Notes from the April 2026 Governing Board meeting

Attendees: Ashlesh, Bowrna, Nemo, Rahul, Shree, Swastik. Bodhish was unfortunately not able to attend due to a prior engagement. Ashlesh also had to leave the call partway through.

On the 27th of April 2026, Shree Kumar, on behalf of the Governing Board, wrote to Rahul, recommending his extension as the CEO of the FOSS United Foundation, noting that the overall perception has been highly positive. In the email, he also asked Rahul to walk the GB through the coming two years. Before sharing his thoughts for the coming two years, Rahul asked the members of the GB what they believed we should focus on.

1. Nemo highlighted that “maintainers” should be the focus. He noted that recent changes, such as the new Maintainers Program and the Forklore campaign, are a step in the right direction, but noted the need to double down on this demographic. He observed that events take up a significant bandwidth of the Foundation’s time and energy.
2. Swastik highlighted that involving companies in the FOSS ecosystem should be a focus of the Foundation. He also noted that lesser emphasis should be placed on FOSS Clubs as the interest from students wanes over time, and that the students might not stay in the FOSS ecosystem after graduating.

Rahul highlighted three broad themes of focus over the coming two years: Internal/ Foundation front, Governing Board-related, and External.

Foundation / Internal

On the Internal/Foundation front, he noted three further themes that will be his focus - Staffing, Culture, and Transparency.

1. Rahul noted that activity at the Foundation used to be heavily cyclical, with IndiaFOSS and FOSS Hack being the primary activities. But this has changed over the past two years with the introduction of newer programs and campaigns. This has unfortunately created a staffing crunch at the Foundation, leading to Nemo's observation earlier about events taking up a significant bandwidth. Addressing this chronic staffing issue should improve staff morale and productivity significantly, and we’re making good progress towards this. Currently, the Foundation has hired two interns for Campaigns and Advocacy work, and is in the process of hiring a full-time events associate and an additional intern for the Maintainers Program.
2. As staffing problems are resolved, the team culture is of utmost importance. While the team culture is already in a great place, we intend to push this further over the coming two years by simply coming together for an offsite every quarter. This is especially necessary given that most of the staff are now spread across the length (not breadth) of India.
3. Finally, we will focus on improving transparency, specifically the transparency of decision-making that involves the broader Indian FOSS ecosystem. For instance, the staff is already sharing information with the GB about tentative grants decisions, but this can be improved further.

(Thought when writing the notes: Promoting and supporting the Indian FOSS ecosystem is a lofty goal, and transparency of decision-making is the bedrock upon which we will be able to stake our credibility and do our work)

External

On the External front, he noted three additional themes that will be our focus: Community and Funder messaging and Ecosystem management.

1. Even within the FOSS United Community, volunteers and regular participants don’t understand the full extent of activities at the Foundation, so it’s understandable when the broader Indian FOSS ecosystem sees us either as an events organising community or as a grant-giving organisation. This perception actively harms the possibility of achieving our stated goals. Over the past two years, we have experimented and refined our messaging. Over the coming months, we will reach out to Community partners in the Indian FOSS/Digital Commons ecosystem to help them fully understand what the Foundation stands for, and the various ways we could work together.
2. Similarly, the Foundation has struggled to attract new funders, but with the Maintainers Program, we are on the cusp of a clear value proposition/RoI for potential funders. We have already received informal confirmation of financial support from two new organisations for the Maintainers Program, and we intend to reach out to more over the coming months.
3. Finally, our work and the decisions we take every day are only as good as the information we receive from the ground. This is one of the reasons why the team spread out from Bengaluru to ensure that we have a direct line to FOSS/Digital Commons communities across the country. But we need to take this further by ensuring that the entire staff is involved in Ecosystem management. All staff are expected to participate in FOSS/Digital Commons communities and maintain relationships with members of the various communities regularly, e.g., via quarterly calls. This will help us avoid recency bias, where we work with the communities that we interacted with the most recently, instead of the communities that are most suited for the task at hand, and ensure that we’re not leaving things up to chance. Regular interactions with community members have already led to interesting outcomes over the past two years, and involving most of the staff will hopefully enable regular activity with a larger range of communities and organisations.

Governing Board

On the Governing Board front, there is only one focus - Working Groups.

1. Rahul noted that establishing one active Working Group per year will be the focus going forward, and Shree noted that our earlier imagination of Working Groups required significantly more volunteers/time than is realistic.
2. Rahul noted that the Grants Working Group is the closest to being ready, and Nemo noted that he will work to finish the WG charter. The staff will continue informing the GB about tentative grant decision-making in the meantime.
3. Additionally, Bowrna’s recent work talking to the staff is well-scoped and WG-worthy, and Rahul will work with Bowrna to figure out what this WG could look like.
4. In addition to the WGs, the GB has discussed the need to meet more than once a month, to speed up GB decision-making and to move the WGs along, but coordinating five people once a month is hard enough.
5. Instead of a second or a third GB meeting, the Foundation will organise community calls twice a month - on the first and third Mondays of every month. Earlier community calls were completely unscripted, but going forward, the calls will be partially planned. For instance, one of the calls will share a quarterly update of Campaigns, another will share an update of the Maintainers Program, and a third will share progress of FOSS Clubs. There will still be time during the calls for unscripted questions from the participants like before, but this opens up a new possibility for the GB members to opt in, when time permits, on a topic that they feel strongly about. Picking specific themes for community calls was suggested many moons ago by a participant in a community call, so it’s good to see things come together this way.

Miscellaneous

1. Nemo asked whether the Foundation used any tool for task tracking, and Rahul noted that we intend to start using GitHub projects, especially for instances where tasks are delegated across a large number of people, like IndiaFOSS. We are open to other task management software.
2. Nemo also asked if we were using a CRM to keep track of all of the communities and people we were talking to, and Rahul noted that we were considering using a tool like Frappe CRM or Monica CRM. Ashlesh put together an org rolodex, and we are finally beginning to incorporate it into the day-to-day functioning of the staff, hopefully making the transition into a full-blown CRM easier.
3. Nemo noted the importance of FOMO when attracting Indian orgs to fund our efforts, and that if one of the Indian unicorns funds our programs, convincing the rest should be easier.
4. Swastik also requested that the GB be kept in the loop about IndiaFOSS progress, noting that he received a number of questions about IndiaFOSS last year that he was unable to answer due to poor messaging.