In June this year we held a gathering in Birmingham (this thread and more on wiki). It was splendid, many thanks to our dear organisers!

Ahead of the event we passed a proposal with allowance of £750 to cover the costs of venue hire and refreshments.

From the user perspective, Birmingham gathering was serviced by Warehouse Café co-op. In fact, however, we were renting the meeting rooms and the garden space from Friends of the Earth Birmingham, owners of the property. Not fully aware of the implications, we were using the space of both organisations at the same time (moving between sessions, working in groups etc.)

It was originally estimated that the venue hire will cost £450. This amounted to £660. On top of this there were minor additional stationary and refreshment costs (access to tea & coffee making facilities), bringing the cost of the hire from Friends of the Earth to £720.60. The invoice was issued in July an paid by CoTech Fund in due course.

During the gathering it was brought up that a separate invoice from Warehouse co-op, who operate the café in the building, was to be sent us, though the final cost was not specified. Warehouse co-op served delicious lunches on both days to all the gathering attendees. What the organising team did not anticipate at the time was the potential cost of this, including the fact that Warehouse co-op will also bill CoTech for using the café space on both days of the gathering. The invoice from Warehouse co-op amounted to a total of £1,140.00 - invoice attached.

Combined with the first invoice the total cost of the gathering was nearly 2.5 times the original budget. The invoice from Warehouse co-op was waiting to be paid. The treasurer of CoTech Fund suggested to organisers of the gathering to make a separate proposal on Loomio to validate paying for the invoice, using this as an opportunity to describe what happened. The proposal that followed did not attract much of CoTech members' attention so Code-operative fronted the cost of the invoice to get Warehouse co-op paid.

The question now is whether Code-operative can now be reimbursed for the money they paid to Warehouse Café co-op.

John from Code-operative and Leo from Autonomic did not received a great deal of support in organising the gathering in Birmingham and were both very busy with their ongoing co-op commitments. They tried their best to deliver a great gathering experience which indeed happened. They had not managed to secure a full clarity on the costs associated with the event before the gathering took place. After several conversations amongst CoTech treasury team (Chris Lowis - Go Free Range, Polly Robbins - Outlandish, Szczepan Orlowski - Animorph) we would like to propose reimbursing Code-operative for the extra costs associated with them organising the gathering - £1,140.00.

At the upcoming gathering we would like to draft a wiki page that compiles best practices for organising future gatherings. All suggestions welcome!