12 November 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”).

November 12, 2025

**Attending: **Julie Hollek, Rosie Pongracz, Andy Terrel, Mridul Seth

**Executive Director: **Rachel Kerestes

**Not attending: ** Sanket Verma

Information:

• Budget
  • will discuss proposed budget on Nov 19
  • Finance committee to meet Nov 24
  • Budget to TSC Nov 24
  • Board vote Dec 3
• Topics for a future meeting:
  • Fundraising
  • Meeting minutes
    • Philosophy & Legal requirements
    • What was discussed, decision points reached, resolutions voted on

Discussion Items:

• Updates
  • Volunteer Policy to be distributed
    • More complicated to distribute bc we don’t have a good centralized list of all the folks who sit on committees
    • Met last week to define who needs to sign
    • Team is pulling those lists
    • Do a blog post, add a page to the website
    • Go out by email on the 20th, blog post 21
    • Anyone who is rolling out of a position by EOY doesn’t have to sign
    • Signing deadline Dec 31
• Elections
  • They’re open! Don’t forget to vote
  • Blog post on the process that Jim has drafted to be shared this week
  • Close on Nov 24, but might need to extend based on number of folks who voted
  • Feedback -> lots of folks were submitted/submitted and folks don’t know why they didn’t make the cut
• Finance Transition Plan
  • Mir’s last day is Friday
    • Transitioned work over
    • Making sure accounts and logins are being shared this week
  • Flash audit - with Rachel, Chervonne, Savannah
    • Policy, procedures
    • Do everything in triplicate, manual entry, not really using QuickBooks
  • Actions
    • Prioritized / deadlines / assigned process changes/updates
      • Budget process - Rachel
      • Monthly closes near EOM instead of a month later. October close should have been done by say Nov 5
      • Produce monthly financial reports
      • Budget vs Actuals report - minimum quarterly
      • Monthly financial statements to projects
      • P&L for events
    • Looking at systems we’re using
      • Quickbooks
        • A lot of platforms we use for 1 off tasks
        • Want to find more integrations with QB
      • We probably won’t use Maslow
        • It’s a banking platform, not accounting
        • Won’t provide financial reports to projects
        • Needs to happen 2 years before
    • What’s the answer on moving from Open Collective?
      • Where are we going? Why?
    • Redoing chart of accounts
    • Forecasts
      • Future project -> provide financial forecasts for projects
      • A bunch of projects with zero or negative balances
      • Before a project goes into debt process
        • Is the project going to continue?
        • What is your fundraising plan?
  • Finance team morale is better
• Website Project (started in 2024?)
  • Needs to be shut down bc it’s unclear that the firm we hired was right
  • Close it out and then transfer whatever work has happened
  • Likely ends up being a 2027 budget item