Foundation/AGM2025/Election to Board
OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) members will vote to elect a new board at the Annual General Meeting in September 2025.
Online voting start: Saturday 6th of September after 16:00 UTC, until the start of the Annual General Meeting.
Online 2025 Annual General Meeting: Saturday 13th of September, at 16:00 UTC.
If you want to get notified about any changes to this page, please (create an OSM wiki account and) add the page to your watchlist (press the star on the top of this page or alt+shift+w).
Key dates
The official dates and times are on the tables below.
| Dates/period | Notes/activity |
|---|---|
| until 2025-06-14 | [Board] Arrange facilitator for candidates' questions and answers. |
| 2025-06-15 | [Community/Members] Start of submission of questions to board candidates. |
| 2025-06-15 | [Candidates] Start of submission of self-nominations on this OSM wiki page. |
| 2025-06-19 | [Board] Publication of any board-suggested draft resolutions for discussion by the membership. |
| We're here. | |
| 2025-07-05, 23:59:59 UTC | [Candidates] Deadline for members to put themselves forward for the election by adding their information on the candidates' table of this OSM wiki page. |
| until 2025-07-12, 23:59 UTC | [Community/Members] Discussion about any special/normal resolutions proposed by the board or some of the members. |
| 2025-07-12, 23:59 UTC | [Members] Deadline for getting support for any member-suggested resolutions. |
| 2025-07-12, 23:59 UTC | [Community/Members] Deadline for adding questions for the candidates to the talk page or to the osmf-talk mailing list. |
| 2025-07-19 | [Board] Soft deadline for finalisation of the text for any special/normal resolutions. |
| 2025-07-26 | [Administrative Assistant] Soft deadline for drafting the official General Meeting announcement, mentioning any special/normal resolutions suggested by either the board or the members. |
| 2025-07-26 | [Candidates - Facilitator] The facilitator's official set of questions to the candidates (based on community questions and questions from past years) to be published by the facilitator or the Administrative Assistant. The board candidates will also be notified via email. |
| 2025-08-02 00:01 UTC | [Administrative Assistant] Soft deadline for official Annual General Meeting notice, including the text of resolutions. The official notice will be sent to all members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation via email. |
| 2025-08-08, 23:59 UTC | [Candidates] Deadline for candidates to send answers to the official questions and their manifestos to the facilitator and copy the email to the administrative assistant. |
| 2025-08-16 | Publication of candidates' 1) answers to the official set of questions and 2) their manifestos by the administrative assistant. |
| 2025-08-17 to 2025-09-06, 16:00 UTC | [Community/Members] Discussion about candidates' answers and manifestos. |
| 2025-09-06 16:00 UTC | [Members] Online voting opens for the board election and any resolutions (exactly 1 week before the Annual General Meeting). |
| 2025-09-13 16:00 UTC | [Members] Start of the online Annual General Meeting on IRC. Find out how to join. |
The table above does not include most administrative tasks, such as documenting the election process on the OSM wiki, OSMF website, creating and testing of the OpaVote election, compiling and checking the list of OSMF members eligible to vote and other tasks.
| Activity | Dates and times | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| [Community/Members] Addition of questions by community/members to the OSM wiki (of the ~28 days, the candidates' names will be known for 7 days). | 2025-06-15 to 2025-07-12, 23:59 UTC | ~28 days (to allow ample time for non-EN communities to contribute.) |
| [Candidates] Submission of self-nominations on the OSM wiki. | 2025-06-15 to 2025-07-05, 23:59:59 UTC | ~21 days (extended from 17) |
| [Members] Get support for any member-suggested resolutions (the wording must be already finalised). | Until 2025-07-12, 23:59 UTC | |
| [Community/Members] Discussion about any special/normal draft resolutions proposed by the board or some of the members. | 2025-06-19 to 2025-07-12, 23:59 UTC | ~24 days |
| [Facilitator] to complete compiling the set of the official questions to the candidates. | 2025-07-13 to 2025-07-25, 23:59 (UTC) | ~13 days (extended from 12) |
| [Candidates] Board candidates to send their answers to the official questions and their manifestos to the facilitator and copy the email to the administrative assistant. | 2025-07-26 to 2025-08-08, 23:59 UTC | ~13 days |
| [Administrative Assistant] to compile the candidates' answers and manifestos and publish them. | 2025-08-09 to 2025-08-16 | ~7 days |
| [Community/Members] Discussion about candidates' answers and manifestos. | 2025-08-17 to 2025-09-06 16:00 UTC | ~20 days (extended from 13) |
| [Members] Online voting for board candidates and any resolutions. | 2025-09-06 16:00 UTC to 2025-09-13 16:00 UTC | 7 days |
Calendar views
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For your convenience you can also see the calendar views below. Please note that these do not display times - check the dates and times on the tables above, which are the authoritative sources.
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The voting emails from OpaVote will be sent to eligible OSM Foundation members on the 6th of September, after 16:00 UTC, and will link directly to the voting page. When voting on OpaVote, enable JavaScript. Disable ad blockers and plugins like Decentraleyes that block content. Cookies must be allowed. Community members who block outgoing requests to Google-run websites must temporarily unblock them. You risk casting a blank ballot otherwise! |
2025 Annual General Meeting and election to OpenStreetMap Foundation board - general information
Date and time of Annual General Meeting - voting closes
The next Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the OpenStreetMap Foundation will take place online on Saturday 13 September 2025, 16:00 UTC (countdown), unless rescheduled. This is also the time when voting for the board election will close. Voting will open exactly one week before the General Meeting.
Seats available
This meeting will have a board election, with at least three seats available (of Dani Waltersdorfer, Guillaume Rischard and Roland Olbricht, whose board terms are ending). The terms of Craig Allan, Héctor Ochoa Ortiz, Laura Mugeha and Maurizio Napolitano will continue. There are seven seats on the foundation board. Guillaume Rischard cannot rerun this time, according to Article 34 of the Foundation’s Articles of Association (also see OSMF board members by year).
All board members are volunteers.
Board members, when elected, typically serve for two years until their seat is up for re-election.
What the board is/is not, rules and responsibilities
- Scope of the OSMF board.
- Board rules of order.
- These were the roles and responsibilities for the OSMF board, agreed in the 2014 board face-to-face meeting.
- General duties of directors, according to the UK Companies Act 2006.
- OSM Foundation's Strategic Plan
As a Director you have formal legal duties. The full list of duties is contained in the Companies Act 2006. The primary duties are listed here. Directors are required to follow the Articles of Association of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The Foundation's policies are here.
A lot of the foundation's work is done by the volunteers of our working groups, and if you want to help the foundation, you can also look at joining one of them.
Registration with Companies House
If you get elected, we need to fill out an "Appointment of a director" form and submit to Companies House. Your cooperation will be required for providing some personal details and documents (e.g. passport).
Time commitment
This is variable. Officers (Chairperson,Treasurer, Secretary) are expected to have additional tasks. Mateusz Konieczny tracked the volunteer time devoted to board work during his 2 year board term, and it was over 600 hours, which is about 6.7 hours per week.
Board meetings
The board has two video-meetings per month, a public meeting and an unofficial board chat, closed to observers. You might want to consider joining the following public board meetings:
- 2026-06-26 at 13:30 UTC at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/dor-2cd-qah-rim - June agenda page
- 2025-07-31 at 13:30 UTC at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/dor-2cd-qah-rim - July agenda page
- 2025-08-28 at 13:30 UTC at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/dor-2cd-qah-rim - August agenda page
Board tools
The board mostly communicates via email and uses: private GitLab repositories for tracking issues, Loomio for voting on circulars, a private wiki for documentation, BigBlueButton for the videomeetings, Xero for online book-keeping and files.osmfoundation.org for creating and sharing documents.
Personal views
- 2024-07 Sarah Hoffmann - former board member
- 2023-06 Mateusz Konieczny - former board member: "OSMF board – what are they even doing?" - talk
- 2022-10 Mikel Maron - former board member
- 2022-08 OSMF board - ask us anything session
- 2021-08 Why run for the board - opinions of board members before the 2021 election
- 2019-11 Frederik Ramm - former board member
- 2019-11 Heather Leson - former board member
- 2019-10 Joost Schouppe - former board member
- 2017-09 Frederik Ramm - former board member
Additional OSM Foundation resources
Board candidates
Thank you for participating in this election. List of board candidatesCandidates are ordered according to the order of their self-nominations. Self-nominations that are not eligible for board candidacy will be moved below the table, with a reason provided.
*Note: If you can't find the start date of your OSMF membership please email the Membership Working Group or dorothea@osmfoundation.org from the email address associated with your OSMF membership. Confirmation of normal membership and start date by the Membership Working Group or the OSMF Administrative Assistant. Please do not confirm yourself. Self nominations that have been withdrawn
Self nominations that are not eligible for this election
Eligibility criteria for board candidatesAny person may be elected to become a board member, provided that:
Please note that new directors must be:
1 Normal members provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. Their residential address may be disclosed to other members. Finding the type of your OSMF membership (normal/associate)If you want to find out the type of your membership (Normal or Associate), please check the most recent approval/renewal membership email before emailing the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org from the email address which is associated with your OSMF membership. Associate members who want to become board candidatesYou can change your OSMF membership from associate to normal membership by emailing the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org
No membership fees for active contributors: If you got your membership granted via the "Active contributor" program, you are an Associate member. If you change your membership to Normal, you don't need to pay any membership fees, either at the time of change, or during membership renewals. You do need to renew your membership every year - which is by default done via the active contributor program. Submission of self-nominationsSubmission of self-nominations will be open from 15 June to 5 July 2025 at 23:59:59 UTC. You will be able to put yourself forward for the board election by adding your information to the table. Please first check the eligibility criteria mentioned above. To edit this page you will need an OSM wiki account (create one here), which is different from your account on www.osm.org. If you need help, please email dorothea@osmfoundation.org with subject "2025 board election: self-nomination". The ordering of the answers and manifestos will follow the order of candidate self-nominations. Answering the official questions and writing a manifestoFacilitator for the official questions: Brian Sperlongano. See the section "Questions to Candidates" for the process. Candidates will be expected to send:
..to Brian Sperlongano (facilitator) and Dorothea Kazazi (Administrative Assistant) (dorothea@osmfoundation.org) before 2025-08-08 at 23:59 UTC. The official questions (based on community questions) will become available by the end of July 26th. Formatting the answers and manifesto: Candidates will be asked to send their answers and manifestos in .txt files - a template .txt file will be sent to them to add their answers. Candidates can use the following MediaWiki formatting options: links, ordered/unordered lists, subheadings of level three (=== Subheading ===) or more, bold and italics. Kindly note that other MediaWiki formatting options, emojis and over-formatting will likely be removed. This is to make sure that answers have similar readability due to formatting. Thank you. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Cheatsheet for examples (not all options on that page can be applied here). The Administrative Assistant will send to the candidates a guide with information on how to check how their formatted text will look like. Manifesto (position statement): First time writing a manifesto? You can check manifestos of previous board candidates: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018. Expected time needed to answer official questions: 3-11 hours (based on estimates provided by previous candidates). Expected time needed to write a manifesto: Unknown (previous candidates: feel free to add your estimates). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
For OSM Foundation membersWho has the right to voteAll normal members and associate members (including members who joined via the active contributor membership program) have the right to vote provided that:
4 90 days = Start date of your current membership is before 15 June 2025 in UTC, if the Annual General Meeting takes place on 13 September 2025, as scheduled. Active contributors:
Voting processThe voting process will be similar to previous years. Members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation who are eligible to vote will receive one or two emails from the online voting service after 2025-09-06 16:00 UTC:
The page voting information and instructions has more details. The election results of the OpaVote platform will be independently verified by Michael Spreng (Membership Working Group volunteer). Voting on changes to the Articles of Association (AoA) or other changesResolutions proposed by the boardThere are no resolutions proposed by the board yet. Resolutions proposed by OSMF members (need support by at least 5% of members eligible to vote)OSM Foundation members can submit resolutions and ask the membership to vote on them. Please read: Companies Act 2006: Members' power to require circulation of written resolution and see the key dates above. Questions to candidatesCommunity members can submit questions to the board candidates, upon which the official set of questions will be based. This year, as in previous years, we will have a structured question gathering process.
"We expect this to be the official election campaign process. We won't restrict members to continue to talk on our members' mailing list nor will we restrict candidates to continue discussions, but we don't encourage them to do so. The official answers and questions thereof should be what voters use to judge." Facilitator for the questioning processThe board has asked Brian Sperlongano to be the facilitator. Brian Sperlongano is a map hobbyist from Rhode Island, USA, who has contributed to OpenStreetMap since 2010, when he began mapping hiking trails. From 2022-2024 he served on the OpenStreetMap US board of directors, serving as Secretary and Vice President. He runs StreetFerret, an OSM-based tracking and statistics service for athletes. His other initiatives include the OSM Americana map style, a community vector tile server, a wikidata error checker for US boundaries, and browser plugins for displaying human-readable wikidata on osm.org. He has shepherded five proposals through the OSM proposal process and given several talks on OSM-related topics at conferences and OSM mappy hours. Community reviews/discussionsLinks to related posts written by the community, combine with your own judgement. <placeholder> Additional information and FAQAdditional information is on the OSM Foundation website - including voting information and the FAQ. |
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