March 2021 Videoconference

Executive Director

Membership drive

The Two Year Membership drive has been a tremendous success. As of the time of writing, we have an 8.46% increase in memberships compared to February, with 223 full and regional two-year memberships sold during March, versus 60 in the same time frame in 2020. We have also had 120 one-year, and 10 Lifetime memberships during March so far, for a total of 353 memberships sold. This an all time membership high, and one of the largest organic sales months we’ve ever had.

Lisa is running an associated direct mail campaign targeting AppSec Cali attendees, whose membership is due to expire at the end of March. Of the 292 we identified in February, we believe just 10 have renewed. We will continue to run mail campaigns in the lead up to the end of their membership on top of our standard renewal notifications. If few renew, this will cause a dip in memberships in April, down from this month’s all time high.

We are expected to run a regional membership drive in April to coincide with a regional Brain Break event to be held in India. Lastly, I’d like to run a Lifetime membership drive during September to coincide with our 20th Anniversary.

20th Anniversary Kick Off

We opened the 20th Anniversary celebrations with a call to papers and sponsorship for a 24-hour event on September 24th, 2021. The 20th Anniversary event will be a truly global event spanning the entire planet. We’ve had tremendous sponsor interest in the event, which we will continue to promote in the coming months.

Finance Reform Progress

I held three town halls in various timezones, with approximately 120 registrations and around 90 attendees across all three events. The discussion went well, and I think there is a general community consensus behind the finance reform agenda. The first two policies have been through community review and are to be voted on this meeting. The following two policies will reform balances, with the expenses and events policy up next. I am hopeful that the Events Committee will be established in concert with the events policy.

As part of the Operating Plan 2021 and Events Policy update, we are modeling new trainer profit splits to be fairer on trainers and OWASP. We will ensure that we obtain our trainers’ general consent to the new profit splits because we have had feedback that the current settings are not particularly generous.

Inactive Chapters Initiative Progress

We are coming to the end of a 15 month journey to make more chapters active. Just looking at upcoming Chapter events, this initiative has paid off tremendously! We have a level of activity I’ve not seen since the pandemic began. Sadly, we have identified a small number of truly inactive chapters, who have not responded once in over 20 attempts including non-traditional means over the 15 months. I vacated their leadership last week, to permit us to try out the process for the residual chapters who have communicated with us, but not yet met the four basic requirements to bring them into line with being an active chapter: an up to date owasp.org website, an up to date listing of current chapter leadership, a link to where they organize events, and to have held a single meeting between February 2020 and March 31, 2021. We will work with the Chapters Committee to hold elections or ask new for leadership during April for those chapters who fail to meet these very minimal requirements. If we don’t have any luck, we will decommission chapters being de-listed. I have communicated this clearly to the Leaders list, to the OWASP Chapters, Community, and Leaders Slack channels, and to social media. I wish to thank each and every chapter leader who has held meetings and updated their information, because that’s the entire point of this exercise, more activity - not delete chapters. We are seeing a resurgence in community as a result of this initiative, and that’s exactly why we will be managing to the new Chapter policy after April 1, 2021.

Thank you Alonna!

Lastly, Alonna has just started maternity leave. I wish to thank Alonna for her massive contributions all this year to our events, documenting our processes, and assisting Kelly with handover! The best of luck, Alonna!

Finance

• February 2021 Financial Package

The financial package combines the Board summary, financial package, and balance summaries, including Chapter and Project balances. Below is the PRELIMINARY write up for Feb 2021.

Attached please find the preliminary OWASP Combined (Converted to USD for all reports) financial pkg for Feb 2021 which represents financial performance for the 2nd month of Fiscal year 2021. I have included the 2021 Approved budget which I have spread on a monthly basis.

I have also altered the Board summary to match the categories that the new FY 21 budget highlights. Finally I have included a YOY Balance sheet which we will review at the Board call next week.

Income Statement:

• Revenue: On an accrual basis, total revenue, YTD was $123.1K as compared to the budget of $104.2K. The results are Better by $18.9K, with Conference and Donations, being over budget by $32K and $15K respectively. While Merchandise, Trademark and Membership income were a combined <$28K>.
• Expenses: Total spending YTD 2021 is $163.8K which is LESS than budget by $13.6K due to Chapters , Outreach and Project expenses are UNDER budget by $24K offsetting EDU, WIA, Events, Fundraising and G&A, which combined is over $10K ( individual accounts have minimal overages).
• Net Income/Loss: YTD 2021 Net income, on a combined Accrual basis is Negative $40.7K which is Better than the YTD 2021 APPROVED budget of negative <$73.2> by $32.5K.
• Chapter Funds: US bal is $848.6K (down $1.5K) EU Ch bal is $64.9K (down $.2K). US Proj bal is $208.5K (Up $10.7K). EU Proj bal is $-9K

POINTS of NOTE:

Continuing the narrative theme from previous months, as of 2.28.21 our cash position was $1, 127.1K. Our avg monthly spend for operations is roughly $82K including all payroll, which is still roughly about 13.7 months of reserve, which is very good in the current environment. If we remove AP and the PPP loan ( $112.7K of PPP is in the process of being forgiven, however I will keep it here until it is) which totals $139.7K and is just over 1.7 months of reserve taking, us to an estimated 12 months of Oper. reserve, again a good number. Now the concern is the $1,113K of Ch/Proj balances. On a good note, Deferred revenue, is starting to build up again at $120.8K, which is a little over one month of reserve. However the open AR balance is $112.6K which I am told it is all collectible so that almost offsets the deferred revenue, just mentioned. Through Feb 2021 we are tracking a bit better than budget and we need to keep working on revenue while keeping costs down, while we are still in this no travel environment.

Chapters and Membership

As of March 18th

• 3,818 Total members
• 223 New Members from the 2-year memberships campaign
• $75.00 - 191
• $30.00 - 32

24 chapters identified as non-responsive to communications

3 new chapter (2 city chapters and 1 student chapter)

Events and Corporate Support

Preliminary Events and Training financial performance, final figures after March’s books are closed and P&L’s processed.

• Detailed Events Board Report

Operations

Working on merchandise and online books projects, and finalizing 2021 event P&Ls Virtual - Marissa will be leaving on March 26, so we will have a new contact. Policy Review - completed view of Awards and Scholarships Policy Policy Review - completed view of Grant Policy (Draft WIP)

Projects and Technology

Total: 208 New Last 60 Days: 5 Recently Updated: 119 Needs Website Update: 88 Projects

• https://owasp.org/projects/status/

Automation

• Google Email maintenance being worked on.
• Fixes for current failed webhook issue in place and testing.

Operating Plan Status