[Grants] Grant Application from John Bryant for Establishing OSGeo Oceania - professional advice

[Linux Australia Website]

Your Email Address: johnwbryant at gmail.com
Project name: Establishing OSGeo Oceania - professional advice
Aim of the project: Our objective is to finalise the establishment of OSGeo Oceania, a not-for-profit entity with the purpose of building open source/open data geospatial community in Oceania. Over the last 8 months, we have formed a not-for-profit company and appointed an inaugural Board of Directors, with a first-year mandate to establish a set of ground rules for how we operate as a community. Please see our Terms of Reference (https://drive.google.com/file/d/13aZ6L08ke1-l32I7c00MahyEKgxeZkq8/view) for more detail on our inaugural mandate.
In order to formalise these ground rules, and ensure we have an organisation that can withstand the test of time, we wish to establish a membership recruitment process, define appropriate terms for election of directors, and update our constitution accordingly. Our experience has shown that while a DIY approach is possible, it requires a huge amount of volunteer energy and comes with increased risk of error and re-work. This is a situation with high risk of burnout, and we'd like to avoid it.
As we operate an international conference series (FOSS4G SotM Oceania), our accounting needs have some complexity, and we need to ensure we're functioning properly in this area as well. We will have tax obligations in Australia and New Zealand, and potentially in other jurisdictions as well.
To make sure we can do this efficiently and effectively, we want to seek professional advice, and so we seek partial funding.
Estimated cost breakdown of the project: We expect to spend approximately AUD $2500 on not-for-profit organisational advice, and AUD $2500 on accounting advice. These estimates are based on discussions with, and quotes from, several companies operating in this area.
We are requesting funding from Linux Australia to cover 50 from other sources.
Project team details: We currently have 9 directors:
    Alex Leith - OSGeo Oceania Treasurer - OSGeo Charter Member
    Daniel Silk
    Edoardo Neerhut
    Greg Lauer - OSGeo Oceania Secretary
    John Bryant - OSGeo Oceania President - OSGeo Charter Member
    Jonah Sullivan
    Kerry Smyth
    Martin Tomko
    Trisha Moriarty
All directors are very experienced open geospatial professionals, working in government, industry, and academia. Each of us is a keen advocate for open source geospatial technology and data in our own organisations and in our community of practice.
As a group, we have been involved in building this organisation since November 2017, when we initiated the very successful conference FOSS4G SotM Oceania, which ran in Melbourne in November 2018. We're currently overseeing the planning and execution of the 2nd iteration of this conference in Wellington, New Zealand, along with a Local Organising Committee.
You can find more info about OSGeo Oceania at our wiki page: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Oceania
First Name: John
Last Name: Bryant
Email Address: johnwbryant at gmail.com
A statement including a willingness to provide regular project updates on the project: As an organisation focused on open community building, we're very committed to transparency. We generally make our working documents and discussions open to the public on our mailing lists, where possible. We will be happy to provide project specific updates to Linux Australia and to our community.

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