Name: Sammy Fung
Full Name: FUNG Chun Wah Sammy
E-mail: sammyfung@gnome org
Corporate Affiliation: N/A
Dear Foundation members,
I’m announcing my candidacy for the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors election. I am an incumbent director to run for the board again. If I am elected again, I will continue to oversee the expansion of the board of directors to increase transparency and sustainability and the current fundraising status which is the key solution to improve the Foundation’s Finances.
I am a Hongkonger and an open source advocate who has participated and contributed to regional and global open source communities for more than 20 years, established some open source conferences, and connected to some other contributors and volunteers in Asia and the world. I have been a GNOME user since 2000, I became a GNOME Foundation member after I organised GNOME Asia Summit 2012 in HK, then I served at GNOME.Asia committee and now lead the committee. I was elected as a board member in 2022.
I was an entrepreneur of technology companies and a director of a non-profit charity organisation in HK. I studied technology, business, and accounting in college which trained me to oversee both business management and technology development in companies and non-profit organisation.
Expanding the board of directors to increase transparency and sustainability
I served on the board for 2 years, and it was a critical and long transition period for the foundation’s leadership and strategy. At the governance committee, I strongly support expanding the board to 9 seats and adding non-voting officer seats which can build a healthier non-profit foundation with a better board roster rotation, and committee members can also join the board meeting to work closely together. I would like more foundation members (and some non-members with fundraising experiences) to join the board as elected directors and non-voting officers.
In this transition period, the foundation spent a long period (more than 1 year) recruiting a new Executive Director, thanks to the hard work of the ED hiring committee and she is now on board for 6 months. Recently I feel that we are in an important moment of the foundation, I should continue to help this transition, so I desire to extend my service on the board for another 2 years, which provides some consistency and stability in the leadership.
Fundraising is the key solution to improve the Foundation’s Finance
For the finance part of the foundation, the board followed the previous role definition/scope of all committees and officers (board & staff team), and the finance committee oversees the annual budget, each annual budgets are submitted to the board meeting and gets approved at the board meeting. During my term (2022-2024), I believe that the expenses of each Cost Centre should remain unchanged (if possible) until a new ED is hired. Then we should discuss with the Executive Director and the board to get an agreement on the new budget, and ED also an important role in executing the fundraising. In the last 2 years, I believe that the financial situation is not that bad but the income is significantly decreased for several years. I think the key problem of the foundation’s financial situation is the lack of new fundraising because we didn’t have an ED for more than a year. If I am re-elected for the next term, I will continue to oversee this.
In the current status of the foundation, I hope we should trust our leaders on GNOME projects, staff team, committees, and current & new board members - all of their contributions are important to the GNOME community and the foundation. We should prioritize the issues and handle them one by one. And I am happy working with them again and supporting them.
Please don’t hesitate to ask me questions, and I will be happy to answer them.