GNOME Foundation Announces Cost Cutting Measures Due To Budget Woes

While the recently-departed GNOME Foundation Executive Director in the summer statement was described as "drafting a bold five-year strategic plan for the Foundation, securing two important fiscal sponsorship agreements with GIMP and Black Python Devs, writing our first funding proposal that will now enable the Foundation to apply for more grants, vastly improving our financial operations, and implementing a break-even budget to preserve our financial reserves." It turns out that wasn't enough. The GNOME Foundation today announced some new cost-cutting measures for the project overseeing the open-source GNOME desktop.

The Board of Directors for the GNOME Foundation announced tonight that they have had to "make some tough decisions to ensure the Foundation's long-term financial sustainability."

Among those tough decisions was having to reduce staff with letting go of their creative director and director of community development.

The GNOME Foundation is also making operational adjustments in the areas of event organization and representation, marketing initiatives, fundraising efforts, and graphic design.

There will also be an impact on GNOME's travel expenditures. The reduced travel statement as part of the GNOME Foundation update reads:

"Unless additional funds are secured, there will be significant reductions on community, board and staff travel to events. We’ll be reassessing which events are most critical for staff attendance."

On the positive side, key events like LAS, GNOME.Asia, and GUADEC will be unaffected. They have also obtained funding to keep with their current level of Outreachy participation for internships. Externally-sponsored projects and infrastructure/operation costs remain covered.

These cost-cutting measures are being done since "we raised less than expected last year." Due to the foundation's reserves policy, action needed to be taken for their financial year running from 1 October 2024 to 30 October 2025. More details on the current financial health of the GNOME Foundation will be out in the coming weeks.

More details for those interested via foundation.gnome.org.