TDF Board Onboarding How-To
version 20250709-01
Introduction
When a new board of directors takes office, there is quite some learning curve and onboarding required. Over the years, I have developed an onboarding how-to, which we’ll share here. While it might not be an exact blueprint for all other organizations, it hopefully can serve as some inspiration.
This document is a summarized version of the original document, as that contains some explicit questions and requests for data to the incoming board and some back and forth interactions (“what’s your mail address?” - “thanks, you have been added now, you should see the following”) which are mostly relevant for those actually elected to the board. Some URLs and adddresses that are available only for the board have been redacted.
The actual mails are split to one per topic, and are always with a fix prefix, so they can be identified in the inbox.
Welcome the incoming board members and ask for data
E-mail address
First, we welcome the incoming board members and congratulate them to their election.
The first thing we need is an e-mail address to use for the board role. We offer a YourName at documentfoundation.org address, which comes with a full IMAP mailbox and a SMTP server directly hosted at TDF, as well as a Roundcube webmail system.
If someone does not want to have a documentfoundation.org address, they can also name an alternate e-mail address to be used. However, we actually strongly discourage that for privacy reasons, with the exception of libreoffice.org addresses. In any case, we cannot use corporate e-mail addresses, as that would create legal challenges.
Personal data
For registering the next board with the Berlin supervisory authorities, we need their personal residence address. It will be filed internally and not be made public.
Transparency register
We also need everyone’s date of birth and their nationality for filing in the so called transparency register. The board is ultimately responsible to keep the filings accurate and timely. Failing to do so may result in a fine.
Mobile number
Although not mandatory, we encourage everyone to share their mobile and/or landline number with everyone in the new board, so everyone can be reached directly. It will not be made public.
First meetings
Each incoming board member is invited to the next meetings.
Board meetings in Jitsi
The next regular board meeting usually takes place within the next two to four weeks. We use Jitsi. The first part of the meeting is public, the second part is private. Incoming board members are invited to both parts. The agenda will be shared in advance. During the meeting, the minutes will be taken in Nextcloud. Incoming board members will be granted access to the minutes and the documents for the meeting in advance.
Advisory board meeting
Each quarter, the board has one meeting with the advisory board. We use Jitsi. At the next meeting we usually introduce the incoming board of directors. We will send the slides in time before the call. Incoming board members are invited to add a slide about themselves as member of the next board.
FOSDEM in-person meeting
TDF will attend FOSDEM in Brussels with a booth, which takes place shortly before a new board regularly takes office. Usually the two days after FOSDEM, Monday and Tuesday, there will be in-person meetings all day. Usually we have not only a board meeting, but also a meeting with the membership committee and the team. Traditionally, the incoming board is invited to join all the meetings, but for those who cannot make it, we will also make remote participation via video conference possible.
We will reserve some rooms in the hotel also for new board members. TDF will also cover the cost for a regular trip to and from Brussels as per our travel policy.
Electing chair and deputy chair
One of the new board’s first decisions when they are in office is to elect two formal roles: the chairperson and the deputy chairperson. There are no concrete rules in the statutes on how to make that decision. It’s at the new board’s discretion, but both must be full board members and can’t be deputies.
Chair and deputy chair have several special roles and duties:
-
Legal representation of TDF, especially when entering longer contracts or dealing with banks, needs a signature from chair or deputy, together with another board member. This means that chair and deputy should be willing to sign, if needed on paper, and sometimes also snailmail things around.
-
In order to reach a quorum for in-person or remote board meetings, either the chair or deputy chair should ideally be present during the meeting. However, a representation is possible.
-
The invitation to all meetings as well to one annual formal meeting, have to be sent by either the chair or deputy chair as per our statutes.
-
In case of a voting tie, the vote of the chair or deputy chair counts twice.
One thing to keep in mind: If someone is excluded from a vote, e.g. because the vote concerns awarding a contract to them or their company, this person cannot be represented. If both chair and deputy are affected at the same time, there is no quorum to take a decision.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
To give the incoming board access to several of the internal tools we use, they need an account in our single sign-on (SSO) system. Someone likely already has an account if they use services like Nextcloud, Redmine or the wiki. The very same account will be used for access to board-internal documents. Every SSO account can have multiple e-mail addresses associated, and we will add everyone’s new documentfoundation.org address to it as soon as it’s setup. Details on how the account creation works are written down at Single sign-on (SSO) - The Document Foundation Wiki
Soon thereafter, incoming board members now have access to all board-internal content via their single sign-on (SSO) login. It’s possible that they need to relogin for the new access to become active. They see new folders in Nextcloud and have access to more projects at Redmine than before. Please note that most of the contents are CONFIDENTIAL and contain personal data about several people, so it can absolutely not be discussed outside of the board group. Please keep it private, it is very sensitive information.
Biography on website
As soon as they took over office, the new board will be listed on our website.
We will use the name and affiliation they used for their nomination, and the picture and biography they send for the advisory board meeting (if they do). If they want something different (or not be listed with a picture or biography), that is possible of course.
Mailing lists for board discussions
There are two important mailing lists for the board: an internal list, and the public board-discuss@ forum.
The internal list
There is an internal mailing list. Subscribed is the full board and the executive director, possibly also their assistant. On this internal mailing list, we discuss private and confidential topics and have votes that are not meant for the public (yet).
For technical reasons, this internal mailing list has two addresses that point to the very same.
For filtering, you can use the Roundcube filter module that creates a server-side Sieve filter, or any desktop e-mail client. If possible, filter for the “List-Id” header (this string contains no @-sign indeed). Alternatively, filter for both the recipient addresses.
Over the past years, we’ve developed the habit of tagging e-mails with subjects like [DISCUSS], [VOTE] and [DECISION], [URGENT] or [INFO] to help identifying important mails.
The public board-discuss@ forum
Any discussion that has no need for confidentiality should go to the public board-discuss forum instead. This public mailing list is used for public discussion of and with the board, public votes, the public sharing of minutes and decisions as well as important announcements. Everyone can subscribe to it and there are public archives.
We strongly recommend the incoming board subscribes there if they aren’t already.
Discourse can be configured in a way you receive notifications for each new message. If you enable this, you can filter via Roundcube/Sieve or a mail client.
Header to filter for: List-Id: <board-discuss.community.documentfoundation.org>
Internal e-mail aliases and mailing lists
TDF has internal e-mail aliases and mailing lists. For filtering, you can use the Roundcube filter module that creates a server-side Sieve filter, or any desktop e-mail client. We recommend to filter for the List-Id header instead of the subject prefix or the recipient address.
The first three mailing lists are for a wider audience:
All members of the incoming board are already on the membership announcement mailing list, that is a read-only, private mailing list for all TDF members. If you want to have your e-mail address changed there, please ask the membership committee directly to update it in the members database.
In addition, like all members, the incoming board is invited to the private member discussion list.
There’s also the private marketing list that is used for marketing discussions, like drafting of campaigns and press releases. Subscribed are currently 118 trusted community members, like native-language maintainers, localizers and marketeers. Marketing discussions should take place in public, but when there’s a need for confidentiality, this is the proper list.
Additionally, there are several internal addresses that are not open to members. All of these lists are private and their content is confidential. When replying to a mail, double-check the list of recipients, especially when external parties write, to only copy who should be in the loop.
- A low-traffic list for anything legal, including external requests, trademark grants and violations as well as things to archive, like license statements.
- A high-traffic, generic fallback address that is used everywhere where a generic contact is needed. Receives a lot of spam, support requests and questions on donations.
- A low-traffic mailing list for discussions with the advisory board, where we also share the minutes of the calls.
- A lists for invoices.
- A list for travel refund requests.
- A very high-traffic list with all incoming donations from PayPal and Stripe.
- A low-traffic list with incoming snailmail to our Berlin address attached as scan. Documents mostly in German language.
Areas of oversight
In the past, TDF had areas of oversight defined in their rules of procedure:
- employees & hiring
- infrastructure & community
- QA & community
- documentation & community
- native language projects, translation, localisation & community
- certifications and other business development activities
- licenses and development & releases including schedules & community
- affiliations, e.g. advisory board, peer foundations, politics
- marketing, events, communication & design, brands & community
- assets, finance, taxes
- contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks
We want to cover each area with at least two board members or deputies. The decision can be taken from the day on the incoming board is officially taking office. Those who have oversight of an area should be able to have the big picture of what is going on, provide regular reports to the board, and are the primary points of contact for these areas.
Access to bank accounts
TDF has several bank accounts:
- three regular accounts (“Girokonto”) at Volksbank Pforzheim - one for the nonprofit part, one for the business part, and one for the capital stock
- one savings account (“Tagesgeldkonto”) at Volksbank Pforzheim
- one regular account at GLS Bank
- one investment depot with connected account at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg
All of these hand out access on an individual basis instead of an organizational one, which means that everyone who wants access to the accounts needs to be individually signed up with the banks. We might need passport copies, confirmation of tax status, and a possible identification with the bank via video ID, plus signature on paper. Banks still work mostly under ancient conditions, so we usually use FOSDEM to handle all the paperwork.
The incoming board should discuss who wants full access to the bank accounts (and is willing to do the paperwork). Plus, we have an account at PayPal (which qualifies as bank) and at Stripe. These need board members listed as legal representatives, who need to provide address data, tax data and passport copies.
There are also TDF credit cards that some representatives have, e.g. for paying for group hotel bookings onsite.
Overview of public mailing lists and forums
TDF operates several public mailing lists. Below is only a small selection, there are also several other lists. A more comprehensive overview is available at:
- Mailing Lists | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft (English lists)
- https://listarchives.documentfoundation.org (English lists)
- lists.freedesktop.org Mailing Lists (mostly development-related, search for “libreoffice”)
- Language/LocalMailingLists - The Document Foundation Wiki (international lists)
- https://community.documentfoundation.org
For filtering, you can use the Roundcube filter module that creates a server-side Sieve filter, or any desktop e-mail client. We recommend to filter for the List-Id header instead of the subject line or recipient list. Find below some lists as well as instructions what to filter for and how to subscribe. We did not automatically subscribe the incoming board to any of these lists.
Projects forum
This public forum is for cross-discussion between various projects, e.g. to coordinate between release engineering and marketing. We use it to share announcements and have discussions in case several areas of the project are affected. Discourse can be configured in a way you receive notifications for each new message. If you enable this, you can filter via Roundcube/Sieve or a mail client.
Header to filter for: List-Id: <projects.community.documentfoundation.org>
Forum link: projects - The Document Foundation Community
marketing@global.libreoffice.org
This is the public marketing list for LibreOffice-related topics.
Header to filter for: List-Id: <marketing.global.libreoffice.org>
Subject prefix: [libreoffice-marketing]
Subscribe via: marketing+subscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Archives at: List Archives
discuss@documentfoundation.org
This is a public, general-purpose discussion list for TDF. It has not been widely used in the past.
Header to filter for: List-Id: <discuss.documentfoundation.org>
Subject prefix: [tdf-discuss]
Subscribe via: discuss+subscribe@documentfoundation.org
Archives at: List Archives
website@global.libreoffice.org
This public mailing list is for all infra-related topics, including website, servers, mailing lists, our tools like Bugzilla or Redmine and for talking to the infra team in public.
Header to filter for: List-Id: <website.global.libreoffice.org>
Subject prefix: [libreoffice-website]
Subscribe via: website+subscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Archives at: List Archives
announce@documentfoundation.org
This is a public, read-only mailing list, used for sending our announcements to thousands of subscribers.
Header to filter for: List-Id: <announce.documentfoundation.org>
Subject prefix: [tdf-announce]
Subscribe via: announce+subscribe@documentfoundation.org
Archives at: List Archives
E-mail signature
For any internal communication (e.g. to other directors and colleagues) this is not relevant, but when writing in an official capacity to other entities, companies or authorities, when representing TDF, there are formal requirements. The recommended mail signature looks as follows:
Your Name, [Deputy] Member of the Board of Directors
The Document Foundation, Winterfeldtstraße 52, 10781 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
One may enhance it with one’s contact data. For the curious, the legal background is explained at Signatur (E-Mails im Geschäftsverkehr) – Wikipedia (unfortunately there seems no English version.)
The incoming board can use the signature only after they are officially in office.
Language of documents and official communication
One aspect of an international foundation is: languages. TDF is active internationally, has contributors around the globe, and the internal language we use for communication is English.
Like every entity, we do have one legal seat, which for TDF is Berlin, Germany. This means that several contracts, regulations, laws and legal texts are primarily done and available in German. This is no different from other countries, where the mother tongue is used for any official communication.
That can make matters complicated from time to time, but in the past, we have handled this with the German speaking board members in mutual trust and it has worked out pretty well. Those dealing with those matters have been sharing the activities and contents with the rest of the board and whereever possible and doable, we have tried to have English as the master language. See e.g. our annual reports or the translations we do for various legal topics. While the accounting is done in German and then translated into English, the annual report is written in English first to get approved by the board and then translated to German for the official filing. Usually, Google Translate or DeepL help quite a lot, too.
Things primarily available in German e.g. are the full ledgers from DATEV, the payroll documents for employees, tax office and general authority communication, employment contracts and the like - but with the above, we hope to make things feasible for everyone, and hope the language is not a blocker.
One more thought: Keep in mind that English is not the common denominator for all our community. Several native-language projects have only a few people who speak English, at least on a level that helps to follow the international lists. Often, there are very few people acting as gateway. Based also on the MC survey presented during LibOCon, I think we should focus on being more inclusive for those who speak a language different than English.
Statement of representation
For votes during a meeting, we need a quorum (majority of board present, majority of those present in favor of a vote). In case people are absent and can’t attend a meeting, we might run into the situation to miss that quorum, then we would not be able to make a decision. For this situation, § 9 II of the statutes foresee that each full board member can be represented by another board member or deputy during a meeting, but each representative can only represent one person at the same time.
Example: Jane can ask Joan to represent her. Also Jill can ask Joan to represent her. However, Joan can only represent one of them during a particular meeting.
Only full board members can name a representative, deputies can’t. A board member does not have to allow anyone to represent them, but we recommend it for the reasons explained above. In the past, we usually asked the deputies, in order of election rank, to represent, but everyone is of course free to choose who, how many and in which order can represent them. One can also change or withdraw the representation statement anytime. With a representation statement, deputies can stand in as full board members when someone is not available. They then will act with a warrant on someone’s behalf and can make decisions and votes. Please note that also action on a warrant creates legal responsibility.
There’s two other important aspects: Someone who is excluded from a vote, e.g. when voting for one’s own matters as per § 9 VI of the statutes, can’t name a representative for that particular vote. Also, the affiliation of the representative can be relevant for the 1/3 third rule in § 8 IV of the statutes.
In any case, the statement of representation can only be made after the incoming board’s term has started, and only once chairperson and deputy are elected. To name representatives, a board member can (again, after the term has started and chairperson and deputy were elected) send an e-mail to the public board-discuss forum, with a subject of “Representation statement” and a text like:
> I, $firstname $lastname, elected member of the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, hereby and until further notice, nominate the following deputies to represent me during board calls and meetings, in the order set forth below:
>
> 1. A
> 2. B
> 3. C
For the chairperson only, there’s also a representation possible in that particular role, so the text would be as follows:
I, $firstname $lastname, elected member and Chairperson of the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, hereby and until further notice, nominate the following deputies to represent me during board calls and meetings, in the order set forth below:
1. A
2. B
3. C
In case neither the Deputy Chairperson nor me as Chairperson of the Board are available during a board call or meeting, this representation statement also applies to my role as Chairperson of the Board, unless conflict of interest or other rules prevent so.
In case the Deputy Chairperson is present, but not me as Chairperson of the Board, this representation statement only applies to my role as member of the Board of Directors and not to my role as Chairperson of the Board.
Matrix (Element/Riot) accounts and chat room
TDF hosts its own instance of Matrix (Element/Riot). If an incoming board member wants to have a Matrix account documentfoundation.org, the onboarding mail contains instructions how to do so. We have on chatroom for directors. Additionally, there is one chat room for board, MC and team. This can be used for ad-hoc notifications or urgent topics.
Use of a personal Matrix account is highly discouraged.
E-mail encryption
E-mail encryption is some sort of optional item, as not everyone is comfortable using it. In practice, some board members make use of it, while others don’t and don’t want to receive encrypted messages. For confidential discussions and sharing of documents especially on legal, taxes or team, having means for e-mail encryption is helpful at least, but in the meantime, we do have Nextcloud which helps quite conveniently.
It can’t hurt to setup your own GPG key, either by adding the TDF account to an existing key or creating a separate key for the TDF account and publish it on the keyservers.
Tools and services
TDF uses various tools and services. Most of these services are handled via our single sign-on (SSO) instance.
Nextcloud
Our Nextcloud instance is at https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org
We use it for sharing documents both with the general public as well as internally.
Jitsi
Our Jitsi instance is at https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org
Anyone who has an account in our SSO can create a new room.
There are apps for mobile devices for both Android and iOS available. In the app, you need to configure https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org as the base URL, then you can use our instance also on the go.
Etherpad
Our Etherpad instance is at https://pad.documentfoundation.org
New pads can be created by asking the infra team.
We don’t use Etherpad for board minutes anymore.
Redmine
Our Redmine instance is at https://redmine.documentfoundation.org
We are using Redmine for dealing with non-code related tasks and for tenders. Please read the project’s description whether they are public or private to avoid leaking information that is confidential.
Wiki
Our wiki instance is at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org
There is no actual board-related content there, but you can create yourself an account to edit pages. Some of interest are
- Board of Directors Decisions - The Document Foundation Wiki (now at Topics tagged decision)
- Board of Directors Meetings - The Document Foundation Wiki (now at Topics tagged minutes)
- Board of Directors Rules of Procedure - The Document Foundation Wiki
- Membership Committee Meetings - The Document Foundation Wiki (now at Membership Committee Discuss - The Document Foundation Community)
- Marketing/Branding - The Document Foundation Wiki
- TDF/Policies - The Document Foundation Wiki
IRC (optional)
IRC is not used for the board role, but a couple of projects are active at LiberaChat.
Some IRC channels that might be of interest are
- libreoffice
- libreoffice-dev
- libreoffice-qa
- libreladies
- tdf-infra
- libreoffice-hackfest
- libreoffice-design
- libreoffice-nlp
- libreoffice-doc
- libocon
Telegram
Telegram is also not used for the board role, but there is a variety of discussions groups you might want to check out. A comprehensive overview is available at Website/Web Sites services - The Document Foundation Wiki
Warrant for authorities (“Spezialvollmacht”)
In order for Florian to take over administrative filings, each board member must issue a warrant (“Spezialvollmacht”). The text will be provided.
Various administrative tasks
There are other administrative tasks, like updating the imprints, the simplified donation confirmation etc. In total, we currently have 125 places where some TDF data (either address and/or bank data and/or legal representatives) is listed.