week comment period on budget report. Committee will incorporate them on the long meeting
- July 29
- this is the long meeting. This will be converted to a finance committee working meeting to address board comments and any thing else needed
- Attendees: Jim, Mir, Mridul, Rosie
- July 30 present to board during normal meeting time
- July 16
- June 18
Action Items:
- Add board to NF Google Worksuite -> made a ticket
- find out more about github sponsors winding down their program
- connect with Z on communications committee
- Follow up with TSC to see how they deal with website content