******************************************* Community Oriented Budgeting Recommendation ******************************************* The TAC recommends the Board adopt the following Community Oriented Budgeting process. Goals ----- Currently LFN contains a number of large projects with a need to conduct outreach, hold developer and marketing events and other community activities addressed by this discretionary budget. Handling of Tungsten Fabric (TF) -------------------------------- Tungsten Fabric having being admitted to LFN is also in need of these funds to reach its goals of diversifying the community and reaching additional pools of developers as well as addressing the needs of its current development community. It will take a substantial time for TF to move through the necessary reviews to become a TAC project and it may fail in its diversity and outreach goals without funds. We propose that for the budget needs we consider the pool to be TAC projects plus TF, with the budget process below also applying to TF. Normal Budget Process --------------------- 1. **Budget:** The Board budgets an amount for the year equal to some factor greater than one times the amount allocated by LFN to General and Administrative (G&A) funds, to be divided equally among the TSCs of the TAC projects for them to spend at their discretion in support of: a. Community events - Community events colocated at existing conferences as meets the communities needs as determined by each projects TSC. b. Marketing in support of those colocated events, including booth collateral (booth at broader event at which community event is collocated, signs, swag, handouts, food, video, support staff and their travel, food, event promotion, etc). c. Other community needs as they arise. d. This does not include common costs like infrastructure, salaries of staff, interns, etc which should continue to be handled centrally by the Board. e. This does not include large standalone conferences/summits. 2. **Notify:** Expenditures by the TSCs of the TAC project must be presented to the TAC as a notification prior to being made. a. The TSC notification of the TAC is intended to discover possible synergies with other projects, in the hope that projects may find opportunities to increase value or reduce costs by collaborating on expenditures. b. Only the Projects can adequately assess whether there is a synergy. The TAC presentation is a notification process, not an approval process. c. The decision to collaborate or not belongs to the individual TSCs of the TAC projects choosing to collaborate to insure true benefit to all communities involved in the collaboration. 3. **Expend:** A project's TSC may proceed with the planned expenditure two weeks after TAC notification of the expenditure. A project's TSC may, at its discretion, delay the expenditure to work jointly with another community or to allow additional conversation. 4. **Report:** The TSCs of the TAC projects report to the Board quarterly their expenditures for the past quarter, why they were made, and what benefits were realized. The Normal Budget Process in this proposal was informed by the `response of the Board`_ to the TAC's previous recommendation on community representation that it would consider budgeting fund to the individual project TSCs to be spent at their discretion. .. _response of the Board: https://lists.lfnetworking.org/g/TAC/message/239 Exceptional Budget Process -------------------------- In the event that one or more TSCs, individually or jointly, identify a budget item need that cannot be adequately addressed by the discretionary funds delegated to the TSCs of the TAC Projects, that need should be addressed by this Exceptional Budget Process. 1. One or more of the TSCs of TAC Projects must prepare a Budget Request to the Board. 2. Budget Requests must be presented to the TAC as a notification prior to forwarding to the Finance Committee of the Board. The TSC presentation of a Budget Request to the TAC is intended to discover possible synergies with other projects, in the hope of inspiring a joint Budget Request. 3. Only the Projects can adequately assess whether there is a synergy. The TAC presentation is a discovery process, not an approval process. 4. Once a Budget Request has been presented to the TAC, it may be forwarded to the Finance Committee for consideration. We recommend a form with the following items for Exceptional Budget Proposals: 1. Title 2. Description 3. Sponsoring community or communities 4. Requested budget amount (please include details on how arrived at budget amount) 5. Is this a one time or ongoing expense? If ongoing, please include details on cost and timeframe. 6. Timeframe when the resource is needed (including start/end dates if applicable) 7. Benefits to communities 8. Impact of budget request being denied 9. Date TAC was notified of Budget Request (links to email threads, code reviews of proposal, or meeting minutes) The Exceptional Budget Process in this proposal is predicated on the assumption that the A&P Committee is the appropriate point to address these requests, and that they will carry out whatever internal process the Board deems reasonable in response. Other Non-TAC Projects -------------------------------- Non-TAC Projects should have access to the Exceptional Budget Process. The Board should consider allocating a small separate budget pool for direct funding of Non-TAC projects, based on their size and bugdet needs. Future Updates to the Budget Recommendations -------------------------------------------- This document should be revised upon admission of new Non-TAC projects beyond existing set as well as promotion of new projects to the TAC status as part of the LF-N admissions review and TAC admissions review process to accomodate the evolving needs of the projects.