Budget 2025

[derberg]

2024 Recap

We did update on budget 2024 on October. So let's first see summary of budget, to get an idea how much left.

Numbers 💵

Some figures:

• Budgeted expenses: ~$102,000
• Expenses:
  • Actual expenses: ~$84,850
  • Expenses for 2025: $19,980 //some costs are reimbursed next year, like mentorship program for example
  • Total expenses: $104,830

$ 2 830 above budget because of underestimated very large costs of shipping swags from USA

We could cover all the costs because we had much more sponsors than expected:

• Planned income $78,300.00
• Actual net income $121,670.50

Left for 2025: $84,787.84

Full info on 2024 budget

Conference

Conference is always managed outside main budget as the sponsors there are separated to have clean books, and dedicated investment.

• We had 2 sponsors ($5k each)
• We spent $7198.11 - visa/travel/shippments

The remaining budget is transferred to AsyncAPI Conference 2025 budget: $1,851.18

2025

Since there are works toward introducing Governance Board to replace Executive Director. I decided:

• I'm not gonna make any special improvements to how the budget is planned for 2025
• I alone do not want to fight with thoughts if the fiscal year budget is better or the calendar year budget is better. I have an opinion but, still just an opinion.

We are not a company where budget is supercritical, we are more like an organizations/government. We need more or less what we are able to spend money on. If throughout a year some expected sponsors do not contribute, we simply adjust spending plans.

Budget technique proposal

My proposal for now is to basically:

• Do budget as it is now, at the beginning of the year for 2025
• Apply an approach called Carryover Budget which means, that if in 2026 we need to spend some money in Q1, and for some reason budget is not yet approved/prepared, we simply apply the 2025 budget and related approvals. This way we assure for example that topics like Bounty for example can continue without issues

carryover you can see in your local countries, where parties argue on budget and do not want to approve it for a long time. The country is not bankrupt, it simply follows the budget agreed upon for the previous year to make sure the country runs as expected

Plans

• Budgeted expenses: $141,480.00
• Left from 2024: $84,787.84
• Planned net income $99,188.60

23% not planned (edit 17%), as a security pillow and budget security for 2026.

Plans overview

Feel free to have a deeper look and add a comment directly: Budget 2025

Items walkthrough

• Community Manager - community work done by @thulieblack
• Community Marketing Specialist - marketing work done by @iambami
• AsyncAPI Mentorship 2025 - continuation of our commitment to having own mentorship program to bring new talents to project
• Mentorships coordination - new item. @AceTheCreator who was doing mentorship in the past as a Postman employee, wants to continue supporting the community. He commits to apply/organize few mentorships (like GSoC or AsyncAPI Mentorship). The estimated cost, including all the support hours for the mentors and mentees, is $2k per program. We secure a budget for 3 programs.
• Bounty Program - continuation of the program, a bit more money as coordination work is now planned separately
• Bounty Program Coordination - separated costs from program budget, for clarity
• Swags - much smaller amount. The main focus is on stickers and cheat sheets production and distribution. I will distribute old swags to different events from my home for much cheaper.
• 3rd Party Services - Zoom and Buffer licenses
• AsyncAPI Grant - new item. In community goals for 2025. I bet that the first half of the year we will be working on the concept and figuring out how to spend first $15k
• JSON Schema sponsorship - continuing supporting our friend project and main dependency

Sponsors plans

Large part of sponsors pay monthly and have not reported they will terminate their support at some point in time. The assumption in budget is that they will pay every month until the end of 2025.

Some sponsors made a one-time payment in 2024 and I'm sure they will renew - just do not know on what level. I also plan to reach out to each and introduce another sponsor level called Diamond.

Summary tl;dr

• we are financially secure for 2025 🚀
• as usual, the conference budget is managed separately with extra sponsorship
• sponsorship renewal is in progress
• you can notice new sponsors already: GitHub (one-time $600 donation), APIDeck moving to Bronze level, Mercedes-Benz joining with $300 monthly ❤
• 2 new items in expenses: mentorship coordination work and AsyncAPI Grant
• I propose that for next years, until new Govenance Board decides differently, follow the carryover budget to avoid situations when budget is not yet approved and we have to cover some pre-approved expenses
• learning: the investment in swag store failed as too expensive. FedEx costs for shipping outside USA was extremely expensive and nobody was buying things ( I once tried, and for items worth $50, shipping was also $50). Shipping free swags to mentors/mentees or conferences reached ridiculous prices (sometimes on the tiny package to India was like $80) and closing the store and shipping a few boxes of swags to my place reached $6500 👀 . This year we focus on localized ordering and working on a list of network of merchants around the world for cost optimization.

====
EDIT

• I changed the prediction for IBM as I got confirmation that they will continue with Gold
• Also new prospectus to all sponsors went out - some new also reached and I actively put pressure on them: Oracle, WSO2 and Kong
• If you know anyone in Mulesoft, Google, Microsoft and AWS who manage budget for open source please get me in touch

[derberg]

@asyncapi/tsc_members please have a look at this budget 2024 summary and 2025 budget plan

we are not voting yet - I first would like to have your eyes on it, ask questions, maybe suggest adjustments - and then next week we can vote.

I want to kick off voting next friday.

some items from budget were already consulted with: @iambami (swags), @thulieblack (grant), bounty (@aeworxet) and @AceTheCreator (mentorships)

[akshatnema]

@derberg I've a couple of questions as:

Large part of sponsors pay monthly and now reported they will terminate their support at some point in time. Assumption in budget is that they will pay every month until the end of 2025.

Why will sponsors terminate their support?

Since there are #1634 to replace Executive Director.

Why are we replacing the Executive Director? 🤯 We have a very nice Executive Director right now 😊

If Executive Director won't be there, who will be the central person, handling all the accounts of AsyncAPI?

[derberg]

@akshatnema

Why will sponsors terminate their support?

sorry, spelling mistake, not now but have not.
assumption is that they will continue to pay

Why are we replacing the Executive Director? 🤯 We have a very nice Executive Director right now 😊 If Executive Director won't be there, who will be the central person, handling all the accounts of AsyncAPI?

well it is a good step as we do not remove the director, we replace the director, and replace the director with 3 people and goal is to have 5 people -> #1634. The plan is to not rely on one person, but split responsibility (one person can be responsible for account, one for sponsorship, etc). You know, we need to avoid the bus factor

I encourage you to join the discussion

[aeworxet]

I would still recommend having the budget for the next year TSC-approved no later than November 15th.

[derberg]

@aeworxet super hard, but maybe once we have a board of people, it will be possible

[derberg]

/vote

[git-vote]

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[Oloso-surur]

Hey @derberg

I was wondering if it might be possible to consider a slight increase in the payment for mentors. Given the projected budget increments, it seems like a good opportunity to acknowledge their contributions and dedication.

Additionally, I’d like to suggest raising @aeworxet payment to $500 as a gesture of appreciation for the excellent work he’s been doing.

[derberg]

@Oloso-surur thanks for the suggestions.

When I work on a budget I always first chat with coordinators of specific topics to check how things work. From @aeworxet I got a message that we should change nothing. And yes, I agree 100% that the coordination work that he is doing is a pro job. Regarding mentorship - we are not that excellent on the budget side - so far we are saving 17% of the budget for 2026 and the recommended amount is usually 20%. We know that sponsors will come, but we cannot be certain of anything without actual money in the account. Luckily budget is not a thing written in stone forever. The truth about budget is that it can be corrected in a few months - it could be updated between June and August, before we kick off AsyncAPI Mentorship, as the financial situation could be much clearer by then. This will be a good exercise for the new governance board that I hope we will have by then.

[derberg]

/check-vote