Updating the Expense Submission documents

So, the OC discussed their stipend allocation today, which I posted to Expenses thread. I might say more later about how I set up discussion and how discussion went down. (It is in the meeting notes). It was not straight forward to make the decision. More than one person became upset. People still raised all sorts of problems. Taxes: I don't want to have to report it. The logistics: this won't work for different countries. The inequity: some people really need this money (vs. us privileged white people). The absurdity: this money is nothing compared to .... the salary of my day job, or the amount of time I "spent" on X project, or the heart and soul I put into X project, or the special skills I have, or the grand importance of X project that I completed. In the end, decisions were made. 6 people attended this meeting; everyone spoke 4 times at least, in rounds. Several people seemed unhappy with the results.

I wonder if we need to have a public discussion in the main Loomio forum on stipends for working groups, just so everyone can feel heard.

Also, there are other ways of configuring "payments." Someone may want to advocate for labor time tracking. I want to advocate for gift cards, which are non-taxable.

How I set up discussion today was based on my anticipation that everyone would want to opine, which they did: [This procedure took 20 minutes, at least)

Stipends: Each Working Group has an amount budgeted for stipends, and they decide how to spend it among its own members.  (See Toward an Annual Budget 

https://www.loomio.com/d/xqw7FtUT/comment/3054707 ) 

* 1,000 GBP allocated for stipends per working group 

Proposed: This total amount shared equally among members regardless of time

* 3 Options for a person: ACCEPT, DONATE TO GROUP, DONATE TO SOCIAL.COOP 

* ACCEPT:: An OC member commits to invoice (or not) the amount via Open Collective 

* An OC member decides not to take it, then either offer it for everyone else or donate it back… 

@caitlinwaddick Thank you so much for sharing all this. I'm not surprised to see this controversy, as I have seen it before in Social.coop and elsewhere. I think we need to find a simple solution that covers as many challenges as possible. For instance, my proposal would be:

WG members are entitled to a stipend, which they are expected to claim during the annual Stipend Window, which is between January 1 and November 30. In order to claim a stipend, WG members must post an expense to Social.coop on Open Collective.

Stipend amounts can be calculated by dividing the total WG stipend with the number of active members, according to the minutes of that WG.

Any stipends not claimed will be donated to the co-op's Community Contributions fund.

Regarding the "Submitting Expenses" document specifically, what do you think would be useful to add? I think of this document as actually separate; maybe we should draft a separate wiki page with more explanations on a stipend policy?

@Nathan Schneider That's fine, if we first finish discussing ... 🤓🤪😂

** whether the amount budgeted for stipends is the right amount

** ways to value our contributions with the creative use of money or non-monetary tools.

** ways to use money and other tools to encourage and promote the participation of diverse people (race, class, sex, national origin, etc)

** whether stipends are a good idea, such as the effects of stipends in how people choose to contribute (i.e. Do volunteers who receive a monetary recognition work harder? Does paid work discourage member participation?)

** other ways that we might name the stipend, such as “an honorarium” or “salary” or “gift” etc.

** whether we need to have a pizza party to show recognition for all volunteers, even if they don’t serve working groups

** whether to hire a consultant to help us navigate the issues.

I already made a specific change the submitting expenses document a few days ago; I'm sorry I didn't mention it here. I don't love my additions either.... they are in the first paragraph.

Yes: we do need a separate FAQ on Stipends. ...We already know what people will ask and object to and propose, for the most part. We could also start a thread in the main Loomio and let people ask away to generate the content. ... I am tempted to write it right now, but I recognize that I am procrastinating another task.

@caitlinwaddick Thank you! Since you've had more context of these discussions in the OC, I'm happy to follow your lead. But feel free to work from (or scrap) my draft above!

@Nathan Schneider have we lost the edits made to the draft? Can we begin using something more permanent?

@andrewe Shoot. Yes, Riseup resets under-used docs. Here's the latest draft:
https://pad.riseup.net/p/socialcoop-fwg

But I'm going to just add this to our wiki, marked as a draft:
https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Submitting_an_expense

Want to just edit away there?

Should all expenses be posted as links to opencollective‍.com, if they are all available publicly (without signing in) on opencollective‍.com? Is this helpful or duplicative?