TL;DR - Analyzing and making the NixOS Foundation financials transparent and also helping us understand our finances better to fund more community efforts. Creation of a general financial forecast in the works as well.
We are excited to share the financial summary for the NixOS Foundation for the first time. This goes beyond just being a detailed breakdown of our income and expenses for 2022 and is also the initial attempt at a more structured approach in being more effective with our finances.
Key Goals
- Provide insights into our financial journey/status
- Highlight opportunities for future growth and improvement
- Encourage community involvement in the financial aspects
- Help us understand our finances so that we can more confidently use them for what they are here for, the community. On a small note, I’d prefer we utilize more of the funding up to the buffer which will also mean ending the year on a lower amount (discussed below).
NixOS Foundation’s 2022 Financial Overview
Throughout 2022, the NixOS Foundation experienced a decrease in its balance from €148,035.51 to €112,785.76. This change can be attributed to total incoming funds of €80,955.28, while our total outgoing funds were €116,205.03.
Sources of Incoming Funds
During the year, the NixOS Foundation received funding from various sources, including:
- Company Donations: €34,505.68
- Open Collective Donations via Stripe: €48,714 (updated due to stripe 3 month matter)
- Donations via PayPal: €1,411.09
- Personal Donations: €3,989.9
- Funds from NLnet Foundation for the specific programs (i.e. Summer of Nix): €140,000 total balance that was received between 2021 to 2023.
These four sources accounted for the majority of our incoming funds, contributing almost 90% of the total income.
Significant Expenses
- Personal Payments/Wise (Summer of Nix): €-98,101.57
- Hetzner.com: €-6,969 (updated)
- DTH Location (NixCon expenses): €-5,640
- Association des Élèves de l’École Normale Supérieure (NixCon expenses): €-2,500
- Netlify: €-1,403.95
These expenses represented around 95% of our total outgoing funds during the year.
There are substantial expenses that are currently sponsored by external companies and therefore not represented in the NixOS banking logs. As these are critical we do want to keep them in mind as we calculate our financial projects and into our estimate of the buffer we want to keep in case of emergencies. These items include:
- Storage: ~€10k/month
- Fastly: Estimated at over €50k/month (this is hard to take into account with a buffer)
- Buckets: ~€7k/month
Miscellaneous Expenses
In addition to the major sources of income and expenses, the NixOS Foundation also experienced several minor expenses, refunds, and miscellaneous transactions:
- Aristo: €-354.83
- AWS EMEA: €-102.17
- Bank: €11.98
- Bunq: €-771.5
- ImprovMX: €-84.92
- Notion Labs, Inc.: €-54.06
- Seats2meet.com: €-411.52
- SkillSource B.V.: €-138
- Streamyard.com: €-322.51
Moving Forward: Reflection and Growth
Releasing this financial summary marks a significant milestone for us as we strive to hold and grow the commitment to transparency and accountability. By sharing this information, we hope to encourage community members to participate in the discussion of our financial strategies and contribute ideas for improvement.
Financial Forecast & General Budget Planning
In order to define a forecast and a buffer we took a look at multiple financial data points which included:
- Potential unexpected expenses
- General curve of profit/loss over the last three years
- Expenses which today are covered externally (storage/fastly/buckets)
- Expected large expenses based on prior years
There are a few “covered externally” expenses that are too high to prepare for such as fastly and therefore we will be working on a backup solution there. For the rest we would want to have enough funds to sustain all aspects of Nix for at least 3 months which roughly equates to consistently having 50K as the bottom bar in the bank. The reason for 3 months is that the expectation is that it will be enough time for us to get together in case of emergency to resolve the issues and get back on track (i.e. concentrated funding efforts/backup plans/expense reduction).
This will obviously change from year to year depending on donations/expenses.
Quick Final Thoughts
As we move into 2023, we will continue to focus on improving our financial transparency and strategy. We will also make it a key priority to keep exploring new opportunities to expand the scope of the funds going into NixOS, ensuring that we can all continue to support the community and further the development of the NixOS ecosystem. One of the projects in 2023 will be to expand on the Documentation funding effort and create an official yearly NixOS fundraising/sponsorship effort.
As this is the first time for an effort like this, we would appreciate any and all feedback/questions/discussions!
The next step is to conduct the same effort for the first half of 2023 (after incorporating the feedback)
