Drupal Association Reserves Fall Below Board Minimum After Two Years of Shortfalls

Audited financial statements show the Drupal Association ended 2025 with a $224,072 decline in total net assets after restating the 2024 decline to $922,731. Net assets without donor restrictions fell by $451,432, while cash declined by $499,654 to $1,726,482. McDonald Jacobs issued an unmodified opinion, stating that the financial statements presented the Association’s position fairly in all material respects.

Drupal.org accounts for the Association’s largest programme expense and has no dedicated funding mechanism, according to management. The audit assigns $2,098,593 in 2025 programme expenses to the website and its supporting services. The figures add audited detail to earlier DropTimes coverage of the Association’s reserve shortfalls. In a financial overview published on 4 August 2026, Tiffany Farriss, interim CEO, said unrestricted reserves had fallen to about $960,000, equal to 2.3 months of operating expenses and below the board’s three-month minimum.

The Association reported $4,737,761 in total support and revenue against $4,961,833 in expenses. A $227,360 increase in donor-restricted net assets reduced the decline in total net assets to $224,072, while net assets without donor restrictions declined by $451,432. The audit defines net assets without donor restrictions as resources not subject to donor or grantor conditions.

The roughly $960,000 reserve measure cited by management matches, to rounding, the audit’s $961,581 in net assets without donor restrictions. That total includes $100,000 in board-designated assets and $86,086 in net property and equipment, so it is not equivalent to cash. The audit separately reports $1,525,276 in financial assets available for general expenditure, down $488,416, or 24%, from 2024. Management does not state the formula used to convert the reserve figure into months of operating expenses.

The audit restates the 2024 accounts to correct the recognition of Drupal Certified Partner membership dues. The adjustment reduced 2024 revenue and unrestricted net assets by $353,167 and increased deferred revenue by the same amount. Tiffany said the correction moved revenue to the period in which it was earned and did not involve a movement of cash.

Tiffany also said the monthly reports reviewed by the board’s Finance Committee were prepared on a different basis from the audited statements, with no reconciliation between them. The committee asked the auditors in April 2026 to examine revenue-recognition practices, according to her overview, and that work produced the restatement. The auditor’s report does not present the reporting gap as an internal-control finding. It states that internal control was considered when the audit procedures were designed, but no opinion was expressed on its effectiveness.

Non-cash transactions totalled $1,011,995 in 2025, up from $703,415 in 2024, and represented about 21% of total support and revenue. The audit lists $691,645 in digital sponsorships and $250,000 in website content among non-cash revenue exchanged for software and information technology services. Tiffany said donated and exchanged services covered 48% of Drupal.org spending in 2025 and had not appeared in the monthly reports before the audit.

Within the Drupal.org programme, the audit records $758,218 in information technology and website costs and $684,077 in professional fees. Tiffany said total Drupal.org spending rose from $1.3 million in 2022 to $2.1 million in 2025, while the DrupalCon surplus fell from about $994,000 to $227,000. Her overview attributes 41% of Drupal.org spending in 2025 to general operating revenue, compared with 4% in 2022. Those historical funding comparisons are management calculations and do not appear in that form in the audited statements.

The audit also says one organisation accounted for 11% of total revenue in both 2025 and 2024. It reports approximately $1,043,500 in sponsorships, donations, and Drupal Certified Partner membership revenue from organisations affiliated with board members in 2025, up from approximately $433,000 in 2024. The statements do not identify the organisations or indicate that the transactions were improper.

The audit records no significant fundraising expenses in 2025 after the Association reduced staffing and limited fundraising activity. It says resources were directed instead towards programmes and expansion of the certified partner programme. The published materials do not quantify the effect of reduced fundraising activity on cash revenue or the 2026 outlook.

The auditor’s report contains no going-concern qualification or warning. Tiffany said the current 2026 forecast points to another shortfall and that an updated forecast, a preliminary mitigation plan, programme-level cost details, and a full calculation of Drupal.org costs will be published in the coming months. She also plans to prepare a 2027–2028 operating budget with the Finance Committee for board approval before the end of 2026.

Tiffany said she does not consider the services relied on by the Drupal project to be at risk and does not intend to close the funding gap by reducing them. That remains management’s stated position. The forecast and mitigation measures that would explain how the commitment will be financed have not yet been published.