RFC5: Finances

[k8hertweck]

View RFC5 here

Q1: Do you have any questions about The Carpentries financial status?

[JasonJWilliamsNY]

The Carpentries is becoming a business, and it looks like a lot of folks and families are counting on it to work. I also know the thought of being an independent charity have been considered, so I leave it to your knowledge on what will work or is possible there. Does their need to be a development role (maybe too early for a person) who is really going to grow charitable donations and partnerships. I know we have community engagement/management? Does Carpentries see itself as working towards endowment and other financial arrangements that could secure it over the next 30 years (a full career for current staff)?

[ethanwhite]

Hey @JasonJWilliamsNY!

I also know the thought of being an independent charity have been considered, so I leave it to your knowledge on what will work or is possible there.

My general understanding here is that our budget isn't sufficiently large at this point to justify the overhead of being our own non-profit, so the general recommendation is the kind of fiscal sponsorship in place for both orgs now.

Does their need to be a development role (maybe too early for a person) who is really going to grow charitable donations and partnerships.

I believe this is a component of the new Director of Business Development role mention in the Staff RFC.

[JasonJWilliamsNY]

Thanks @ethanwhite for the update! - Also, yes, I guess the level of Development reasonable for now can fit under that Director.

[pitviper6]

The vast majority of organizational memberships are joint between SWC and DC, so institutional members are not likely to experience substantially different interactions with The Carpentries than with SWC and DC as they currently exist.

As other Lesson Sets (lesson organizations) are added, this may become far less true, perhaps?

[ErinBecker]

@pitviper6 - That's a good point. I can imagine it being quite common if Library Carpentry joins the umbrella organization that libraries who sign on as members may only want a membership with LC.

[tracykteal]

Memberships will be with the Carpentries organization, so all Lesson Sets will be a part of that. The reason is that our memberships involve instructor training as a key component and that will be something consistent across the Carpentry Lessons. It is now for Software and Data Carpentry because instructor training is about how to teach the Carpentries way, not on specific content. That joint instructor training has been very important for our instructors and member organizations. Memberships are about building local capacity to teach and a community of practice, so keeping all the Carpentries together in the Membership will be important.

[ErinBecker]

@tracykteal - I see. That's good to note that all memberships will be with the Carpentries as a whole.

[jduckles]

Many of our members are excited to see the variety of lesson types we're looking at developing across SWC/DC/LC. More workshop topics that are easy for staff to run translates into a win for most of our Member orgs. So I think overall one of the things to do at the umbrella level is to maintain a customer-focus and understand how our Lesson Organizations meet/don't meet their needs and adapt accordingly.

[npch]

I'd like to see a discussion about how "The Carpentries" will present their financial reporting moving forward. I think it's important to strike a balance between reporting in a way that makes it easy to see the financial position of the organisation as a whole versus showing how each component / lesson org is contributing.

I also think that as an open organisation, we should similarly be open and transparent about our finances, as much as possible.

[tracykteal]

Wholeheartedly agree about the transparency of finances. We just brought on a Business Administrator to help with that. As a fiscally sponsored project, we also need to work through our fiscal sponsor.