Add interim finance committee update, as send to astropy-dev

Author: hamogu

finance/finance-ctte-update-2020-05.md

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+What the interim finance committee is doing
+
+Back in February, we, the Astropy Interim Finance Committee, sent an introduction to this mailing list [1]. The committee is charged with overseeing the distribution of Astropy's funds. The idea is that this committee is temporary, and will be reenvisioned when the project decides on a new governance structure.
+
+The members of this committee are:
+
+- Kelle Cruz
+- Moritz Guenther
+- John Swinbank
+- Erik Tollerud
+- Steve Crawford (Ombudsperson) 
+
+We promised to briefly update you every couple of months [1] on our activities and how money is spent. Here are the highlights from the work we’ve done so far :
+
+- Astropy’s major funding right now is a grant from the Moore
+  foundation. Our major work is to manage and distribute those grant
+  funds. We draft work statements and budgets for core team members to
+  work on the project needs described in that proposal. Our primary
+  focus has been on supporting people in [named
+  roles](https://www.astropy.org/team.html).
+
+- One of the things we have struggled with is how to decide how much
+  to pay people given the wide spectrum of situations and our goal of
+  paying equitably. We have made some progress on this complex topic
+  but welcome community input. See our [running notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/193ERJ6wMNPaNjGSWbS94KHGnojpZ_zwXxWTi9L2etSo/edit?usp=sharing) for details of
+  the discussion.
+
+- As of now, we are actively working on contracts for
+  [Matt Craig](https://github.com/astropy/project/issues/63) and
+  [Adam Ginsburg](https://github.com/astropy/project/issues/70).
+
+- We compensated [Brett Morris](https://github.com/astropy/project/issues/67)
+  for running workshops on Astropy in late 2019 in Belfast, Bern, and Geneva.
+
+- Some funding in the Moore grant may be used to address the project’s
+  needs as they arise. The last Astropy coordination meeting
+  identified a need for a software operational support specialist who
+  can help volunteers with getting started on GitHub, merging,
+  rebasing etc. We have [advertised that position](https://github.com/astropy/project/blob/master/finance/jobs/2020_githubresponder.rst)
+  and convened a selection committee. We are expecting a start date this summer.
+
+- We are working with NumFOCUS (Astropy’s fiscal sponsor) on the
+  processes around getting contracts and subawards drawn up and
+  approved.  We are also working to improve the process of approving
+  expenses.
+
+- We’ve drafted a [policy on travel and conference attendance paid for
+  by astropy](https://github.com/astropy/project/blob/master/finance/funding_requests.md).
+
+See the [issues labeled “finance” in the astropy project repo](https://github.com/astropy/project/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3A%22finance+%3Amoneybag%3A%22) and the full notes from our meetings for more details:
+https://docs.google.com/document/d/193ERJ6wMNPaNjGSWbS94KHGnojpZ_zwXxWTi9L2etSo/edit?usp=sharing
+
+You can make suggestions for things that need to be funded by opening an issue in https://github.com/astropy/project/ or by emailing [email protected] or in the #finance-committee channel on slack.
+
+[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/astropy-dev/U0AQHBS1klw