July 2021 Videoconference

Meeting Details

  • Date: 27 July 2021
  • Time: 12PM US Eastern, UTC 1700 convert
  • Location: Remote
  • Call-in: Zoom Meeting

Agenda

CALL TO ORDER

CHANGES TO THE AGENDA

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

REPORTS

Staff reports, including Executive Director and Finance can be found after the agenda.

Organizational KPIs

KPI	                July        Delta
Members             4603        546 more members (44.8% YoY growth)
Chapter meetings    78          17 more meetings
RSVPs               3311        2208 more RSVPs
Visitors            4.14m       102% of average
YTD net income      -128k       -115k (June - May)
Cash assets         1.180       83k more (June - May)

KPI Summary

Milestones delivered in July

  • Membership portal is now live
  • Adsense grant configured and 3 campaigns set up (20th anniversary, training, OWASP)
  • We Hack Purple Partnership & Member Benefit
  • Black Hat Virtual Booth Partnership and member discount
  • First completely new Employee Handbook since 2012
  • Revised Speaker Agreement to support draft Events policy
  • Revised Trainer splits, to improve trainer splits per 2021 Operating Plan
  • Revised Corporate Membership program ready
  • Preparation for Corporate Membership drive (starts August 1 through September 24)
  • July training

Milestones due in August

  • Draft Expenses policy ready for approval
  • Draft Events policy ready for approval
  • Draft Projects policy ready for approval
  • Email clean up program due to be completed
  • 2020 audited financials delivered for 990
  • 2020 Annual Report completed for fundraising purposes
  • Business Continuity Plan draft ready for Board review
  • Corporate Sponsorship Drive Month 1
  • Preparation for September Lifetime Membership drive
  • Preparation for the election - announcements, ensuring memberships are accurate, etc
  • Travel policy drafted and ready for community review

Delayed or Stalled Milestones

  • Events Committee
  • Mission Statement
  • Bylaws review (postponed to 2022)

Finance Summary

e-Votes to read into minutes

None since June Board meeting.

OLD BUSINESS

Motion to approve the Events Committee

NB: this may need to be tabled until July pending a status update on Events Committee members.

Background: The Events Committee will assist leaders and participants to hold high quality local and regional activities and events. It will assist the Foundation with maintaining a program committee, and assist with sourcing and organizing volunteers and so on for global events. The Committee will also advise the Board on the Events and associated policies, along with maintaining Events in a Box, and improving virtual, local, and regional budget templates and processes. There are representatives from the Events Committee here today if you have any questions.

Motion: “Resolved, the Events Committee is approved with the above charter.”

  • Sponsor: Grant Ongers
  • Second: Sherif Mansour

NEW BUSINESS

Motion to approve Projects Policy

Tabled to August with sponsor’s agreement, as it wasn’t ready.

Motion to approve Events Policy

Tabled to August with sponsor’s agreement, as it wasn’t ready.

Motion to approve Expenses Policy

Tabled to August with sponsor’s agreement, as it wasn’t ready.

Motion to change derestriction of restricted funds

Background The donation policy currently states “Unspent Restricted donation balances become unrestricted at the end of each calendar year.” This is PRECISELY when a lot of organizations have some spare budget and want to help OWASP. We should make this 12 months to remove the disincentive for making a donation just when they are the most likely to have the spare funds under “use it or lose it” budgetary policy that most organizations operate under.

Motion: “Resolved, that the Donations policy be updated to remove the calendar year de-restriction policy, and instead permit directed donations to remain restricted for a 12 month period. Approval of this motion would change https://owasp.org/www-policy/operational/donations from

“Unspent Restricted donation balances become unrestricted at the end of each calendar year.”

to

“Unspent Restricted donation balances become unrestricted after twelve (12) months.”

  • Sponsor: Sherif Mansour
  • Second: Grant Ongers

COMMENTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, AND OTHER BUSINESS

ADJOURNMENT

Adjournment motion

The next general Board meeting is on August 24, at 12 pm US Eastern Time.

  • https://owasp.org/www-board/meetings/202108.html

“It is moved, and seconded to adjourn. Those in favor, say “aye””

Sponsor: Sherif Mansour Second: TBA

Staff Reports

Executive Director

A very busy month for us. We hit 4600 members for the first time, because of three intertwined reasons:

  • Mail clean up program communications (manage to policy)
  • We Hack Purple member benefit caused a jump in memberships after the initial announcement
  • 4500 member social media promotion

I want to highlight that by managing to policy, we have hit our highest ever financial member count. At the time of writing, OWASP has 4603 members. Although the highest “official” number we’ve ever had, this number is likely low, because we have identified discrepancies between Stripe, Copper and MailChimp. These will be investigated upon Harold’s return, and we will put in compensating controls for the election to ensure every eligible member can stand or vote per a previous Board vote.

We are about to launch our revised Corporate Membership program. This will go live at Black Hat 2021. Which leads to announcing that we are participating in a virtual booth, and there will be member discounts, which will be announced on Monday. We we will launch our Corporate Membership with a two month Corporate Membership drive leading up to our 20th Anniversary. Our Black Hat co-marketing goes live this weekend, which gives OWASP members a $200 discount in return for a free virtual booth. We have reconnected with Black Hat after recent staff changes, and it looks good for participation at Black Hat 2022.

We are planning our next membership drive in September to encourage more Lifetime memberships. This will may lead to a bit of a cash influx now, but create a revenue hole in 10 years’ time, by which time I hope that OWASP has fully recovered from the pandemic.

I have socialized the idea of bulk membership discounts as a Corporate Membership benefit with our two membership benefit partners, and had a reply from one of them, who is very supportive of this move. I will follow up with the other partner next week for their feedback. If this goes ahead, as the Board sets membership fees, we will need to have a discussion of the discount available under this program.

In staffing news, Alonna Stock has decided to spend more time with her family, and we wish her all the best. We are actively recruiting for an Event Coordinator to replace Alonna, so if you know any good event contacts, please send them our way.

Finance

Below is the PRELIMINARY write up for June 2021.

Attached please find the preliminary OWASP Combined (Converted to USD for all reports) financial pkg for June 2021 which represents financial performance through the 6th 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.

Income Statement:

  • Revenue: On an accrual basis, total revenue, YTD was $460.1K as compared to the budget of $383.5. The results are Better by $86.6K, with Conference, Memberships and Donations, being over budget by $1K and $88.5K and $31.8K, respectively. While Merchandise, and Trademark income were a combined <$34.7K> below budget YTD. On a quarterly basis combined Actual was better than budget by $42.8K with only Merch and Trademarks under budget. I have added an Event P&L tab that has all of the events YTD results noted.

  • Expenses: Total spending YTD 2021 is $588.2K which is LESS than they YTD Expense budget of $504.7K by $16.5K with only G&A over Budget by $29.8K due to Underbudgeting Benefits/Taxes/Insperity fee, Legal fees, Unbudgeted Professional Development. On a quarterly basis Actual expenses were $26.2K UNDER Budget as all depts were under budget except for overages in Chapter ( Meet up fees) and G&A for the same variance to Budget as the YTD Issues.

  • Net Income/Loss: YTD 2021 Net income, on a combined Accrual basis is Negative $128.1.2K which is Better than the YTD 2021 APPROVED budget of negative <$221.2K> by $103.14K . On a quarterly basis the Actual Net Income was Positive $-95.2K which was better than the Budgeted Negative $111.4K by $26.2K.

  • Chapter Funds: US bal is $853.1K , EU Ch bal is $65.7K. US Proj bal is $220.2K. EU Proj bal is $-9K . All balances are slightly down from the previous month

POINTS of NOTE:

Continuing the narrative theme from previous months, as of 6.30.21 our cash position was $1,180K which is UP from 5.31.21 cash bal of $1,096K. Our avg monthly spend for operations is roughly $98K including all payroll, which is still roughly about 12 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 $173K (up $40K from 5.21 bal) and is just over 1.7 months of reserve taking, us to an estimated 10.34 months of Oper. reserve, again a good number, if we factor in the $186K of open AR that takes us back to 12 months. Now the concern is the $1,130 (up $3K, from the 5.21 bal) of Ch/Proj balances.

On a good note, deferred revenue, is starting to build up $205K from last month at $328K for events later in the year. which is a little over three months of reserve. Through June 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

  • Chapter Committee was provided with a second draft of the chapter handbook to edit.
  • No regional chapter model
  • Chapter Reactivation completed
  • Reached 4,500 OWASP members on 7/21/2021 in Copper
    • Mailchimp: Board KPI is showing 4,713 members with the 614 lifetimes included in the number.
  • Increase in membership renewal with the email deactivation initiative.
  • We Hack Purple announed on Twitter July 14, 2021
    • Memberships July 15-22 in Stripe = 132

Events and Corporate Support

Operations

2021 Board Elections

  • Election page has been posted on our website
  • An email will go out to the community next week reminding them they must be a member to vote in the election
  • Four seats will be available for this election
  • Terms ends for Sherif Mansour, Owen Pendlebury, Grant Ongers and Vandana Verma
  • Sherif Mansour and Owen Pendlebury have reached their term limits so are not eligible to run again
  • Call for Candidates will be released on August 15th

Projects and Technology

(Harold is on leave ^ajv)

  • This month saw the release of the Membership portal
  • Comms from the email clean up program have led in part to a substantial membership rise
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