Hello,
since voting on each and every single expense during the BoD calls is a bit tedious, but required by the statutes, I would like to propose an alternative solution to make the daily operations a bit easier.
In a nutshell, I would like to have the board appoint responsibilities to not only, but mainly, BoD members. As an example:
  - Thorsten and Florian for administrative issues
  - Alex (from the admin team) and Florian for infrastructure topics
  - Michael and Caolan for development resources
  - Italo for marketing projects
and so on. Every area gets a fixed budget, either per month, quarter or year, and if the goals fit into the statutes, the tax law and the foundation's objectives, upon approval of one of the responsible parties, the money can be spent without the need to have a formal BoD vote.
Excluded should be long-term contracts and anything that is not part of the daily operations, like entering 10 year contracts fors infrastructure, signing exclusive advertising deals and so on - you get the point.
Real life examples: Signing the contract with a new domain registrar, buying a bunch of new domain names, ordering the SMS gateway, or buying one additional machine is something the board could leave at my discretion for infrastructure. Making expenses for the tax advisor is something the board could leave at Thorsten's discretion, and buying one development machine or buying required software is something Michael and Caolan could decide.
Things like capital investments, trademark registrations, establishing a certification program and other non-daily operations would still require the approval of the full board.
While the above is no readily written proposal to formally vote upon and issue warrants, what do you generally think about it? I think if we limit the amount to a senseful value, and have the budget on the radar, this is something that would ease our daily operations and give people a bit more flexibility, so we can focus on work rather than administration.
The German FrODeV e.V. has a similar rule in their rules of procedure ("Geschäftsordnung"), but they forsee a "veto time" of four working days, which I'd like to either shorten for TDF or even avoid at all.
By the way, this is something that should not go into our community bylaws or the rules of procedure, since changing it then has some hurdles, so an individual decision of the BoD that can be changed or revoked anytime makes sense.
Florian