simon,

The downsides of being frugal.

The Foundation spends, even with a slightly more ambitious budget this year than previously, less than %1 of what WMF/Wikipedia does, but is struggling to make ends meet.

There is no threat a la the infamous Wikipedia ads that the project will shut down, but without the funds activities will have to be cut back significantly.

If you consider OSM valuable consider https://supporting.openstreetmap.org/

derickr,
@derickr@phpc.social avatar

@simon I'd be helpful if there was a drive or a goal to strive for each year.

simon,

@derickr well that depends on the budget naturally. Essentially donations need to be total budget - membership fees - any surplus from conferences.

This year that is £500'000 and a bit. See https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board/Minutes/2023-02/Budget

derickr,
@derickr@phpc.social avatar

@simon Sure, but put that up and front. The current membership recurrent payment is only through PayPal which isn't appropriate.

derickr,
@derickr@phpc.social avatar

@simon my membership lapsed because I can't be arsed to do the complications around paying OSMF

grischard,

@derickr @simon in the UK you can use a bank transfer. If the forms annoy you(fair), you can st transfer and we'll still use the cash to pay for bandwidth. https://supporting.openstreetmap.org/alternative-payment-options/

derickr,
@derickr@phpc.social avatar

@grischard @simon That's what I did, I had set up a direct debit, but I got my money returned a few times. So I gave up on that too.

grischard,

@derickr @simon probably when we changed banks from Barclays? (They didn't like that we had no directors in the UK)

I'll message you on irc in a minute.

simon,

@derickr you need to discuss that with @grischard ... but I suspect the gist is that the OSMF is happy to have at least one payment processor at all.

grischard,

@simon @derickr indeed. We've tried a few, from Mollie which had the rudest customer service and almost stole our money, to Wise who blew a fuse when we had non-paying members in countries not under sanctions but they considered dodgy. Huge drain of volunteer time, hugely thankful to current banks and providers.

derickr,
@derickr@phpc.social avatar

@grischard @simon Wouldn't Stripe subscriptions work for most countries though? Works a treat for my use case.

grischard,

@derickr @simon we tried Stripe for a few days just now. For some reason donations fell, both in numbers and amounts. Visible dip in the graphs. No idea why!

derickr,
@derickr@phpc.social avatar

@grischard @simon As an additional option?

grischard,

@derickr @simon nah just one option. The page and form are overly complicated anyway, and people have no idea whether they want Stripe or Mollie

Natureshadow,

@simon AFAIR Microsoft and Meta and some more have recently founded Overture, which relies heavily on OSM.

Don't tell me that wasn't accompanied by a few millions donated to OSM 🤑?

simon,

@Natureshadow the point of the Overture Map Foundation (OMF) run by the Linux Foundation is not to support OSM, quite the opposite. Down to the point of using an easy to confuse abbreviation.

grischard,

@Natureshadow @simon while some of Overture's members generously support us, Overture itself doesn't, in funds or time.

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