Foundation/AGM2025/Election to Board - OpenStreetMap Wiki

Foundation/AGM2025/Election to Board - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Foundation/AGM2025/Election to Board
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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)
Contents
Key dates
1.1
Calendar views
2025 Annual General Meeting and election to OpenStreetMap Foundation board - general information
2.1
Date and time of Annual General Meeting - voting closes
2.2
Seats available
2.3
What the board is/is not, rules and responsibilities
Board candidates
3.1
List of board candidates
3.2
Eligibility criteria for board candidates
3.2.1
Finding the type of your OSMF membership (normal/associate)
3.3
Associate members who want to become board candidates
3.4
Submission of self-nominations
3.5
Answering the official questions and writing a manifesto
For OSM Foundation members
4.1
Who has the right to vote
4.2
Voting process
4.3
Voting on changes to the Articles of Association (AoA) or other changes
4.3.1
Resolutions proposed by the board
4.3.2
Resolutions proposed by OSMF members
(need support by at least 5% of members eligible to vote)
4.4
Questions to candidates
4.4.1
Facilitator for the questioning process
4.5
Community reviews/discussions
Additional information and FAQ
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.
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.
2025-07-24 update
: Brian Sperlongano (facilitator for the questioning process)
published the official set of questions to the candidates
, who were 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, irrespective of voting eligibility, via email.
The date was changed, as the board is likely to
propose a resolution related to OSMF's move to the EU
and the wording of the resolution has not been finalised yet.
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
[Administrative Assistant] (Updated) Soft deadline for drafting the official General Meeting announcement, mentioning any special/normal resolutions suggested by either the board or the members.
2025-08-16 update: Two versions of the announcement prepared. It is still pending whether there will be a resolution proposed by the board.
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 (link)
2025-09-06 16:00 UTC
[Members]
Online voting
opens for the board election.
(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
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
Online calendar (monthly view)
. Additional information is included in the events' descriptions. If you want to add it to your calendar, you can use
this subscription link
- please note that if you
import the file
, instead of subscribing to the url, you won't get any updates.
Image below.
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
June agenda page
2025-07-31 at 13:30 UTC
at
July agenda page
2025-08-28 at 13:30 UTC
at
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
OSM Foundation mission statement
OSM Foundation responsibilities
Board candidates
Read
what the board is/is not, rules and responsibilities
Check
the eligibility criteria
Add your name and details to the table below
, from 2025-06-15 to 2025-07-05, 23:59 UTC
. Read the instructions below the table.
Read the
official set of questions
by the facilitator, Brian Sperlongano, on
2025-07-26. Please follow the
instructions below the table
regarding formatting your answers and manifesto.
Send your answers and manifesto until 2025-08-08 23:59:59 UTC
. Your answers and manifesto will be published at
Foundation/AGM2025/Election_to_Board/Answers_and_manifestos
on 2025-08-16.
Thank you for participating in this election.
List of board candidates
Submission of self-nominations closed on the 5th of July 2025, at 23:59:59 UTC
Candidates 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.
Result
Name
Nationality
Country of residence
OSM Foundation member since
(will be confirmed*)
OSMuser links {{User|OSM_username}}
Elected
Roland Olbricht
German
Germany
2012-08-23
(confirmed)
drolbr
on
OSM
edits
contribs
heatmap
comments
Elected
Brazil Singh
Bangladeshi
Bangladesh
2024-04-14
(confirmed)
Brazilsingh
on
OSM
edits
contribs
heatmap
comments
Elected
Daniela Waltersdorfer
Peruvian/Peruana
USA
2021-10-20
(confirmed)
DW2515
on
OSM
edits
contribs
heatmap
comments
Md Atikuzzaman Limon
Bangladeshi
Bangladesh
2017-2019, 2024-07-07
(confirmed)
Md Atikuzzaman Limon
on
OSM
edits
contribs
heatmap
comments
Community questions for the candidates, upon which the official set of questions will be based
--
Official set of questions
Answers to the official questions and manifestos
Detailed election results
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 nomination that was withdrawn, as it was not eligible for this election
Suthakaran, Sri Lanka,
Suthakaran
on
OSM
edits
contribs
heatmap
comments
Reason for ineligibility for this election: The start date of the current OSMF membership is 2025-06-29, which is within the 180 days before the 2025 Annual General Meeting on 2025-09-13. See:
$78 of the OSM Foundation Articles of Association
. Previous membership: 2017-2022.
Eligibility criteria for board candidates
Any person may be elected to become a board member, provided that:
They are
normal OSMF members
28 days before the General Meeting, and
they have been a normal member or
associate
member during the full 180 days before the General Meeting, and
are willing to act as a board member, and
are permitted by law to do so.
Please note that new directors must be:
aged 16 or above
not disqualified from being a director
not undischarged bankrupt
not auditing the company.
Normal members
provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. Their residential address may be disclosed to other members.
Associate members
provide just their country of residence and can vote - but not on all issues. More information
here
See the
UK Companies Act 2006
, including Part 10, Chapter 1 "Appointment and removal of directors".
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 candidates
You can change your OSMF membership from associate to normal membership by emailing the volunteers of the
Membership Working Group
at membership@osmfoundation.org
Send your email from the email address which is associated with your OSMF membership.
It is necessary to provide your residential address, which will be available to other OSMF members.
Please change your membership type before adding your self-nomination to the candidates' table below. If you decide to be a candidate at the last minute, you can still add yourself as an associate member, but you have to change your membership type immediately after the submission period of self-nominations closes. In this case please email both membership@osmfoundation.org and dorothea@osmfoundation.org Thank you.
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-nominations
Submission 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 manifesto
Facilitator for the official questions
Brian Sperlongano
See the section "
Questions to Candidates
" for the process.
Candidates will be expected to send:
their answers to the
official questions
(a .txt template file will be sent to them by the administrative assistant, to add their answers in) and
their manifestos
(position statements)
..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
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 members
Who has the right to vote
All
normal members
and
associate members
(including members who joined via the
active contributor membership program
) have the right to vote provided that:
they were a member or associate member throughout the period of 90 days
prior to the date on which the meeting is held; and
their membership account was not in arrears 7 days prior to the date on which the general meeting is held
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
If you have an
active contributor membership
not based on mapping but on other contributions
(had to be voted by the board)
which ends between 6th of August to 6th of September 2025, make sure to renew it in time, as processing the renewal might take two weeks or more.
Voting process
The 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
one email for voting for the board election and on any normal/ordinary issues
(possibly) a second email to vote on any special issues suggested by members (special resolutions). Only normal OSMF members can vote on special resolutions.
The email will have a link to the online ballot. The election will follow the single transferable vote rules
(STV - more at the link below)
. Each foundation member will vote by ranking candidates according to their preference. Please see the warning box at the top of this page.
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 changes
Resolutions proposed by the board
There are no resolutions proposed by the board.
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 candidates
Community members can submit questions to the board candidates, upon which the
official set of questions
will be based.
The submission period will open on the 15th of June 2025 and will close on 12th of July ("by end of", in UTC). Questions will be added to the
talk page
or could be sent to the
osmf-talk mailing list
(for OSMF members -
archive of emails viewable by all here
This year, as in previous years, we will have a structured question gathering process.
We invite members to post their questions to
Talk:Foundation/AGM2025/Election_to_Board
, from 2025-06-15 up to 2025-07-12 ("by end of", in UTC)
(see the top of this page for other key dates)
The facilitator will gather the community questions, organise them and publish an official set for the candidates at
Talk:Foundation/AGM2025/Election_to_Board
Candidates then will submit their answers to the
official
questions
and their
manifestos
directly to the facilitator and cc our administrative assistant. It will be up to the candidates to answer all the questions or just a few of them, but our suggestion is to answer all of them.
All answers and manifestos will be compiled and published at once by the Administrative Assistant,
Dorothea Kazazi
Discussion then will commence, until 2025-09-06 16:00 UTC when voting will open.
"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 process
The 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/discussions
Links to related posts written by the community, combine with your own judgement.

Additional information and FAQ
Additional information is on the
OSM Foundation website
- including
voting information and the FAQ
Annual General Meetings of the OpenStreetMap Foundation
Board Elections
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
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