are the board members-members for life, or can we vote them out, and replace the weak links? if they can be voted out; what is the process and how do we get this ball rolling?
also, is there a spread sheet we can view to see where/how the foundation spends money?
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Was asking for something similar in another topic today.
As there is a discussion if the founders reward should be continued i think first of all we should know what funds/money has been spent for what over the years. A full report on all funds received by the foundation and what and how many of these funds went where. Same goes for Zcash co by the way, just my opinion.
Just and than a discussion IF the founders reward should be continues should begin at all. Just adding it here too as you asked for a spread sheet on how much money was spent for what…
The questions about board members is actual and interesting as well in my opinion. Good question.
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That vote thing last year, besides determining asic resistance also determined the board members + other things
Not a spreadsheet but informative
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I might be wrong here, but if i remember right the last elections have been to ADD new board members, not to elect the “old” board members again, or? If i’am right than @kek made a valid request, how, when, where and how often are the board members elected again or up for election and what is the whole process of election for the whole board.
- Providing a platform for new Board candidates and to elect new board members
Reading it again i think i’am correct that only new foundation board members have been elected. Still no garantee after someone confirms this.
The other paper you posted might be informative, but without a real spredsheets of how much funds/money went to each it’s not really telling the whole story.
Even in the name of transparency, especially for the foundation, there should be yearly spreedsheets how funds have been used, or even better monthly or quarter reports on this financial matters. Just my 2 cents and opinion of course.
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Two stood down and two were voted in. There is more here but this info is outdated as the Satisfaction Approval Voting was not used GitHub - ZcashFoundation/Elections: A space to describe and run the Zcash Foundation's elections.. I’m strongly in favour of a fully elected Board with fixed term limits - assuming the process runs anything like last year this is something we can obviously propose.
Edit just to clarify, as I misread your comment, existing board members did not have to run again.
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Both good questions for @acityinohio or @sonya
Perhaps some feedback on what exactly you feel the Foundation could be doing better would be more constructive criticism? @kek
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Like this thread, gives a glimpse into the current governance model. Away from the usual price speculation discussion we have most of the time.
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I imagine the tentativeness applies to the value of zcash when it’s acquired from the founders reward payout and exchanged
i’m more interested where money’s being spent. as-of-now i’m unsure the foundation in current form is adding significant value to the ecosystem. foundation certainly does close to nothing to boost investor confidence (which is most important). 2019 - we don’t even have an “official” wallet yet. maybe money should be reallocated, but i cannot find a proposed budget/budget that was voted into play. maybe they’re putting money exactly where it needs to be to add real value to the ecosystem, nobody knows…
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Thanks for prompting this discussion @kek. Let me start with this reply first:
We haven’t published it yet, but I’m in process writing a (rather lengthy) State of the Foundation report on publishing details around the same level as last year’s budget in addition to updating the community on the current state of our treasury and what we actually spent last year. I gave some numbers last month but the forthcoming post—which should be published this week—will have more granularity.
In addition, you can always view our Form 990s, which we are required by law as a 501(c)3 to submit to the IRS every year. We generally file extensions on these, so they’re not submitted until later in the year. Thus you can expect 2018’s 990 to be on our website by end of 2019. Given the delay, I’d view them as a good source for verifying that we spend money according to the (much more up-to-date) blog posts. Trust but verify and all that. 
You can view 2017’s 990 on the website—thanks to this discussion I realize it wasn’t carried over during our GitHub consolidation, so I just remedied that now.
Re: your other question regarding the election process, as stated in the repo, the election really should have been called an “advisory” panel. Relevant section screenshot here:
From a legal perspective, the Zcash Foundation operates like most non-profit 501(c)3s, in which the Board is ultimately responsible for voting new members into the Board. The Board membership terms are three years, according to Section 3, Article 1 of the Foundation’s bylaws. Two vacant seats were left by Naval and Yan last year, and Amber and Ian were elected by the Board (based on the advice of the Community Governance/Advisory Panel) into their terms. The Board may expand membership if they so choose, and there aren’t any restrictions on being elected for another term. I do not speak for the Board, but I do not expect another Board election this year (though I do expect another expanded Community Advisory Panel process for other policy decisions). CC @amiller, the Zcash Foundation’s Chairman of the Board, if he’d like to offer his opinion on the above.
More generally, the Board votes on strategy and policy but also has the key job of evaluating the Executive Director/management of the Foundation and whether they are executing on the strategic goals of the non-profit. In that regard I personally believe they’ve been doing an exemplary job, but I’m obviously biased. If you are unhappy with how the Foundation has been working, it’s probably more effective to petition the Board to fire me, TBH.
One thing that I’d like to make abundantly clear, particular regarding this reply: it is not in the Foundation’s Mission to boost investor confidence in ZEC. We care about long-term development of value in the Zcash ecosystem as it pertains to building private Internet payment infrastructure for the public good, and while our endowment is weighed heavily in ZEC, we are indifferent about short-term price fluctuations and will not engage in activities purely designed to boost investor confidence.
I hope this elucidates the structure of the Foundation, and keep an eye out for the State of the Foundation post this week (we’ll definitely post about it on the forums).
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this needs to change - you added the “short term” part. i’m definitely looking forward to reading the “state of the foundation” report.
side note - you misspelled “boost investor confidence” easy place to start would be to have an official wallet people can download from the official foundation website.
Apologies, edited it to say “investor confidence” rather than “short-term investor confidence.”
And hope more of your questions are answered in the report!
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I checked all the links in your post but couldn’t find exact numbers on how much funds have been used for what exactly. Maybe i missed something, but as said, i wasn’t able to to find any detailed information on how much USD/ZEC has been used exactly for what and when and why.
Sure, there are here and there some references like grant 1 and 2 each 125,000$, but that’s nothing detailed in my opinion.
Maybe it’s my vault as an business owner that i work with more detailed balances when it comes to expeneses and funds and analyzing what went where when…
Edit: I absolutly agree with kek on this matter that there should be more transparency so the community is indeed aware what’s used for what and why and when.
And this should be done nearly in real time, not 1 or 2 years lagging. Again, just my opinion. Is there any information on the same matter for Zcash co? I said it bevor, bevor a discussion is done about an funder reward extension i think it’s urgently needed to show the community where the founder rewards went so far, what it’s used so far and so on.
@acityinohio and @Shawn I saw below response when a community member asked if funds are held in t-addr-
“And No, the Foundation doesn’t have all of their funds in a transparent address, that wouldn’t be very Private for the Foundations employees, contractors, and businesses they have to pay“.
How do you audit foundation funds held in shielded addresses? how are the auditors selected?
For grant spending, the detailed awards are very public but not included as part of any of those posts @boxalex. You can drill down on details for each grant via the posts announcing the 2017Q4 and 2018Q2 grant winners:
For the future grant platform we’re building it should be even easier to see what the Foundation (and the community) funds.
Other budgetary details are not shared for a variety of reasons: for example, as a business owner, would you share employee salaries publicly? To respect their privacy I don’t, unless it’s legally required by the IRS via the 990. But I still provided overall budget for headcount in my initial post announcing the budget last year. Similarly there are limited marginal returns for sharing discrete, real-time budget updates: it’s operationally difficult and we already go beyond what is legally required for a 501(c)3.
I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement here; there is, and ideally we’d have more discrete budgetary updates throughout the year, and again I hope my State of the Foundation post answers these questions with more detail.
@SPinSin: who from the Foundation said that? Most of our ZEC is with a custody partner and it’s in t-addrs at the moment, but we’d like to migrate to z-addrs once our custody partner can manage it. Once it is migrated to a shielded address we will likely post a view key (once it’s possible with Sapling) so anyone can check on the Foundation’s current long-term storage of ZEC.
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@SPinSin @acityinohio that quote was from me, I was under the assumption that the funds would probably be held in a variety of addresses/forms not necessarily all sitting in one transparent address as a user had asked previously.
Edit: here is the original post I responded to: How many ZEC does Zcash Foundation have？
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Ah thanks for the clarification. It’s definitely not all in one t-addr, and we do shift to shielded from time to time to make payments (e.g. all the grants from 2018Q2 were paid into Sapling z-addrs).
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Thx for the links, will check them tomorrow, too late now. Are there any other fundings beside Q2/2018 and Q4/2017?
As a business owner mostly not, but than again and i hope you excuse me for being absolutly straight here, the foundation isn’t a business and doesn’t generate any profits its own.
U.S. Foundations may differ from Foundations in the EU, but due my awareness here every foundation has to be absolutly transparent in any aspect, exatly due the reason, they use money and funds that are given to them.
I might be totally wrong and others may have an absolutly different stance on this, but in my opinion absolutly every cent used for whatever should be listed and the community should have access to these numbers.
Why not keeping them transparent in T-adresses and have the adresses and all transactions visible for the whole community and that way connect them with expenses made for example?
Don’t get me wrong, but while until now it everything seemed to be normal things change after the question arised if the founders reward should continue. If for now i perosnally miss a lot of transparency, easyness, oversight and public accounting…