Hi everyone. I'm told we can get started. How's everybody's
positive going? Amazing. My name is Karen Fowler. I am the executive director of
the Software Freedom Conservancy and of course my slides are not working. Let's see if I
can do that again. I should have used PowerPoint. Why didn't I ever think of that?
Let me introduce myself and explain why I won't use PowerPoint. I am really
passionate about Software Freedom because I was born with a her condition. I have
an implanted pacemaker to Fibre later and I can't see the source could in my own
body and as I've lived with a Fibre later I've had all kinds of experiences that
show what it's like when your technology may not be made for you. I was shocked
unnecessarily when I was pregnant because my heart was palpitating with
a super normal for pregnant women but because I had a Fibre later it shocked me
and repeatedly and I could only deal with it by taking drugs to slow my heart
rate down so much it was hard to walk up a flight of stairs. I'm fine now. Everything
is all fine. I'm actually asymptomatic and I have a wonderful life but the issues
around our technology and the public's control of our technology are so critical
that this is what we must focus our attention on and so I run Software Freedom
Conservancy which does a lot of nonprofit things. We do we three main branches of
our work. We have our our alternative to proprietary software so we're the
home of Git for example and some of the in-scape line loads of projects to EMU
OpenWRT and then we are we have a copy left program where we do advocacy for
copy left and we see companies that are out of compliance with licenses. We
recently had success against AVM in Germany. We're sitting busy on your
anyway. These are all besides the point and we run a diversity initiative where we
do paid remote internships to folks subject to systemic bias and impacted by
under representation. So we're we're very busy or we're very lean we have very
few people and we just do everything we can to like do all of the pragmatic
move the needle things to progress for software freedom. And so that's this is
where I'm coming from. Now as an executive director I spent a ton of time
trying to raise money for my organization obviously. I actually don't know what
was in this from earlier because well in addition to being running all over the
place because it's positive I couldn't get into this room she's congratulations
to you all for being here and the organizers for creating such great content. So
forgive me as some of the things we're talked about before but as everybody
knows funding has become quite difficult as of late it was never easy to begin
with but these days it's been particularly hard in the last few months or years
actually and getting harder and harder by the month for the non-profits in the
free software space. So this slide is just some of the news items whatever you
know layoffs within the tech-bound profits space and the like it's been
particularly hard for diversity initiatives. I don't need to tell you about the
overall political climate or apologize for the things happening in my
country or anything like that but I will say that the last year has seen
closures of really important diversity initiatives like women who code who
shut down for financial reasons and girls in tech which basically went public
and said we need to raise a hundred thousand dollars and if we raise a hundred
thousand dollars we will keep going and you know what they didn't raise a hundred
thousand dollars and they're gone and we've seen the same shrinking of
support for for outreach our program and and so money is very important to us so
why am I here talking to you about when to say no to money right I mean it's
like the opposite we're all desperately seeking how do we sustain our
initiatives how do we keep going because if we don't none of this work will get
done and especially in the public good charitable sector this work has never
been more important we've never had more opportunities right like now finally
the public is waking up and saying there's a problem with our technology
governments are waking up this is the time when we could be the most effective
and yet it's the time when it's the most difficult to keep our funding going
now we at software freedom conservancy we have like our where we kind of
three pieces of our funding we have like about a third of our funding comes
from private grant makers about a third comes from corporate donations and
about a third and sponsorships and about a third comes from individual donors
like people giving a hundred and twenty dollars a year which is really really
critical to us and how being that spread is really really healthy and even
when things are so it's it's interesting because when things are good and
money is rolling in it's really easy to say no to money like your if you if
you if it doesn't come exactly the way you wanted it's very easy but when
things are hard it is so hard to say no to funding that comes and that is
the time when it is so critical to say no when the funding that you get will
fundamentally compromise what you are planning to do so the problem is like a
known one right everybody makes the joke that's like having a oil company
sponsored environmental you know company organization right so we we know
that this problem has been around for a long time that there are problems with
funding there are types of their ways in which organizations you know need to
think critically about the funding they take for a whole host of reasons now
I go to these meetups of executive directors of very large tech
organizations there are a few different groups that I'm a member of there's so
fun nobody's heard of the software freedom conservancy like we're like a
really tiny organization and it's fun to like slip in with the really big ones
that have you know that are worldwide and that are you know thousands of people
that that are employed by them and here are the kinds of analysis that those
executive directors do about these problems and I went to one meeting of
executive directors of tech orgs and we were sitting there and they were really
comparing their metrics for saying no to funders and their main criteria that
they had most of them had settled on was just a very simple we will not take
money from anyone who is actively working against our mission right that was
their metrics so if the funder sponsors research that fights against you know
looking for a solid if if they actually take do now for free and open source
software I just this I'm not saying which organization these are the sponsors
from you can guess but like if you look at all of these companies that are
invested in free and open source software you know most of them are writing
and promoting proprietary software and so I said at this meeting hey everybody
like I know I'm the quirky on the quirky free software person you know I'm always
asking you to meet on big blue button instead of meeting on zoom like what do
you all think what is your advice for me what do you think that I should do
because all of the companies that are in our space are actively promoting
proprietary software like what would you do and silence total silence they're
like oh yeah they're all actively working against your mission I don't know
what you do how do you survive and you know so so we we thought about that a lot
of people in the field feel like you know what that money is better off in our
hands let's take as much as we can away from the people who are doing these
things that are working counter-tour mission even if we don't like them 100% even
if we think that they're bad we can take their money and we can run with it
and do what we want to do to forward our mission and and we'll be good and we're
then subjugating that entire you know construct but it doesn't really work
out that way most of the time so so especially so especially with the you know
the public good organizations when you compromise your values your fundamental
the way you do you know who you are and what drives your your activities it subtly
and not subtly affects what the organization does how it's structured what
it can accomplish you can hear it even when people talk about the work that they're
doing when they're hoping they're going to get certain funding they censor
what they're going to say and it's becomes a lot less authentic but more importantly
it's subtly influences what programs happen and what programs don't sometimes
it overtly influences it and it can be a real a real problem and so you have to
really think what what is your projects DNA right what is your organizations what is
your organization doing that special why does your organization exist I was going to say
why do you deserve to exist but none of our organizations deserve to exist right we are
fighting to make improvements in the areas that we think are so important and if people think
that that's important they will get on board and help you find money and help donate to you
and if they don't well you know maybe it wasn't that important and you'll have to find
something else to do but if you don't say focused on that mission and you're willing to
compromise around the corner you will never build trust for your organization you'll
never be able to get the volunteers that you need to keep going and your funding will
then constantly be on a downward spiral towards things that take you further afield from
the reason you got started to begin with so you got to say no you got to say no I am now
that I'm in a funding crisis like all of the other orgs I keep thinking back to literally
I would say a million dollars over the last ten years that I've had to say no to and I think
was that the right thing to do was that the right thing to do and you know what the answer
was yes it was the right thing to do and I'll talk a little about some of the things that was the
right thing why this was the right thing to do so funding that will fundamentally redefine or
restructure what you're doing we're constantly approached by funders that want to like they have
they have their funding agenda and they want to accomplish their funding agenda with whatever
organizations will come and you know be a part of that construct and you have your mission
and as someone who's trying to raise money you're you want to make what you do fit what they
want to fund right like that's what that's the constant dance but if you redefine what you want to
do to match their funding in a way that fundamentally changes what you would be doing you are
probably not the right person to accomplish that work to begin with and secondly you'll be so
far from where you started out that you will not have accomplished what it was you were trying to
do and from a nonprofit charitable perspective that means that often this work would be better
done in a for-profit setting rather than a nonprofit public good setting so funding that redefine
and then furthermore we were we really were in the advanced stages of applying to U.S. government
grants that would have we would have had to do some significant restructuring and we were thinking
of possibly doing it because it's fit with what we were doing but had we done that we would certainly
be looking at no funding today after completely restructuring what we did from the U.S. government
freezing its funds and so if you restructured redefine what you want to do too much you're subject
to the to the various instruction and you will be possibly left with nothing funding that distracts
you so often funders will come to your organization and they will have some idea of something that
they want you know they want you to do and it fits within your mission but it's not the first thing
you would do but because there's money like and this this happens quite regularly where someone comes
and they're like but we want to do this thing and it will give you 300,000 if you just you know
if we did it we would not be doing any of the other work that we had meant to you and maybe
there's something bad about that other work but it didn't actually accomplish the mingles of our
organization and and and it basically distracts us and we find that the donors that come in
sometimes are corporations that wanted to distract us so that we don't do things that are you know
more you know things like GPL enforcement and compliance and our diversity initiative where we
don't exploit our our our you know companies constantly want us to give them the private data of our
interns and applicants no no we will mock if you that data and some you know so funding that
compromise your values is an organization and your shared values with your community and and so
we've I've seen a number of organizations that take funds because they're desperate to continue
an example of this recently I'm not going to call out any of the organizations that have done this
but quite a few organizations have taken money with reservation from like the wallways of the
world right or you know or you know companies that there feel that their community feels uncomfortable
with because it was either you know turn off the lights or take the money from this company and
they're left in this limbo of you know are we you know where where volunteers start turning away
from the organization where you know the integrity from which the organization speaks with is compromise
funding that purchases control we have a lot of that this little equation of C6 equals two two times C3
because I actually was on a paddle I was in a room where one of the large C6 organizations executive
director was in the room and somebody said what's the difference between a C3 and a C6 in the
United States what's the difference so C C3 is the code in the U.S. IRS statute for a public charity
and a C6 is a trade association that's formed for a common business interest and organizations
look at their all nonprofits and the C6 is say we are a nonprofit working to make the world
better as a open source and the C3s are public cherries and they have totally different
regulations the C3s are organized for the public good and the executive director of the C6 said
I'll tell you the difference six is twice as good as three and you know they certainly make twice
the salaries at least those organizations but but what the C6 has done is they've established a
model where funders can get control of the organization so the funders get board seats and this
means that often in this field the corporate sponsors are very used to having that kind of
control and so when the corporate sponsors come they say what do we get for our sponsorship right
what do we get and they say you know this other organization is giving me a board seat
huge mistake I've seen C3s go through contortion to give some kind of control to companies and it
basically it it blows up the whole organization because you can't build a governance based on
public good when you have the corporate interests steering the way some there have been various
things where you can you can like harness this corporate the corporate interests without
giving the actual control the go go no foundation pioneered the advisory boards so you get those
companies to be on an official board that has no actual corporate control but they feel like they have
access or they have some other but it's it's sort of like a more of a trapping than as there
are ways that you can you can have that but anything that gives control is is just a huge mistake
and the more orgs that accept the board seat roll the harder it is for all of the other organizations
to say no funding that makes you work way too hard so I have done this before where I've been like
oh my gosh a $10,000 donation thank you so much and then the donation causes us to have to work
hours and hours and hours and like there was one donation that we got where the person you know
is like all I want is for you to generate this little report about this you know little thing
and it's no big deal and and then it turned out to actually write the report took several staffers
for a few weeks and it would have been like we would have been so much better having said no to it
so thinking about what is the workload of that that this donation will generate and that comes
to pass especially for your marked donations where grant makers or corporations but often here
grant makers want very specific work and I would say that from our perspective it's very hard
when we apply for grants to be able to like present our work in the ways that are amenable for
the grant makers that also don't cause us to have huge huge paperwork requirements or other
kinds of of additional workload and and so you know I think that one of the things that I've been
really frustrated that folks that are seeking funding don't don't do is they don't read the fine
print on any of the donations they got and so and this is mostly true of the corporate donations
although I've had it also in the grant makers space that often the corporations are giving you
peos where there are terms of service and almost every organization that I know just clicks
yes on those they just accept them but when you read them those terms are wild the objectionable
so most companies purchase orders have terms of service that require the organizations that they don't
need to to grant indemnities so the organizations promise that they will pay those companies
if there's ever any loss to them related to anything about the organization so for an organization
like us that cares about GPL compliance and making sure that companies do the right thing like
it's a huge amount of liability that we are undertaking and so some companies you put and it's not
just the indemnities there are other provisions as well that are just wildly objectionable
confidentiality provisions that are just absurd right and when you read so I read this and I'm like
you know this is a vatitude being an executive director and a lawyer is only hey have you
checked out your terms of service like did you read those you should totally check out you know
section section 10 like you really think that if somebody sue you over you know like so for
where all of our outreach communities they're all they're in all of the technology if somebody
sue you over a Linux kernel thing that you're gonna like I'm a green that I'm gonna have to pay
millions of dollars even though you've given us this $20,000 sponsorship like is that
do you know that and usually the people who are talking to have no idea and then what's really
interesting is when those like people who are working at that company try to elevate that at
their corporations it really reveals so some corporations say no problem and they actually give us
exceptions so oh always ask for exceptions because the more of us organizations that ask for
exceptions to these terms of service the easier they get there are major corporations that I just say
oh you forgot this year to give me the indemnity like the to strike the indemnity and they're like oh
I'm so sorry I'll take it out right and all the other orgs are just accepting that indemnity
there are plenty of corporations that say nope sorry these are our terms of service and we will not
we will not veer from them and I see that the same companies are sponsoring like every other organ this
space so read the fine print don't like bring on all of this liability it's not that hard to
imagine a world where some of these corporate sponsors become desperate in some way or where
our technology becomes really inconvenient for them right and they want to find these mechanisms
to shut our organizations down because we're disrupting that that technical space so definitely read
the fine print another reason to say no is that not just in terms of like trying to get our
interns data and other kinds of information and exploitive practices from funders but a lot of
funders are really interested in SEO and they're really interested in their local placement
and that's all well and good people really do watch our sponsorship page when companies come on
as sponsors people say oh I noticed that such as this company became a sponsor of software freedom
conservancy or outreachy like people really do look and I think that some companies are you know
acknowledge that and notice that and and they find that it's very helpful for their talent recruitment
but but others are you know they're just looking for SEO and and so we only give no follow links
we will not give other links and and what's interesting is we have all kinds of companies looking
to give us sponsorship to promote all kinds of businesses that we would never want to promote ourselves
and so casinos escort services all that are things you would be so surprised that we get
and so we've turned down sponsorships that are like you know we we turned down a company that sells
guns we turned down on me so like you know because we because this is promoting the values of our
project and you know so they're all all these reasons why we we we we wide of turning turning down
these funds but when we do when we do list our sponsors we try to limit the kind of exploitative
practices that they can have on our community right so that when when people come and CR sponsors
they are not worried that they're going to be stuck in a predatory situation we also had to turn
down companies where for example you know and especially with our outreach initiative people are
often coming to us to rehabilitate there I'm not sure if I've just let it about that later but
try to rehabilitate their reputation right we for example we we've had more than one donor who is
associated with Epstein or some other problematic situation who wanted to sponsor to just kind of
show that they the existence themselves from that ugly past or or we had a company that was
donating to us where one of their executives had made a sexist and racist comments publicly and so
we had to say well you know they wanted to sponsor us at outreach to your us at us a sea to show that
they're really they're really good guys and in those instances you know it's hard to say no to the funding
but we basically we are basically saying that that behavior is okay if we funding in that way so
after I mean it's if they're complicated analyses right we we we run our hands for days and weeks
and you know I've been a participant of many community discussions about what is it okay to do this
and when it isn't so you know like we talk about sustainability right the the whole sustainability
discussion has continually boiled down to pay the maintainers right it's all about how do we get
money to the people doing this work but sustainability is so much more than that our values
sustain us that we would have no free and open source software world if we didn't have
principal people who wanted to make the world a different place and by abandoning that for funding
we burn people out we demoralize them and we do not get the next generation of contributors who are
excited to really make the important work that needs to be done to actually move the needle
towards software freedom so we have to think about sustainability not just in monetary terms but
also in terms of our values and what we want to accomplish in not just the next year but in the
next decades and even if that means that some of our organizations die you know and no longer exist
it means that our principles can continue and we can actually do this work long term and so I'll be
very sad if I'm at Fauston next year and I can't say this is all the great work that software
freedom conservancy and RIT has done but I will hold my head up high and note that we did the
work that we wanted to do and that we've produced the materials that preserve the values and that
will hopefully inspire people to do it in the long run we don't have the right to do this work
it's a privilege and we're so grateful that we're supported especially by individuals
but and grant makers and that we are able to say no to corporations and say no to problematic
funding and I hope that can continue and so you know I think we're all in this this together like
the funding crisis is so intense I won't I won't I'll leave more time for questions so we won't
talk about that but I think I have five minutes or four minutes and I would love to take a few
questions if anybody yes I'm going to give you a round of applause. Oh thank you so I'm
really lovely to get to meet you in person so I'm 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20. Oh you're an outreachy
grad her way working at Witsha. Oh amazing so an outreachy grad is here working at Open Life Science
I have to repeat everything for the recording. So my name is an actually a question but just to
say I wouldn't be sitting in this room if after she didn't exist I wouldn't have found my
organization without an outreachy. Dub says she wouldn't be here in this room if we weren't for outreachy
who would fit to get for that opportunity. Thank you for seeing me so glad but who has questions
about the saying no to funding because I saw from the faces of people in this room that some of
you have been in these situations there have been a few very prominent discussions in different
communities about these situations especially as of late. Yeah you talked a lot about
when to say no and a lot of cases as you said that we are in the crisis went to make exceptions.
When do you make exceptions like when do you say yes when you shouldn't say yeah or when you
would ordinarily know when you're so desperate I really think I might regret saying this
but I really think that when you're so desperate like especially with the nonprofit space
I feel like you you got to find something else to do like I feel like if you turn around
and abandon your principles then what are you even working for it a begin with? So the lines
are not clear right it's like you can find your way to say yes to some uncomfortable funding
from time to time but it leads to a very difficult spot and I really feel strongly that if
you're in that situation you have to articulate it clearly to the people who are your previous
funders your potential funders and just hope that people come in and they value what you do
you can basically they're the rule in nonprofit fundraising is once every 10 years you can tell
people that you're going to close up if they don't like the lights will go off if you do not
donate today you can only do that once every 10 years all right and so I've been thinking about
doing that and I like I think I can hang on with one more positive fundraiser and the truth is
that's all we can do we're the free and open-source software community we have to rely on transparency
and if people don't value it then we don't like there's no right to do it you know?
Yeah thank you for your talk I wondered if you have any good advice on a festive ground fire
wall in techniques yes or are there any effective firewalling techniques for grants to work on
white so people don't necessarily appreciate that when you take in grants there's a tremendous amount
of paperwork so you must track any grants that you organization gets in that are for specific
activities you need to make sure that you spent those funds in the way that you said you were
going to spend them and so you have to you have to track those activities and it is very complicated
to do that the question is like how do you how do you handle that massive amount of paper work
they're okay yeah there is a structure yeah well so we at software freedom conservancy
use only free and open source software we're never possible obviously we have we use bean
count software for our books and records and we have been working on improving that for
for export to other nonprofits and it has we have program tags and we have other ways of checking
our use of funds but it is extremely labor intensive and the way that I mostly handle it is
by trying to get as much unrestricted funding as possible so I try to just so I try to push back
on grants and it's been mostly effective where I've been able to move our private grant makers
into less restrictive purposes by simply explaining if I take this funding in I will have to spend
a lot of hours you know this is how my team works this is what we work on this is our expertise which
is why you're funding us is because we are have this expertise and you will take away from that
by by restricting it so much here's what we expect to accomplish does that match your funding goals
and how can we explain it in ways that you can report on the work that we're doing that match
is what you're seeking to do and that's been fairly successful so far but as I said
we're in a funding crisis too so I might regret everything I've said here but I really appreciate
you your time any ideas that you all have I would I have to run because I have to fill in for
in the main track because my colleague is sick so I have to run right from here but thank you
so much and let's have more conversation in the future.