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Ubuntu Budgie – Annual Financial Statement 2016 – 2017

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As part of our commitment to you to be transparent with you, the team are pleased to present a short statement as to our financial position 2016 to 2017. Budgie Remix launched in April 2016 – 7 weeks from inception to launch!. Basically it was myself that bankrolled the project for a considerable amount of the 2016 year. Our first Paypal donation was given in September. Our first Patreon was shortly after. As we closed off the 2016 year the financial position of the project was precarious – £56.63 in the bank, no reserves and questionable that we had the money to pay the bills for 2017, let alone meeting our initial goals of funding 2018-2021 for a potential Ubuntu Budgie LTS release. Costs included website server fees and URL fees together with requiring reserves to meet unexpected costs. Since January we have had literally an explosion of donors – both individual Paypal and many more Patreon sponsors. So much so, thanks to those donors, we have met our 2017 costs together with set-a-side money for a potential LTS release. With have had a major vote of confidence by DigitalOcean paying for all of our 2017 website and hosting fees. Closing out April 2017, we have healthy reserves for 2017 to 2021. We have set our sights on a stretch goal of 5 years viability, together with looking to fund equipment to help us test HiDPI support. We have a nominal £81.96 in the bank, with set-aside costs for 2017 to 2021 + reserves. Our confidence level for our financial viability is as close to 100% as you can get.
Today we are pleased to announce our first developer give back. Ubuntu Budgie have donated to Antoni Norman. Antoni – better known as Pinguy – helped us launch budgie-remix. Without his help sorting out PinguyBuilder 16.04 issues in double quick time spending countless days on this – the key tool we created our first ISO, we simply would not have been here now. With your help, we look forward to making more donations to developers and organisations who have help Ubuntu Budgie in the future.
Just a couple of points to clarify here. All Ubuntu Budgie team members including myself are volunteers. We do not benefit financially in anyway from your generosity. Additionally, although we are now an official flavor of the Ubuntu Family, we do not receive any financial help from Canonical. Canonical supports Ubuntu Budgie through their launchpad build systems and ISO distribution costs.
All donors are displayed on our website unless you specifically ask us not to. How we are looking after your donations are also shown. If you want to support Ubuntu Budgie , help us through Paypal, Patreon and now BitCoin. David (project lead)