Plone Foundation Board Minutes October 2, 2025

Call to Order

  • Meeting started at 20:04

Attendance

  • Present: Rafahela Bazzanella, Brian Davis, Mikel Larreategi, Martin Peeters, Guido Stevens, and Steve Piercy (Interim Treasuer)
  • Excused: Eric Brehault and João Henrique Gouveia

Approval of the minutes of

  • September 18, 2025: Guido motions to approve. Mikel seconds. All in favor.

Action items

  • Martin contacted Rikupekka re: sponsoring Conference attendance
  • Brian and Steve traveled in-person to Chase Bank to become both Authorized Signers and Authorized Representatives

Incoming Correspondence

  • Emails from Steve
  • Mikel re: Sponsorship Community Recognition
  • Mikel re: PloneConf26
  • Mikel re: new membership
  • Github sponsorship cancellation
  • Sponsorship inquiry
  • pypi
  • Failed sponsorship correspondence

New Business

  • Electing New Foundation Members: Motions
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Ana Luisa Lopes Ferreira as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Clayton Caetano de Sousa as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Dante Álvares Pérez as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve David Ichim as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Julio Zinga Suzuki Lopes as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Ramiro Batista da Luz as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Wesley Barroso Lopes as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Luis Flavio Loreto da Rocha as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Rafahela makes a motion to approve Alok Kumar as a new Plone Foundation member. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
    • Guido makes a motion that the Board pre-approve the 5 additional new Plone Foundation member that were missed in the system. The Board mandates the Membership Committee to review the following applications, and the Board will trust the recommendation of the Membership Committee to approve or reject them as appropriate. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
      • Unai Etxaburu
      • Lur Ibargutxi
      • Ion Lizarazu
      • Silvio Carlos Marino
      • Rohan Shaw
  • Electing New Foundation Members: Discussion
    • The Plone Foundation Board wishes to welcome all of the new members to the Plone Foundation.
    • Brian will work with Rafahela to get email addresses, photos, and bios for news article.
    • 37 people still waiting to renew. Martin will send them a second email reminder before Sunday.

Continued Business

  • Treasurer Report
    • Provider listing and invoices
      • Steve: We decided long ago to not invoice providers for listing, but there was a drop in communication, and recurring payments are still coming in from PayPal.
      • Martin: There was never a requirement to be on this listing. Even on plone.com it was free. There were 3 sponsor levels, that's it. I believe they were referring to "supporting sponsorships" from the past.
      • Steve: Not sure who set this up or where it came from. Previous treasurer did not monitor this. More of a procedural thing that snuck through, and it is a trivial amount of money. But these are invoices for "provider listings" not "sponsorships".
      • Martin: We do not charge "provider listings", those are "supporting sponsorships".
        • Steve: But the invoices say "provider listing".
      • Guido: There should be some communication about this with the people who were paying. It should be validated and corrected.
      • Martin: The reason it's weird is because it was included in previous sponsorship packages. If it was sold as provider listing, that is wrong.
      • Guido: Whoever has access to Paypal should be monitoring/flagging these transactions.
    • Switching from Paypal to Wise due to fees/exchange rates
      • Steve: Wise is much nicer, fees are less than pennies on the dollar. We had 1 person test this already, everything went fine.
      • Steve: Should we accept Credit Card payments with Paypal/Wise?
        • Steve feels no, we should require seting up an account with those services.
      • Mikel: Does wise accept wire transfer for both US/EU? Steve: yes.
      • Guido: What about other currencies, like Brazil?
        • Steve: I can look into this.
        • Martin: Let's wait to see if its necessary.
      • Martin: In general, let's hold off on all of this until the new Sponsorship Team is in place and the new Sponsorship Levels are published.
      • Steve: Who/how should I share this spreadsheet so that Sponsorship/Marketing can also see it?
        • Martin: Put it on Quaive.
        • Steve: Is Marketing on Quaive?
          • Brian: Yes. We've been on there for over a year now. Guido, can you add Vitaliy?
    • "Subscriptions" vs "Invoices" on Paypal.
      • Steve: Not sure what subscriptions are or why they were labeled that way.
      • Steve: 4.5% in fees from subscriptions, 5% in fees from invoices. This is why we want to move to Wise.
    • PloneConf invoices
      • Steve: All have went out. All but 3 have been paid.
        • Martin: Board is not right team to inform, instead inform the organizers of the Conference.
      • Martin: Wire transfers on PayPal are a pain.
      • Steve: University invoice systems are complicated. Can we process this for them?
        • Martin: Yes, you can pay invoice related to Ploneconf with money received from Ploneconf.
    • Financial statement for annual report
      • Steve: I've been working towards defining better buckets
        • Admin Team Budget = hosting, domains, licenses have been split into 3 different buckets
        • Ploneconf = tickets, sponsorship can be split into different buckets
      • Steve: What else?
        • Martin: Separate Release Manager stipends from GSoC stipends
        • Guido: Budget/report line items should follow the same classification schemes. Looking forward to receiving report from treasurer.
      • Steve: What about sprints?
        • Martin: Basically, we are just reimbursing companies with amount we agreed to pay up front.
        • Guido: Yes, but we discussed different types of funding. Like extra funding for key people to attend sprints.
      • Steve: What about Victor's request?
        • Martin: Victor's request is part of release manager stipend.
      • Steve: It seems like we are not really reviewing what they spend.
        • Martin: Yes, we are reviewing what they spend. We review all their receipts and validate based on that, because they cannot spend on other things that what was agreed upon (like alcohol).
  • GSoC
    • No news
  • Ploneconf25
    • Not much news. 150+ attendees. They will order t-shirts this week.
  • Ploneconf26
    • Discussed Ploneconf26 financial considerations.
  • Sponsorships
    • To be handled by next board
  • Github cleanup
    • To be handled by next board
  • Sprint funding request
    • No news, will meet during conference
  • AI policy
    • To be handled by the next board
  • Provider listing on plone.org
    • Brian: Vitaliy is working on a new provider content type. He sent me code to review.
    • Brian: AFIK, other than small updates, this is Marketing Team's first time even touching these pages since I joined the team in 2021. Sponsorship Team has traditionally handled these pages, because Providers/Sponsors use the same content type. While you guys were talking, I found an old email thread from 2023 related to the topic of not charging for provider listings. Will fwd for review.
  • Zope funds
    • No news. Steve sent second email. Waiting for 2 weeks before phone call. At that point, will ask the Board to consider next steps.

Review Ongoing

  • Reviewed annual report for annual meeting
    • What was our biggest failure? = lack of Sponsorship Team
      • Guido: We tried, we failed, we should have tried harder. The important question is what were the blockers that hindered us from trying harder?
      • Brian: We were supposed to have additional meetings with the Sponsorship Team, but those meetings never happened.
  • Reviewed potential candidates for the next Board
    • We will inquire with and recruit individuals during PloneConf. Also looking for US citizens who could serve as Assistant Secretaries for the Chase account. Assistant Secretaries do not necessarily need to be elected Board members.
  • Reflected in general on successes/failures
    • Guido: I would like to see the Treasurer Report time-boxed at future meetings, the Board does not need to discuss every small detail.
      • Brian: Agreed. During the first meeting Steve attended, he noted that in his past experiences with non-profits, too lengthy/too frequent Treasurer Reports can lead to information overload. Steve mentioned that he found it to be more productive for the Treasurer Report to be given quarterly rather than discussed at every meeting.
    • Brian: We also spend a lot of time trying to solve interpersonal relationships. While every concern is important, there are other topics we never get to. See "Marketing" and "Communications" as a example. The Board needs to have a better balance between community relations and business.
    • Martin: It is also important to retain historical information from board-to-board and to seek out previous board members for consulting.

Adjournment

  • Guido motions to adjourn. Mikel seconds. All in favor.
  • Adjourned at 22:05