Dear GNOME members & community,
Similarly to last year, the Board would like to share details on our newly-approved budget for the 2025-26 financial year, which runs from 1st October 2025 to 30th September 2026.
tl;dr
This budget reflects a balanced approach: maintaining financial stability while starting to invest in community support after a year of significant constraints. We’re pleased to be able to increase community travel funding, maintain our events program, and continue supporting critical infrastructure, while keeping our reserves above policy minimums.
The decision to eliminate a staff position as part of the budget setting process was difficult but necessary for long-term sustainability. With recurring expenses now balanced with recurring revenue, the GNOME Foundation is in a sustainable financial position. We are committed to supporting our ongoing team, streamlining operations, and positioning the Foundation for growth as we expand our fundraising efforts.
Background
The GNOME Foundation budgeting and spending policy requires an approved budget in order to authorise staff and committee spending. After several meetings where the budget was reviewed and discussed by the Board and our treasurer, Deepa Venkatraman, we passed this year’s budget on 14th October 2025 shortly after the start of the financial year.
As in previous years, we consider the budget in 2 distinct parts:
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Restricted funds for our fiscally-sponsored projects (GIMP and Black Python Devs). We consider their income but not their expenses, as the Foundation takes a small fiscal sponsorship fee to support our administrative and operating costs. These funds are tracked separately as “restricted funds” and cannot be spent on general Foundation operations and programs.
Certain other funds, such as grants from Endless for Flathub and the Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls project, are also restricted and do not normally form part of our general operating budget, and we are also using $30k remaining from a previous project to fund ongoing Adwaita work with Alice Mikhailenko.
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General operating budget for the GNOME Foundation, which is what this post is all about. When we discuss “the budget” below, we’re referring to general/unrestricted operating funds only, for programs directly run by the Foundation. These include our operations, events, core infrastructure, travel sponsorship, and other projects we support in the community.
It’s also worth reminding you about the Foundation’s reserves policy, which is a key budgeting tool that requires the Board to keep funds in reserve to cover operating expenses should we experience a sudden reduction in income. The policy is defined as requiring reserves equal to 13 months of expenditure, but the definition of which expenditure is critical. A low reserve figure is riskier: while it frees up income and funds to spend sooner, it means that a sudden income reduction would force us to make immediate, sharp expenditure cuts rather than being able to ‘weather the storm’ or make gradual adjustments.
Review of FY 2024-25
Last year’s budget anticipated $586k of revenue and $550k of expenses, aiming for a modest surplus after several years of deficits. The 2024-25 budget was balanced using one-off contributions that were not anticipated to recur. These included unrestricted funds from pre-existing 2023-25 Endless grants, as well as fiscal hosting fees from one-off Bitcoin donations to the GIMP.
It also used a narrow, minimal definition of ‘core expenditure’ for the reserve, calculated at approximately $225k currently, but we used an even lower figure of $158k in October 2024. This is a very small reserve that would cover only a fraction of the Foundation’s current activities in the event that anticipated revenue was suddenly interrupted.
In the end, the Foundation’s financial performance over 2024-25 exceeded our expectations, due to some additional one-off revenue which wasn’t anticipated in the budget process during October 2024. One was an additional unrestricted $150k grant from Endless, primarily to support the recruitment of a new Executive Director. The other was that the Bitcoin donations to GIMP were worth more than we had estimated, which increased our fiscal hosting fees beyond budgeted amounts.
During the previous financial year, the combination of a budgeted surplus, and income which exceeded projections, allowed us to replenish our reserves so that they exceed the minimum level required by the Foundation’s reserve policy. These reserves give us flexibility: if fundraising progresses well in the coming year, we can confidently increase investment in executive staff, fundraising capacity, or program delivery, knowing we have the buffer to sustain higher operating costs through any temporary changes to income.
2025-26 Budget Overview
For 2025-26, without the one-off income sources we had in 2024-25, the Board wanted to aim for another balanced budget to keep the Foundation on an even financial footing where recurring costs will be covered by expected recurring income. This establishes a sustainable financial position which can be repeated in future years. Although not the most exciting goal, it’s a very safe one which gives us a solid baseline for us to raise funds and incrementally grow our programs and investments in the community.
Steven led the re-launch of our Friends of GNOME initiative with donate.gnome.org earlier this year, focused on recurring donations. The success of this effort allowed us to include an increase in donation revenue in the 2025-26 budget, but not enough to sustain our spending at 2024-25 levels. Considering these financial constraints, and an assessment of our organizational needs, this budget also included the difficult decision to eliminate the role of Senior Director of People & Operations and, with the utmost of gratitude and appreciation, part ways with Rosanna Yuen last month.
The new 2025-26 budget projects total income of $435k balanced by total expenses of $434k. This includes anticipated additional fundraising of $35k, which is in line with current fundraising progress. However, we now have the reserve funds to cover the deficit if this figure is not achieved. We hope that through growing donations and other fundraising, we can meet this figure and even go on to raise additional funds to invest into the community. Even without additional fundraising, this budget ensures our recurring revenue (existing donations, advisory board fees, etc.) can cover our existing operations (conferences, infrastructure, operations/admin) in a sustainable steady state.
2025-26 Budget Breakdown
The rest of this post describes each element of the budget in more detail.
Income
Income for the current financial year is projected to total $435k, and is split between the following sources.
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$250,000 in donations and contributions
- Individual contributions: $130,000 (up from $75,000 in prior years, based on $4,300/month new recurring revenue from donate.gnome.org as of September 2025, on top of our traditional individual giving)
- Advisory Board fees: $100,000
- Other corporate contributions: $20,000
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$60,000 from event sponsorship
- Most of this comes from GUADEC ($55,000+), with some contributions from LAS and GNOME Asia
- This sponsorship covers the majority of venue/vendor/travel/etc costs involved in running our events, making them very sustainable provided our core funding covers the staff salaries
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$60,000 in interest income
- Earned from Foundation cash reserves and fiscally-sponsored project funds
- We’ve improved our banking arrangements to maximize returns on reserves
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$25,000 released from restricted funds
- Unrestricting approximately $25k of $110k remaining Flathub funds from the Endless grant (2023-2025) for legal, professional, and accounting costs
- These funds will support Flathub infrastructure, staff & legal costs
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$5,000 in fiscal sponsorship fees
- Administrative fees from hosting GIMP and Black Python Devs
- Note: This is significantly lower than last year due to the one-time Bitcoin donation processing in FY 2024-25
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Anticipated additional fundraising: $35,000
- The budget includes a scenario where we will raise an additional $35k through new fundraising efforts
- Exceeding this would provide additional headroom for new expenditure, but is not guaranteed, so we have budgeted conservatively while we see how new fundraising initiatives perform
Expenditures
Expenditure for the current financial year is projected to total $434k, and is split between the following categories.
Staff & Professional Services: $308k
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$208k for full-time staff
- Our team of three full-time staff covering Programs & Events, Operations & Admin and Infrastructure
- One-time costs relating to restructuring of staff roles
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$58,000 for accounting services
- External bookkeeper, audit / tax filing preparation fees (last year the Foundation passed an income threshold in California which requires us to carry out a full external audit of our accounts), and working with a new accountant to streamline/consolidate financial operations.
- Some of these costs are non-recurring and represent a one time investment in our finance systems which will deliver efficiencies in future years.
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$32,000 in legal contractors
- General legal support: ~$27,000
- Flathub-related legal work: ~$5,000 (funded by restricted Flathub grant funds)
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$10,000 for other contractors
- Flexible budget for additional support as needed, eg work on donations website
Conferences and Travel: $89k
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$39,000 in conference expenses
- GUADEC 2026: ~$28,000
- GNOME.Asia: ~$5,000
- LAS: ~$6,000
- Due to the timing of the budget, we rarely have the final figures for GUADEC when preparing the following year; but this sum represents a reduction from $60k in FY 2023-24 (GUADEC in Denver, USA) as we expect GUADEC to be in Europe once again
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$10,000 in board and staff travel
- Primarily for staff attendance at our events
- Maintained at its low level from prior year
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$40,000 in community travel funding
- Doubled from $20k last year to better support community participation in GUADEC and GNOME.Asia
- Administered by our Travel Committee
Operating Costs: $37k
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$20,000 in office expenses
- Primarily banking and payment processing fees (~$12,000)
- Postal and shipping costs for materials to contractors and event organizers
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$5,000 in insurance
- Liability and D&O insurance
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$4,000 in computer services
- Online services and tools
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$4,000 in marketing expenses
- Banners, stickers, content production
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$4,000 in depreciation
Thanks for reading! We welcome any feedback and questions from the GNOME community. Thanks to all of our GNOME members, contributors, donors, sponsors, and advisory board members for your continued support!
The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors
