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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Python community, there is a lot of messaging from PSF and allies along the lines “dear organizers, PSF and you are in the same boat, we are so sad :sparkling_heart: and suffer with you, there was nothing we could have done :sparkling_heart: ”.

Do not accept this narrative but hold PSF accountable for its egregious failures.

For instance, for not publishing ahead projections and financial statements as any normal, professional organisation would do:

Also, Marie (@riecatnor), Georgi(@georgically) , it would be instructive to see an answer to the following question:

can you put a ballpark number to the financial benefits that you have received over the last years from or through PSF?

direct (e.g., salary, grants) or in-kind/indirect (funding to allied projects, events, etc)?

Any maybe compare that to the amounts that, for example, you have recently denied to the median African event that confers benefits and opportunities to not 2 but maybe 100 people?

But, on second thought: publishing your salary would be factual and give useful context, but it would not be such a great communication strategy, Community Communications Manager Marie Nordin?

So, instead, let’s focus how we and PSF can jointly suffer :sparkling_heart: and hope :sparkling_heart: for a time :sparkling_heart: where maybe more scraps :sparkling_heart: :sparkling_heart: will land in the laps of us wretched of the world :sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart::sparkling_heart:

And please let me know if being critical and asking for accountability and transparency is considered a Code of Conduct violation on this forum :sparkling_heart: - after all, I did imply at least negligence, and my tone could make you sad :sparkling_heart:

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The PSF has paused our Grants Program
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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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Fiscal projection: PSF will default by 2027 - 50% salary increases, salaries >170.000, multimillion pycon US losses, costly consultancy contracts
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Thanks for the pointer. More than nothing, though this is a mix of glossy self-congratulation and numbers that do are not detailed enough to understand where money keeps going.

Also, this is a “hindsight” view, where are budgets/projections? Do these exist? Forecasts are critical to see whether an organisation is headed for a full-on crash.

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@Deb , thanks for your swift response.

While we have your attention, can you explain how you managed to spend 2.500.000 Dollar on pycon US in 2024? (this is the sum according to page 25 of the “2024 impact report”)

According to the convention center page, renting out the full thing is just 30k daily; you also charged 750$ per corporate, 400$ per individual, 100$ per student to attendees.

At 2.551 in-person attendees, it means you spent approx 1.000$ per attendee (!). If this is from catering, that is multiple 5-star menus and centuries old wine per person, even after substracting venue costs.

For comparison, the report lists upkeep of the python packaging/distribution ecosystem at 1.3 million, and grants at 0.6 million.

Also, how much did you spend on pycon US 2025?

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So,@Deb, what do you think you have control over? In your budget, I mean? Expenditures maybe?

Like, maybe, staff costs, or how much you spend on pycon US every year? Is that something you have control over, or is this also a function of “community enthusiasm” that is impossible to rein in? Just asking politely here.

Maybe a list of the companies or persons that received funds for pycon 2024 and pycon 2025, and for what, might be helpful to “improve the long-term health of the program”, as you say.

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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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Do you really think that’s what you’re doing?

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It’s not a CoC violation to ask for details. However, you’re also acting extremely rude and pushy, and it’s pretty clear you’re aware of that. 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.

Moderators have decided to set this to slow mode along with the other topic you started.

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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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Moderators, thanks for unblocking my account again.

Funny how no one seems to be engaging with my question: where did the 2.500.000 (two point five million) Dollar for pycon US 2024 go?

This is four times the annual grant budget. About 50% of the Program Service Expense budget. The venue costs 30.000 per day, so even if you pay all of the 2.511 attendees a hotel room every day on top and 5-star menu, you do not quite get there.

And what did pycon US 2025 cost?

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You asked that question 4 hours ago, on a Friday afternoon in Europe, and a Friday before a long weekend in the U.S and Canada:

While I am interested in what information comes out of this topic, I think you need to significantly realign your timeline expectations if you’re actually wanting helpful and constructive outcomes.

That you expect the board of a non-profit to answer your questions (a person who is not financially contributing to or, presumably, involved in grant applications with the PSF) within a few hours on the same day regardless of anyone’s prior commitments is wildly unrealistic.

From my own experience of administrative and financial questions from an organization I would consider simply receiving an acknowledgement of the questions within 1 business day (that would be by the end of Tuesday in the U.S and Canada) to be a fast turn around. And to be clear, I don’t have or mean to imply that expectation.

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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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That you expect the board of a non-profit to answer your questions […] is wildly unrealistic.

@Deb Nicholson, the executive director, has almost immediately replied and engaged with this thread, her answer is “we will do quarterly reviews on the grant budget”.

  1. completely unhelpful misdirection, because the issue concerns the entire budget, incl the massive multimillion expenditures for pycon US, the single largest post - four times the grant budget, and likely cannibalizing the grant budget! With the massive, growing multimillion spend on pycon US, and conferences everywhere getting denied much lower sums, proposing more reviews on the grant budget is not just ineffective, but it is intentional, cynical negligence.

  2. the executive director can be expected to know where the single largest supermassive expenditure went. If a single expenditure is 50-60% of everything, she better know off the top of her head where it went, and be able to explain it in a way the public can understand, or she has utterly failed at her job and should look for another one.

Deb N has almost immediately engaged with this thread, but is deflecting by disregarding the impact of the pycon overspend on the grants budget, while supporters cheer her on (nothing to see at pycon US with the 2.5 millions! let’s ignore this and talk about sth else!) - so the argument “you cannot expect to get an answer” is absurd, simply because in fact we got an answer within a few hours of me posting, from the executive director no less.

Side note: ”you have not donated anything hence you cannot expect an answer” is not just an absurd ad hominem, but also based on a factually wrong premise.
(I am a contributing member and the link you gave shows exactly the opposite)
I hope you do not expect me to comment on that anymore.

The problem are the millions spent on pycon US close to the decision makers, while grants are being shut down worldwide. We want answers, not performative distraction.