Context

There's an annual budget that gets approved by the OSGeo Oceania Board of Directors, you can find it in the OSGeo Oceania Google Drive (OO Board > Governance > Finance > Budget ONGOING).

The line item for "Grants and Sponsorships" is AUD$5,000 - which means that the Grants Committee has AUD$5,000 to work with.

We've already spent or committed about AUD$8,000, which is over the previously approved allocation of funds. You can see the current expenditures in the Xero Management Report February 2024 (Let me know if you need help logging into Xero), on the "Profit and Loss" page you can see under "Operating Expenses" a line for "Microgrants" and another one for "Sponsorship (Expense)".

There are also funds that have been committed but not spent yet, such as retaining our QGIS sponsorship, funding GeoGeeks meetings, etc.

Problem

The total already spent is AUD$5,226. Including committed funds, it's closer to AUD$8,000.

Proposed Solution

I propose that the OSGeo Oceania Board allocate an additional AUD$5,000 for "Grants and Sponsorships" in the 2023/24 budget.

Result

Additional funding will cover committed grants and sponsorships and provide about AUD$2,000 additional uncommitted funding for any new grant applications or sponsorship opportunities.