The administration of a nonprofit organisation

Hello everyone,

just lately, I have published an article about the administrative situation at TDF. Having spoken with several community members during the LibreOffice Conference in Budapest, I would like to share some further insight.

The summary of my previous article is that the TDF administration is only working because a few people are going above and beyond.

I’ve also published some further details to our members via the tdf-internal mailing list on July 25, which dives into the current situation at TDF and how we arrived there. I encourage members to read this as well for a better understanding of the whole picture.

Slim administration

TDF is still very slim on administrative staff taking its size into account. During our in-person team meeting in Budapest, Jonathan said something along the lines that TDF as organization size is not just 15 staff members, but actually the size of the full community, making it a mid-sized organization. So when we look at our structures, we should not look at 15 people, but at the big picture. That comment still rings my ears, because it is exactly to the point.

Also in the team, in the past we had periods where in less than six months our team has grown by five people, which is a challenge by itself.

Conference aftermath

One example of the administrative work is our annual LibreOffice Conference.

I returned home with a batch of documents and receipts. Some were invoices from the conference that had to be unexpectedly paid with a TDF credit card in Budapest, like the community dinner and the hackfest. Thankfully Sophie was available even late in the evening to look up sums and details, so we could ensure things are in proper order. We also received a good batch of travel refund documents that were handed over to us in person.

We need those documents in time, because early October the accounting for September starts, and at the very latest, TDF has to send in its monthly VAT declaration by November 10, for which the correct invoices are needed. Certain services rendered on site, like hotel nights or meeting rooms, are not subject to VAT reverse charge, others are, so this is highly relevant in order to make a proper declaration.

In case TDF would not file documents properly and on time, the future deadlines would be reduced by a full month, so we are well-advised to handle things properly.

There were some more invoices pending, in the aftermath of the conference, I am not sure if all have arrived in the meantime. Ultimately, we plan to publish a detailed lising like we did for 2024 and 20203.

What I took home was a batch of probably 25 pages that needed scanning, archiving, putting into the proper (virtual) folders for accounting, and of course, we need to chase those invoices that are still missing, including any original paper receipts. Also, the accountant needs to know what the invoices are about, so everything is properly documented and accounted for.

In the end, it was me doing the scanning of all the papers, because shipping around to someone else would have taken a smiliar amount of time. Now the documents need to be physically stored. The whole process is something we really need to change and optimize in the future. The overhead on my end is too big to handle also that. I’ll discuss with Sophie and Stephan how to tweak our process here, but in the end, the community needs to decide whether we want to use donor’s money to hire additional time from someone to deal with such administrative work, or ask community members to support us a bit by preparing their filings accordingly.

Some attendees simply “threw over” their receipts and asked us to just figure out what and how to pay - that’s not how it works. In no other organization you just throw over your receipts and ask someone else to do the work, but usually you have to follow a process - the bigger the company, the stricter the process.

This is neither criticism to the conference organizers, nor those people who gave me their travel refunds. My goal is to explain why too many of those “small items” turn into a big challenge, in particular given the sheer amount of things happening at the same time.

Last but not least, we lately received travel refund requests for an event that ended more than one and a half years ago, which adds an additional challenge. Does it affect the budget? Which costs did we cover for others who attended? Did the person attend? All these questions need to be evaluated before making the payment, to avoid things falling on our feet later on.

The board as legal representative

Like for many other organizations, at TDF the the board of directors is the legal representative of the organization. They are in charge, they have several liabilities, their data has to be filed with authorities and banks, they need to sign tax declarations, social security audits, and sometimes they need to sign other documents too. While for certain tasks, warrants can be given, it is ultimately the board who is the legal representative of our foundation and has the final responsibility for all matters.

Fulfilling TDF’s duties

The statutes put certain explicit duties onto the board, namely says that the board’s main tasks are: management of the foundation’s assets, use of the foundation’s resources, preparation of a budget plan, proper accounting and collection of documents, and preparation of the annual financial statement and activity report.

At the beginning, when things were still small, the board handled a lot of these tasks itself, including accounting, but the majority of time of the past 13,5 years TDF exists already, the board has staff members and external advisors to help them fulfil their duties, like:

Too much burden on too few people

This list is not at all conclusive, it shows just some examples, in reality it is much longer. All you see above already is in essence prepared for the board by 2,5 people (not all of them are fulltime), and when it comes to German language depending items, which are many, even less people work on it.

Some of these people also have to regularly deal with complicated legal topics like a more than a year-long tax matter in 2018, that saved TDF around 100.000 € in the end, or a challenging trademark matter in 2017 which did bind resources for months. Of course, lawyers and tax consultants support us, but that still needs substantial preparation and work from our side.

Also anything urgent likely will be forwarded to very few people, e.g. when we get infringement complaints, when there are some GDPR matters, etc. We also have to, on behalf of TDF, provide all requested documents for audits. Additionally, very few members of the team are in charge for onboarding the board as well as the membership committee.

The list also doesn’t reflect the additional challenges when there are fights in the governing bodies, legal challenges and other events that normally should not happen, which adds even more burden to individuals.

Different governing styles

Many things depend which “style” of running an organization any current board applies.

My (and others’) view is that TDF as a non-profit needs to meet high standards. We work with donor’s money, we work for the common good, we provide a product that is used by millions around the world. Additionally, as a non-profit we are under scrutiny also by the authorities. As such, I would always recommend to play it safe, be cautious and vigilant, to ensure the entity will stay how it was setup - “built for eternity”, as they say for foundations. Of course, being relaxed on rules and regulations makes things faster, because you have less work, but it is not a smart choice.

Views on that, however, differ. In the past, the careful approach has frequently led to complaints we would be “gold-plating” things, or “pile up money”, or we are slow. Eventually, it is the board’s deciding which path to follow, which means it can change at least with every election.

Ideally, if TDF has people preparing matters for the board, I would suggest to carefully listen what they recommend. Not only have many of them years of experience, they are also - against all odds - committed to work for TDF, and have the same interest as everyone else: that TDF is doing well, is around for a long time, and follows all regulations that are required to run an entity.

What some seem to misunderstand is the fact following laws and regulations does not mean we necessarily endorse all of them personally. Many items cost time, they cost money - but not implementing them could have negative impact on TDF.

This is the very same challenge many companies face, that the amount of bureacratic requirements is growing and growing, and as such it is not special TDF as organization.

Delegation is key

The board needs to approve and is responsible, but they are unlikely to carry all of the actual work. That is not to critize the board - one board’s term might be too short to learn all the relevant bits and pieces, but even more so, the board has to fulfil its role in a volunteer capacity, next to their regular dayjob, which - in particular in an organisation of our size, and with the situation we are in - can be a very challenging and demanding task.

Also in organizations employees deliver on the mission. However, it brings me back to what I explained above - TDF is not small anymore. With all that is going on, with our international activities, with all the requirements and deadlines, and also the growing amount of knowledge required to ensure things work out in a smooth way, we need enough people to handle the work. Administration does not directly deliver on our mission, it is to a certain degree not visible, but - like many other things, e.g. infrastructure - it is literally the foundation on which our entity is built.

The situation of the staff

The team has been around for a long period of time. I started working for TDF nearly 13 years ago, the next team member joined just a few months after this. Now, if there is a dedicated team to work in a constant way on elemental matters, be it administration, infrastructure or others, it is of course important to treat people well. I’ll not go into details of what has happened in the past, as me and others have explained that already, but of course, silencing people, verbally attacking them in public, shouting at them in front of an audience, calling them traitors and other names or organizing a “Meeting to discredit staff in March 2020” is amongst the worst one can endure.

Job safety and a healthy, non-toxic work environment is another important thing if an organization relies on a team to run its operations. While the situation in the current board has been significantly improved over the past months, we do see tensions in the community, and from time to time sadly, still, some personal attacks from some community members. What has been brought up just lately were undue attacks on team members after the 2024 LibreOffice Conference by some people, described by “heart breaking” by some.

In the end, if an organization relies on good, stable, reliable and planable work from a team to make it run, people need a stable, safe, working environment they can count on and can plan long-term. If people commit themselves to a job and go above and beyond, that needs to be rewarded with stability and safety, and the political situation at TDF still gives worries to many of us.

Conclusion

With all that is going on at TDF, we do have a scaleability problem. As outlined in my earlier posting, many takss are on very few people’s desk. This article is only about the administrative bits, but I would guess we have a similar situation in infrastructure (where Guilhem is the main driver), in release engineering (where Cloph and Xisco are the drivers) and others.

In result, there definitely is a need to get more people involved also in more complicated matters in the future, to not have all the burden on very few people. This is a part of the reason why I write and publish several howtos, e.g. on budgeting or on TDF in general, and in parallel I also review our processes to make them more manageable.

I currently work on a more detailed set of proposals which I’ll publish at a later time.

Florian

2 Likes

Hi,
I believed that now and for several year, travel refund should be submitted here : https://refunds.documentfoundation.org/travel_sponsorships, but may be it’s sponsorships category only

Regards

This tool, called TSP, should be used indeed. However, we need signed forms and any original invoices, if they exist on paper, in Berlin. This is for tax reasons, and that is the batch of documents I was handed over by various people.

To get into a productive view on this general problem: can you recreate some simple metrics on a graph (in private) by year, members, event atendees, donations and numbers of team (maybe with a second line for the orga stuff, in man hours)? I guess this would be interesting for any astimation.

I do know this cannot be shared, but I guess having all values in percentage in a diagramm is helpful for any discussion…

Sorry, there are enough companies in German using digital papers only. This is a myth that a german lawer needs them on paper. Mostly the want, because they are used to it (or simply old).

You do not even need to send the papers any longer (or forward to the tax authorities) if there is no special reason (high spike).

You don’t need to send them, but you need to have them in case taxes want to make an audit. That the same for my company, and I guess France is not far from Germany here. If I have a control from taxes, I need to provide all the invoices, receipts, expenses in paper. That is what the accountant is collecting for us. And they even ask you to print documents on demand when they come to make the audit in your office.

Hi Florain and the Team,

Thank you very much for that report on administrative tasks, the invisible ones, though imperative.

Best,

Hi @floeff ,

If that helps - quite a few of the items from your long list are things that could be handled by tax accountants & their staff. I’ve excellent, largely hands-free experience with one firm since the end of 2020, and could make a referral, if considered useful?

Best, Thorsten