2014 Drupal Association Annual Report and Financials
One of our key values at the Drupal Association is communication:
We value communication. We seek community participation. We are open and transparent.
One of the ways that we try to live this value is by making our numbers -- both operating targets and financial -- available to the public. The monthly board reports share basic financial numbers and all our operational metrics. Once a quarter, we release full financial reports for the previous quarter. You can access all this information at any time on the Association web site.
At the close of each year, we take the opportunity to have our financials reviewed (and sometimes audited). The review process ensures that we've represented our financials properly. This work takes some time. Though our fiscal year closes on 31 December, it takes six to eight weeks to get the final bits and pieces handled in our financial systems. The independent review or audit adds another 8+ weeks to the process of closing out our year. Then we have to review the findings with the Finance Committee and the full Board before we share them publicly. That's why it's August and we're just now sharing the 2014 reviewed financial statements with you.
In 2014 we also began tracking our progress towards several operational goals for the first time. Though we share those numbers every month in the board report, we pulled some of our favorite stats and stories together into an Annual Report to share the work that our financials represent.
What happened in 2014?
2014 was an investment year. Per our Leadership Plan and Budget for the year, our key focus was building an engineering team to first address technical debt on Drupal.org and then take on actual improvements to the site. We purposely built a budget that anticipated a deficit spend in order to fully fund the team. The intent was to also build some new revenue programs (like Drupal Jobs) that would ramp up and eventually allow us to fund the new staff without deficit spending. And that's what we did. We went from two full time staff focused on Drupal.org to ten.
The investment has been paying off. We spent a lot of 2014 playing catch up with technical debt, but also managed to improve site performance markedly while also increasing the portability of our infrastructure. On top of that, staff worked with community volunteers to release new features related to commit messages, profiles, and Drupal 8 release blockers. Most importantly, staff and the working groups prioritized upcoming work and published a strategic roadmap for improvements to Drupal.org.
We held two huge DrupalCons, one in Austin and one in Amsterdam, and planned for a third. Our very small team of events staff and a crew of remarkable volunteers hosted over 5,500 people across our two events, all while planning our first Con in Latin America. We had some stumbling blocks and learning opportunities, and have been applying what we learned to the three 2015 DrupalCons.
We launched Drupal Jobs. This was something the community asked for very clearly when we conducted a 2013 study. We’ve seen steady growth in usage since our quiet launch and will continue to refine the site, including our pricing models, so that it is accessible to Drupalers around the world.
We diversified our revenue streams. DrupalCons used to be 100% of our funding. Not only is this a risky business strategy, it puts undue pressure on the Cons to perform financially, leaving us little room to experiment or make decisions that may be right for attendees, but could negatively impact the bottom line. As we increase the funding sources for the Association, we can make more and different choices for these flagship programs and also grow new programs with the community.
We introduced branded content including white papers, infographics, and videos. These materials have been widely used by the community and have helped us understand the Drupal.org audience in a better way. You can see a lot of this work on the Drupal 8 landing pages, where the key content pieces were downloaded thousands of times in 2014.
We released new vision, mission, and values statements for the Association. These tools are really useful in defining the focus of the organization and helping to guide how we get our work done. Working in a community of this size and diversity is extremely challenging. There is no choice we can make that will include everyone’s ideals, but our values help us make those decisions in a way that allows for transparency and open dialogue with the community. It’s something that we try to honor every day.
What about money in 2014?
As anticipated, we ran a deficit in 2014. However, we did manage to grow our overall revenue by about 6% from 2013 to 2014. This trend has continued into 2015, though not at the rate we had hoped. Still, we are now on track to support the investment we made in 2014 into the future. Another key win in 2014 is that we grew non-DrupalCon revenue to 21% of our total revenue. Diversifying our revenue streams reduces our financial risk and takes the pressure off of Cons, allowing us to experiment more.
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