From Fedora Project Wiki

This is a projected forecast for the general Fedora budget for the remainder of FY13.

General Information

Notes on Quarters and Fiscal Years

Fedora's fiscal year is split into four quarters, which run from:

  • March 1 - May 31 (Q1)
  • June 1 - August 31 (Q2)
  • September 1 - November 30 (Q3)
  • December 1 - February 28 (Q4)

The current fiscal year for Red Hat is FY13, and thus for ease of things we also refer to this as FY13 in Fedora. FY13 started in March 2012, and will end in February 2013.

PLEASE NOTE: Items are booked against a specific quarter when the actual expense report is filed inside of Red Hat, not when the actual spending took place. That means:

  • If Robyn pays for a sponsorship for an event that is taking place in Q3 during the course of Q2, it will get booked into the Q2 budget.
  • If you request a reimbursement for sometihng in Q2 and receive it in Q3, it will go against the Q3 budget.

Additionally: Things which occur within the last 2 weeks of a quarter will generally fall into the next quarter for accounting purposes.

"Buckets" of budget

PLEASE NOTE: We have governance in place for how "premier Fedora events" and "regional support" funds are spent in a community-collaborative way. The "discretionary funds" had in the past been allocated at the discretion of the Community Architecture team, who chose to make that line item of its larger budget transparent because most discretionary spending ends up being on Fedora. Because the new OSAS group will have significantly larger scope, the way the discretionary bucket is handled may change, but the items previously paid for within that budget will likely still be paid for out of a similarly named bucket, but may have more of a fixed amount that is strictly dedicated to Fedora.

Historically, Fedora budget has been divided up into three "buckets":

Premier Fedora Events

Premier Fedora Events are events that are all about Fedora. FUDCons and FADs are the events that make up this portion of the budget.

Regional Support

Regional support has traditionally referred to the money that was managed by FAmSCo and Regional Ambassadors to provide support for events, travel, media, swag, hardware for event boxes, etc.

Discretionary Budget

The "discretionary funds" part of the Fedora Budget has traditionally been used for the following purposes:

  • Payment of yearly LWN subscription for use by Fedora Community members
  • AWS (Amazon Web Services) bills
  • Other items (travel, etc.) at the discretion of Community Architecture (and now, possibly OSAS and/or FPL)

Budget in FY12

In FY12, the following amounts were allocated to the aforementioned buckets:

  • Premier Fedora Events: $90,000
  • Regional Support: $80,000
  • Discretionary Funds: $15,000

The final numbers posted for FY12 are can be seen here, but in summary:

Item Budget Spend
Premier Fedora Events $90,000 $49,362
Regional support $80,000 $76,385
Discretionary funds $15,000 $12,716
= =
Total $185,000 $138,463

Unfortunately, there is no transparency AT THIS TIME as to how / where money was spent after late July, 2011. In other words: We know that funds were allocated to these buckets after these points, but the detail of amounts by event, etc. are not provided or available at this time.

Budget in FY13

Currently, for FY13, I am looking at solidifying a budget of somewhere between $145,000 - $165,000. This amount is inclusive of the $34k already spent, so the below numbers are basically working to create a budget for Q2-Q4 of $111k - $131k.

Why is it less than the budget for FY12? Unfortunately, the use-it-or-lose-it rules applies in this budget much as it does anywhere else. I realize that the lack of spending was due to lack of information on availability.

Why no total budget # provided to just work within? A few reasons:

  • A total amount of EVERYTHING spent on Fedora was provided for Q1 ($34k), and was not divided up between Regional, Premier Events, and Discretionary spending.
  • The budget set by CommArch for the FY13 year was less than the previous year, and thus the budget transferred over was less, and may not be enough to cover needs.
  • THE GOAL OF THIS WIKI PAGE is to ensure that Fedora's needs are enumerated well. What I've estimated goes beyond $145k for the year, which is the low-end, original target, but there is some wiggle room / room to make requests. We also need to work to try and stick reasonably close to the amount we finally do set for each quarter, hence the division into quarters of the year below.
  • Once we have a reasonable idea of what needs to go where - it will be easier to set some divisions of at least Regional vs. Premier Events budget. Regional fluctuates - I know that we spent quite a bit in Q1 on case badges, etc. - but again, without knowing where the money was spent, it's hard to judge how much of a total for the year actually got spent in Q1 on Regional vs. Premier Events.

How you can help

What's Missing? Is there anything missing from the list below? Specifically:

  • Other regional events
  • An approximate $ for release parties for F18
  • Items not yet reimbursed
  • Shipping costs in regions other than NA (would be nice to have a quarterly estimate)
  • FADs for future quarters that were previously approved by Commarch

Budget for FY13 for Q1 (Mar. 1 - May 31, 2012)

The official wrapup of finances as they were transferred from Community Architecture to OSAS ended at the end of Q1. The report out from CommArch stated that Fedora had utilized ~$34k ($33,984) through Q1.

The only unknown at this point is whether or not the Community Credit Cards that ended in May or June were booked into Q1 or not. Finance is currently investigating whether or not these were built into the final Q1 number or not.

Purchase orders for the F17 media, because they were booked against the Community Architecture cost center during the course of Q1, are (according to Robyn's information) included in this Q1 total figure, regardless or whether or not that PO has been fully paid out at this point.

Unfortunately, as with the latter half of FY12, there is no detail available at this time regarding what this money was spent on. I do know that it includes spending from regional support, premier fedora events, and discretionary spending buckets.

Budget Projections for Remainder of FY13

FY13 Q2 -- Jun. 1 - Aug. 31, 2012

This section is currently IN PROCESS - as in, we are literally in Q2 currently.

Regional Budget Estimate, Q2: $12,000 Premier Event Budget Estimate, Q2: $18,200

Regional Spending:

Premier Fedora Events:

Discretionary Spending:

  • Amazon Web Services: $150 (estimate)
  • Reimbursement to nmccallum for fosdem 2011 (yes, 2011): $1000 (pending)

FY13 Q3 -- Sept. 1 - Nov. 30, 2012

Note: Q3 is currently ALL ESTIMATES. Please comment as needed.

Regional Spending Estimate, Q3: $14,200 Premier Events Spending Estimate, Q3: $29,000

Regional Spending:

  • F18 Media ($ based on what I could see for F17 and estimated guesses)
    • North America: $6000
    • EMEA: $2300
    • LATAM: $4000
    • APAC: $2300
  • Shipping, North America: $400 (UPS)
  • Ohio Linux Fest: $2000
  • Maker Faire: $1500
  • LinuxCon North America: $2000

Premier Fedora Events:

  • FUDCon Venezuela: $5000 (estimate; expected to be mostly hotel/food/shirts/etc. paid after Aug. 15)
  • FUDCon Paris: $15000 (estimate; remainder of airfare/travel, hotel, food, shirts, etc. paid after Aug. 15)
  • Anticipated FADs:
    • FADNA (North Am. Ambassadors' FAD): $3000
    • Cloud SIG FAD: $3000
    • Fedora Infra FAD: $3000

Discretionary Spending:

  • LWN Yearly Subscription: $2000
  • Amazon Web Services: $150

FY13 Q4 -- Dec. 1, 2012 - Feb. 28, 2013

Note: Q4 is currently ALL ESTIMATES. Please comment as needed.

Regional Spending Estimate, Q4: $8,700 Premier Fedora Events Spending Estimate, Q4: $8,700

Regional Spending:

  • Brno Dev Conf: $1000
  • FOSDEM: $3,500
  • Linux.conf.au: $1,600
  • SCALE (SoCal Linux Expo): $2,000
  • NA Shipping: $600

Premier Fedora Events:

  • FUDCon Lawrence: $20,000 (assuming all airfare/etc. is booked AFTER Dec. 1)
  • FAD Rheinfelden: $2,000 (do we need to split this out for travel booked before dec. 1)?

Discretionary Spending:

  • Amazon Web Services: $150

Moving Forward

The OSAS team intends to provide updates to the budget/accounting page at least once a month. It may take a few weeks to get this straightened out the first time, and there may be mistakes, but the goal is to improve and make it easy for everyone.

Ruth Suehle will be working from her position in the OSAS team to assist with Fedora's budgeting & payment processes.

Things that would be additionally useful going forward (please note, this section is solely Robyn's opinions, and I am full of them as the person that ultimately needs to ensure that the flow of information between OSAS and Fedora is going well):

  • Thinking more clearly each year about likely events, projections, new needs, etc. Because the fiscal year starts in March, planning for the upcoming fiscal year begins typically in December/January.
  • Consider having a single trac/wiki/mailing list for payments/reimbursements so things don't fall through the crack, even if it's a "this got spent" mailing list just to confirm final totals.


To Do's on the wiki

  • Create OSAS Page
  • Append CommArch page to add historical info
  • Move FY12 #'s into old page and make FY13 the "current year" for reporting for Q2 onwards
  • Update "how to organize a fad" page to point to not-commarch for determining budget