Loomio
Tue 14 Nov 2023 5:50PM

Toward an annual budget

NS Nathan Schneider Public Seen by 26

Please see below for a proposed post to the full membership—please share comments here before I circulate it there next week:

Toward an annual budget

We in the Finance Working Group have determined that the co-op should develop a cohesive annual budget. We currently take in far more than we spend; our current balance of £22k, for instance, exceeds our total spend over 5 years of £21k. Our current estimated annual budget is £15. The fact that we are so significantly underspending means that we are not effectively stewarding our members' resources to build the cooperative fediverse. We expect that this budgeting process will shift to the Organizing Circle once it is ready.

To get a budgetary process going, we have developed a very simple draft budget for the co-op, based on allocating funds to working groups. We need your feedback to help make this more accurately reflect our needs and wants. Please share suggestions in the comments below. Based on these, we will make a formal budgetary proposal for the year 2024.

Draft budget (£15)

Finance WG (£1)

  • Stipends

Tech WG (£10)

  • Open source contributions on Open Collective, to be determined by the TWG with input from the membership (£5)

    • E.g., Mastodon, Wikimedia, Matrix, Bonfire, Hometown

    • What others?

  • Expenses (£2)

    • Meet.coop £90.00 GBP / month

    • Hosting (£1k)

    • Domain (£100?)

    • May First ($250)

    • Loomio ($100)

  • Labor stipends (£3)

Community WG (£4)

  • Stipends

  • Governance transition process

Reserves (£5)

NS

Poll Created Sat 18 Nov 2023 3:18AM

Is this thread ready to be posted to the full membership? Closed Tue 21 Nov 2023 3:00AM

Outcome
by Nathan Schneider Wed 22 Nov 2023 10:29PM

Initiated thread here: https://www.loomio.com/d/liwtX0qd/toward-an-annual-budget

This sense check is an opportunity for your input and contribution, to help us make a better decision. Leave a comment or make a suggestion for improvement.

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Looks good 100.0% 3 CWF AES KG
Abstain 0.0% 0  
Concerned 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 9 NS G MC JD D LS SG F HB

3 of 12 people have participated (25%)

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle Mon 20 Nov 2023 2:15AM

We need this conversation, and we will start with what we have. 🐾 🤓

AES

Andrew Escobar (Andres) · social.coop Finance Working Group Mon 20 Nov 2023 6:04AM

I think this a good draft. It allows each WG to establish its own budget and priorities for social‍.coop and cooperation with others.

  1. I would like to see CWG pay itself a bit more and I hope this encourages them to have that discussion in advance of a formal budget proposal in 2024.

  2. I trust TWG will be able to allocate £5K GBP ($6.2K USD, $8.5 CAD) to open source contributions, via open collective and other platforms (expense/payment process to be determined by FWG?). Do we need there thoughts here and now though?

  3. We already have £20K+ in reserve. I would propose lowering annual reserve contributions to £3K (20%) and increasing FWG by £2K for governance/fiscal hosting/innovation.coop (or creating a new overall governance category).

NS

Nathan Schneider Mon 20 Nov 2023 3:35PM

Matt_Noyes recommends that we wait until the new year and make this the first order of business for the new governance model: https://social.coop/@Matt_Noyes/111440611593710458

I'm willing to support that.

NS

Nathan Schneider Wed 22 Nov 2023 10:27PM

Actually, in that thread, Matt approves us initiating the process while including reference to the new governance structure.

NS

Nathan Schneider Mon 12 Feb 2024 6:49PM

FWG agreed on a revision in our 2/12 meeting: To move the open-source contributions to the FWG, which has less on its plate than the TWG does.

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle Tue 12 Mar 2024 1:36PM

The Organizing Circle made a Decision at our bi-monthly meeting on February 27, 2024 to ask that the Finance WG propose an annual budget, formally, on Loomio to the membership for a vote. The OC members approved this action with the understanding that the proposed budget is for this year (2024-2025-ish), and that the OC will be more involved next year, as the OC develops greater capacity. The context for this Decision is: "Let's not delay the annual budget with our involvement at this time."

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle Tue 26 Mar 2024 12:54PM

A thread BY THE SAME NAME is located in the main Loomio channel: https://www.loomio.com/d/xqw7FtUT/toward-an-annual-budget

CWF

Caitlin Waddick, Finance Working Group for Social.Coop and Organizing Circle Thu 28 Mar 2024 7:38PM

Josh and I posted the Community Contribution Budgeting thread to the main SC Loomio space: https://www.loomio.com/d/2k8IHs9Y/comment/3073202 We asked for ideas. ... We should use the Announcement tool in Social.Coop to let folks know about it. I'll look into it soon.