PSF grant shutdown - PUBLISH FINANCIAL STATEMENTS SINCE 2022 NOW

PSF
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The PSF has brutally paused their grants program without early warning, putting communities across the world in a difficult position. PSF has also tried to claw back funding that was already paid or committed, putting communities in financial difficulties.
(see also The PSF has paused our Grants Program)

At the same time:

  • PSF has, so far, failed to publish tax forms with income/expenditure statements since 2022 (search here for Python Software Foundation, EIN: 04-3594598) https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/
  • PSF is not publishing advance budgets or financial statements to its members by any other means either, as far as I know
  • For context, 2022 Form 990 filings statements listed 4 million dollar revenue, 1 million salary expenses, a net profit of 0.5 million dollar. What are these numbers in 2025? What are the projections? What was the net profit in 2024?

Failure to publish the information above is an inacceptable degree of intransparency and/or incompetence, for an organisation that purports to have the best benefits of the international python community in mind - especially when shutting down grants without any appropriate notice.

Publishing financial statements and budgets is not “nice to have”, it is a basic operational hygiene and anti-corruption measure.

PUBLISH 2023-2025 STATEMENTS AND 2025 BUDGETS NOW.

Accept accountability and responsibility.

The current PSF should also step down for utterly failing the worldwide community.

PSF needs to be devolved to a federation of local organizations.

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Do we really need another public vilification of the PSF for all the work they’ve put in? They’ve already explained what happened. Lower attendance of PyCon US [1] meant less money in and post covid revival of old events meant more money going out. It’s pretty obvious where that leads.

You demand a time consuming audit of the PSF’s finances yet you just assume the worst and seek to dismantle the PSF before you’ve even seen it. Why demand if you’ve already made up your mind…

  1. not really surprising given how many people felt unsafe to even enter the country ↩︎

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Python Software Foundation Public Records | Python.org lists annual reports of the PSF (currently up to 2024), which include consolidated financial statements for the respective year. Note that the PSF has posted losses in 2023 and 2024. The same page lists the Form 990 for 2023.

Additional information, including detailed statistics for the 2024 grant programme, is usually posted on the PSF blog.

I’m not a PSF member or in any way involved in PSF business, yet I was able to find all this information in minutes. So while I’m sure there are ways to improve communication in the light of the grants situation, much of this screed seems completely baseless to me.

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@Jost, the link contains - at current time - only the Tax form for 2023, not the one for 2024, screenshot below. The 2024 pdf is not a proper tax filing form (why do you not have that, it is already late 2025?) and not disaggregated enough to get a clear picture where funds are going.

Plus, where are budgets or projections? Maybe they exist (do they?) but can you point to a clear and early communication that the PSF was headed to a shutdown?

One of the following must be true:

  • that PSF ran out of money, and it came as a surprise. Then this is incompetence.

  • that PSF ran out of money, it did not come as a surprise. Then why the sudden shutdowns and clawbacks? Lack of transparency and communication at least.

  • PSF did not run out of money. We cannot verify since budgets, projections and 2024 full statements cannot be found (at least from my perspective)

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Do we really need another public vilification of the PSF for all the work they’ve put in?

Let me pick apart this statement:

  • “another public vilification” - The PSF is under public criticism justifiedly, that is not vilification. PSF should engage with the criticism rather than dismiss it as “vilification”
  • “work they´ve put in” - apparently not the basic operational work that any normal organisation should do, financial statements, budgets, and communicating the to decision making stakeholders - the PSF members and the worldwide python communtiy?

It’s pretty obvious where that leads.

Kind of obvious?

And that justifies PSF to punish the weakest in the equation, instead of, say, reducing salaries, or laying off staff in the US on extremely high salaries (in international comparison), or replacing staff in the US by equivalently competent staff in Africa or Asia?

You demand a time consuming audit of the PSF’s finances

Basic financial statements, budgeting is not a “time consuming audit”. Create an excel table and publish it at least to the members. Do this ahead of time and not after excrement hits the ventilator.

seek to dismantle the PSF before you’ve even seen it.

I think we all have seen enough to make this call.

The argument for devolution (not dismantling), so empowering the local communities by giving them the decision making power and budgeting power, holds even without the egregious blunders of the current PSF management.

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As a former Director (two years removed), Treasurer (two years), and Vice Chair of the PSF, I can shed some light on why their 2024 990 filing hasn’t happened yet. They aren’t due yet.

If you check their 2023 990 tax filing, they filed it on Nov. 15, 2024.

We can expect their 2024 990 tax filing by mid-November 2025.

Looking back, this trend appears consistent with the last 7 or 8 years of filings; however, the dates vary from the 15th to the 16th, depending on the year and whether it falls on a weekend.

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Moderators have decided to set this to slow mode along with the other thread you were posting in. I’ll paraphrase what I asked of you there:

Slow down how often you’re posting, wait for responses to have an actual dialog, and use polite, professional communication regardless of how urgent or angry you may be.

Please review our participation guidelines for guidance on how to participate in a successful discussion here.

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Are you a donor to the PSF?

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@JamesParrott, you mean me?

Over the last 5 years I have donated ca 75.000 Eur from personal assets to support charitable causes around python. More in-kind (time).

Not to PSF though.

Would that mean that I am not allowed to have opinions about PSF?

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Please let’s not question peoples’ motivations. Stick to the questions. I happen to know that Dr. Kiraly is a leading AI researcher, and has strong connections to Python, being the lead on several related open-source Python projects, perhaps most notably sktime (a framework for incorporating time-series analysis into machine learning).

I also happen to know that he believes he has good reasons to be skeptical of open source “umbrella organizations’” stated motivations, due to bad experience with one such (not the PSF, but more or less “adjacent”).

lt would be nice if we tried to win him over rather than look for reasons to shut him up. I certainly agree he would be well served to show patience here, and avoid responding to people who can’t answer his questions (which frequently ends badly for all involved).

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@tim.one , nice one, very subtle - in the same post you say “let’s not question peoples’ motivations”, yet you manage place a narrative about my own motivations, by implying that I am somehow misguided, or worse, out for proxy revenge (“believes he has good reasons”, “bad experience with org like PSF”)

I certainly agree he would be well served to show patience here

I think the time for patience is over, it is time for action.

Your suggestion of “patience” means allowing that international communities get significantly hurt.

Patience in this case is not mercy, but a mixture of complacency and indirect cruelty towards the Python communities of the world.

We need to fix the lopsided budget with multimillions spent on pycon Pittsburgh NOW, and not 2030. Patience can be had when those responsible no longer are.

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@fkiraly, seriously, don’t reply to people who can’t answer your questions. That includes me. It only stirs up the pot, and that’s unwelcome in this forum. I’ll let your odd characterization of my intent slide; I think it’s dead obvious to everyone else that it was my intent to help you keep your voice intact here. Same as in early March, your questions just get forgotten when you get shut down.

Stick to addressing factual matters related to your questions? You will, of course, suit yourself in this, and should.. But the outcome if you continue as you have been should be obvious. When I started this reply, Discourse already popped up a box warning that your post had been flagged for hiding (not by me), and did I really want to continue?

Yes, I do. I want you to have every chance you can get to be heard. Whether you help yourself in this respect is up to you. There’s no need to reply to me. In fact, it’s probably better for you if you don’t. Not because I’ll fight you (I won’t), but because that would just be more “stirring the pot” with meta-complaints. Stick to your original issues, please.

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That’s very generous of you. Apologies for the insinuation. But it’s useful for the board to know.

You are indeed allowed an opinion. I myself just don’t feel this is any of my business.

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This forum seems to be full of censoring mechanisms like this - moderators delete threads, posts get hidden or edited, and also “social censoring” where yes-men, distractors, and noisemakers pop up like on command.

Stick to your original issues, please.

Good suggestion, Tim, so I’ll just repeat them:

where did the 2.5 million dollar go for pycon US 2024?

How much did pycon US 2025 cost? Which people or companies received the money? Did this single biggest expenditure impact (or even cause?) the grant shutdown?

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Thanks so much to all the community members who have jumped in providing history, context, and information about the PSF and PyCon US. Your time in responding is appreciated. I won’t make this thread even longer by repeating everything folks have shared, but I can add the following:

  • PyCon US 2025 Expenses: $2.34M

  • PyCon US 2025 Revenue: $2.14M

  • Resulting in a loss of approximately $200K

We’re continuing to make changes that cut costs and increase revenue. It takes about three years to change anything major about the event. See our previous announcements here and here. You can check out this PyCon US blog post about the changes we made for 2025.

In Long Beach (our venue for 2026/2027), we’re cutting down the number of onsite sprint days, trimming food and beverage costs, keeping onsite staffing costs as low as we can, and actively working to increase domestic attendance. We’re also exploring more ways to engage with companies and organizations that use Python and might want to be part of PyCon US or otherwise support the Python community.

We will continue to run PyCon US as the best possible event for the Python community members who live in the US. We will also continue to celebrate, promote and collaborate with other PyCons around the world. We look forward to retooling and unpausing the Grants Program and financially supporting worldwide Python events again soon. If you want to help promote PyCon US, or help your regional Python event with time or money, or help the PSF fundraise and connect with sponsors, please get in touch so we can get you plugged in: deb@python.org

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My understanding is the cost of running PyCon US is effectively paid for from the revenue of running PyCon US, and the numbers from @Deb seem to support this.

In theory, the PSF could choose to allocate that 2.3M (or whatever number) to funding additional conferences elsewhere. I suspect the outcome of that would be that the next year, there is significantly less than 2.3M available, as it’s unlikely that the revenue from running all of those conferences would make up for it [1].

I believe historically the profit from PyCon US has also been part of what has allowed the PSF to run programs to give out grants (although not completely, as there are direct donations as well as I understand it).

In effect, I believe the idea of taking that 2.3M and spreading it out would likely be a one time event, and after that the PSF would no longer have the funds to run any major events and would be severely limited in it’s ability to provide any funding for any event.

I’m not an expert though :slight_smile: That’s just always been my understanding of the situation at hand.

  1. Part of what allows PyCon US to have such large revenues is that it has large expenditures that allows it to attract a large number of people and sponsors, and I suspect there’s costs that would go up from spreading the conferences out. ↩︎

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@Deb, I would like to see a drill down on the expenditure/revenue numbers.

As @dstufft says, the key counterfactual is, how much income (currently attributed to pycon US) would there be if the money were spent elsewhere?

Question: are you attributing any donations to the pycon US revenue which would flow anyway, pycon US or not? If so, then “accounting magic” would mask the real losses that pycon US is incurring. (in an extreme case, 1 million dollar)

Looking at the 2023 tax form, about 1 million of the 2 million revenue attributed to pycon US seem to be grants and donations.

Many of these are regular donors which probably have earmarked the donations in their yearly budgets. So, would this not flow reliably, even if pycon US would not happen?

More generally, are the donations correctly attributed to pycon US revenue?

If you look at the 2023 tax form, you have:

  • 1,13 million revenue from “program services”, that would be things like ticket sales (part I, 9)
  • 2,14 million expenses for pycon US (part III, 4a)
  • 2,08 million revenie for pycon US claimed (part III, 4a)

Overall, this means that ca 0,9 million are (most likely) donations - and attributed to pycon US in the 2023 calculation, and most likely also in Deb’s 2025 calculation.

If they are not correctly attributed, even partly, the balance for pycon US be much worse than claimed by Deb.

Counterfactual: not running pycon US

In effect, I believe the idea of taking that 2.3M and spreading it out would likely be a one time event,

The correct counterfactual to consider is not “spending the entire expenditure”, but "spending the loss”.

Even in the most optimistic scenario, pycon US is making losses - so, not running it would leave 200.000 dollar more in the purse (2025 counterfactual). Which could be spent on, e.g., not having a total grant freeze. Or one more staff member at 200.000 yearly salary.

And the more of the revenue in grants/donations is not caused by pycon US, the more surplus there would be. In the most extreme case, this could be all 1m of the donations/grants attributed to pycon US revenue, so a total of 1.200.000 million USD surplus to spend.

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I think it’s impossible to determine whether a donation would occur with or without PyCon US, but it appears the bulk of these donations come from US companies [1], I suspect they would be significantly less likely to donate directly to a conference elsewhere [2].

As mentioned above, I suspect many of these donations are made to get the benefits at PyCon US that come with donating (getting “free” tickets, booth space, advertising etc).

This reads to me like this idea would rely on those companies just never reviewing their own expenses to determine if those expenses still make sense. Hoping that companies forget they are paying the PSF does not seem like a sound fundraising strategy to me.

My understanding is that historically PyCon US has not operated at a loss, but at small or modest profit. It seems unreasonable to me to assume that a relatively small loss for a year or two will continue into the future [3], particularly given @Deb and others have already noted steps that are being made to rectify the situation.

  1. Likely, at least in part, due to the benefits they get at PyCon US for doing so. ↩︎

  2. Just like I assume an Indian company is less likely to donate to a conference in the US. ↩︎

  3. Particularly given the fact the loss years came shortly after a global pandemic and PyCon US had to move to online only the previous years. ↩︎

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@dstufft, I think there are a number of inaccuracies and specious (e.g., strawman) arguments in your statements. Overall, pycon US in recent history has mostly been loss making. And it is not as easy as you claim “we need pycon US, or no income/donations!” Details below.

I think it’s impossible to determine whether a donation would occur with or without PyCon US

Not impossible - you can simply ask the donor?

Second, in recent history, there was an actual instance where python US actually did not happen in a physical form. Remember covid?

The most profitable year in recent history was actually the completely virtual covid conference 2021 - 964k revenue, 560k profit - this is according to the PSF’s own calculation. The next most profitable year was 2022, where virtual participation was still significant.

Finally, you could ask the same question with a smaller and less luxurious pycon.

This reads to me like this idea would rely on those companies just never reviewing their own expenses to determine if those expenses still make sense

Strawman argument, you are assuming that I was assuming nonsense.

A more reasonable assumption is that donors are being talked to and actively taken along with the transition, be it a scenario of no pycon US, a smaller pycon US, a virtual global pycon, etc.

My understanding is that historically PyCon US has not operated at a loss

That is clearly wrong and does not hold up to a fact check!

In recent history, pycon US has consistently operated at a loss, excluding the “covid years”. The profitable years were 2017 and before.

Here are the numbers according to PSF - which, as said, lump in unspecified grant income. The losses are not “imagined”, these are the numbers according to PSF.

2025 – 2.34M expenses, 2.14M revenue, 200k losses

2024 - ?? not disclosed afaik

2023 – 2.14M expenses, 2.07M revenue, 70k losses

covid years separately, below

2019 – 310k losses

2018 – 80k losses

2017 and few prior years - net profits

Covid years:

2022 – hybrid format (many still online due to covid) – 1.59M expenses, 1.95M revenue, 360k profit

2021 – virtual due to covid – 399k expenses, 964k revenue, 560k profit

2020 – losses, does not count due to covid (conf cancelled short notice)

Reference (990 tax forms):