Summary
As part of our commitment to be transparent with the community, the team is pleased to present a short statement of our financial position covering 2021 to 2022. We are also very excited to announce that as of May 2022, Ubuntu Budgie is on Open Collective. More details on this below.
History
- Budgie Remix had launched in April 2016
- In Nov 2016 Ubuntu Budgie was granted the status as an official community flavour with Ubuntu/Canonical.
- 17.04 was our first release official release as a flavour.
- 18.04 was our first Long Term Support release
- 20.04 is our second Long Term Support release
- 22.04 is our third Long Term Support release
Goals
As we close off our fiscal year for 2022 (Apr 2021 – Mar 31, 2022), the financial position of the project is very healthy. We have met several goals this year and including our stretch goal:
- LTS Fiscal Goal – ensure that the costs to support a three-year LTS were in place.
- Stretch Goal – ensure we have reserves to meet five years of costs (2021 – 2025).
- Increase transparency by joining Open Collective and finding a Fiscal Host.
Operating Costs
- Infrastructure costs relating to the website, test build servers, domain registrations
- Reserves are in place as a contingency to account for unexpected expenses.
- Two IRCCloud monthly subscriptions
Purchases
This year the only purchases made were prizes for our Ubuntu Budgie 22.04 Wallpaper Contest.
Details of the contest and its prizes are shared on our discourse post.
Donations
Open Collective
As of May 2022, Ubuntu Budgie joined Open Collective. This is something the team wanted to do for a while, in order to provide great transparency over our financial status, donations, and expenses. Anyone is now able to check up to date status of the project, how many donations are coming in, what expenses are being approved. This also reduces workload on our team, as all financial calculations are done automatically, and reviewed by our awesome fiscal host.
You can check our Collective here: Ubuntu Budgie Open Collective
Special thanks to our awesome fiscal host, Accountable. This service is provided by The Social Change Nest
As we are going to focus on Open Collective, we would like to ask our community to use it for donations. This helps with transparency, reduces workload on our team, and greatly reduces our costs.
Patreon and Paypal are going to stay active, however donating directly via Open Collective ensures your donations are more effective, as there are less transaction fees.
Patreon
For 2021-2022 we did have a handful of Patreon donors. Open Collective is now a great way to give Ubuntu Budgie a regular income. If you do not want to contribute via Open Collective, please do consider becoming a Patreon.
PayPal
We have had many individuals who donate via Paypal, and we thank you all!
Open Collective is now a wonderful way to give one off donations and also regular tips. We realise PayPal is a preferred way for many people to use – so we do love to receive PayPal tips if Open Collective is not for you.
Sponsorship
Digital Ocean
DigitalOcean has been an incredible sponsor of our project throughout the years, paying for all of our 2017-2021 hosting and infrastructure fees. We are grateful and excited to have DigitalOcean as a sponsor. https://www.digitalocean.com
Discourse
Our community support is via a hosted discourse forum which was generously provided through sponsorship as well. https://www.discourse.org/
Future Goals
- Now that we are on Open Collective, we are working to get our team members onboard. This will make expenses claim easier, faster, and completely transparent.
- We are planning to revamp our merch store and bring more extiting items.
Contributions
Our confidence level for our financial viability is as close to 100% as you can get.
- This year our community has contributed approx £2372 with set-aside costs for 2021 to 2025 + reserves.
- We have a nominal £10613 in the bank, which can be checked on our Ubuntu Budgie Open Collective page.
Previous years contributions overview:
2016-2017, our community contributed £248.90 with no set-aside costs and no reserves
2017-2018, our community contributed £2460 with set-aside costs for 2018 to 2022 + reserves
2018-2019, our community contributed £2919 with set-aside costs for 2019 to 2023 + reserves
2019-2020, our community contributed £3258 with set-aside costs for 2020 to 2024 + reserves
2020-2019, our community contributed £5507 with set-aside costs for 2021 to 2025 + reserves
With your help, we look forward to making more donations to developers and organisations who have helped Ubuntu Budgie.
The Team
All Ubuntu Budgie team members are volunteers. At this point we the team do not benefit financially in anyway from your generosity. If we had one or more full-time developers, then the speed of development and improvement would be exponentially higher. For this to become fiscally possible, the project would need to grow to approx 10x the current contribution rate to achieve that.
Canonical Support
Although we are an official flavour 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.
Donations
If you would like to support Ubuntu Budgie, please feel free to donate to the project through Open Collective. Paypal or Patreon will remain open but please be aware there are higher transaction fees, as all donations are transferred to our Open Collective.
Thank You
All donors are displayed on our website unless you specifically request not to be presented.
Thank you to all who have chosen to join our community.
David (project lead)