Finance WG and Organizing Circle Call - 26 September 2024
Agenda
Introductions
Name? Why are you here? What is the weather like by you? How are you showing up https://feelingswheel.com/ ?
Kathe TB, Nathan S, Josh, Andres, Caitlin,
OC WG "standard" agenda for these visits
What does FWG do? What are your workflow?
What do you want to be doing?
How can OC help support your work (which connects to the topics above)?
FWG specific questions:
Does the FWG has a clear, explicit and known domain/scope so as to be sure wether it is sovereign to take desicions? If not, that is a point to work on.
Are the FWG communications/ reports standarized? (like every 3, 6 or 12 months and what do thy cover). If not, ídem. :)
Questions from FWG:
Clarify responsibility for annual budgeting
Scope of FWG discretion outside the budget
Close out
* How are you leaving this call?
Kathe TB · Thu 26 Sep 2024 6:19PM
Notes
Notes
* Intros
* Kathe is under a hurricane watch in Florida, showing up hyperfocused
* Nathan is holding things together in Colorado
* Andrew is enjoying the weather in Toronto
* Caitlin recently read the fictional Everything for Everyone book
* Josh is getting ready for the USFWC 20th anniversary
* History of FWG
* Emerged out of OpenCollective relationship led by Nathan. Meeting about once a quarter.
* Main task is approving OpenCollective and monitoring budget.
* WG hve line items, CWG has been very consitant with invoice
* Approval historically been very 'what ever', looking to move towards structured budgeting in the future.
* Experimented with vote per expense, didn't really make sense because mostly it was regular webhosting.
* Most expences are routine (webhosting & WG)
* Domain recovery and FWG Stipend are recent 'unusual' expenses.
* Legal issues around incoperation status for payment processing and getting social.coop domain under common control.
* OC situation
* The OC has been trying to be careful about not stepping on toes of working groups, still trying to determine its scope
* One person from each working group in most meetings
* Concerned about upping to two with current bandwidth
* Talking with Andres about getting him on the OC
* How do we as an org, onboard new folks and offboard old hands ready to move on?
* Historically it's been very informal.
* Can we formalize this?
* There have been community meet & greats in the past
* What is the scope of member particpation?
* What needs to go to vote vs what is an operational decision?
* What is the scope of the budget? and overlap between FWG and OC control?
* Hard to have visibility to other WG to see need
* Could OC help draft budget so that we can see what the WG needs?
* Embracing the lose-ness of everything
* We might need to get 'better' at governance. Clarifying how we do things espeically if inovation.coop and/or other leads end up paying off.
* We are productive and there is structure - right sized for where we need to be. Running on good intentions with smart and honest folks.
* Looseness is liked! Keep the at choice model.
* Is our context changing with new opertunities?
* Keep WG as self organized. OC coordinate onboarding/recruitment
* The existance of the OC has been a huge releaf! Felt like a good coordinating zone to connect the WG.
* Report backs from the OC meetings has been really fantastic.
* https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-
* Tagging folks on in loomio is useful to bring to folks attention
* These generally get lost
* An announcement on Mastodon could also be useful
* Annual reports to memebers could increase visibility
* Request for annual spending report with budget comparison from FWG
* Need to talk about legal aspects (inovation coop, legal risk)