I would like to talk about having the working groups invite the folks who have volunteered

see the "welcoming new batches of volunteers" thread in general on zulip

we should also approve the Budget!

Notes

1500 [20 min] Opening

Check in [no notes]:

• How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings or https://feelingswheel.com/]

ADMIN:

• Who is here? Ammar, Caitlin, Kathe, Eduardo, Melissa, Marie

• Does anyone need to leave early? 

• Confirm our next call on 6 November (1500 UTC)

• Ammar will facilitate

• Who is notetaking? Caitlin

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

Inform and Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/JL0PNl4r/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-october-9-1500-utc-

[[Build agenda]]

• Jury meetings update? 

• WG updates - already in there

• budget

• deep issues/ important topics (reserved time) (big questions! same thing)

• https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true

• [pending] priorities in kanban (em)

• https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true

• onboarding new volunteers

1520 [20 min] Updates from working circles 

• Finance

• See bottom

• First reactions:

• 10-15% wiggle on the items 

• Acknowledging that we have extra GBP (29,000 GBP in the bank; budget spends half of member contributions during a year) 

• Is this for 2025 or 2026? How would we deal with unspent 2025 (community contributions specifically)

• Good to know money in the account

• We can start a flow of budgeting each year. 

• Support for passing as a 2025 budget. 

• Suppport for passing it as a 2026 budget. 

• Cash reserves: what do we want to keep? (And, where do we want to keep them?) 

• What is our level of concern about the budget when we approve it? Do we build the budget with the working group? 

• TODAY: 1st time that Social.Coop with the Organizing Circle will have approved a budget. 

• We can amend the budget later. 

• Andrew will move forward with the Community Contributions for 2025. 

• DECISION: APPROVED! The budget for 2025 is approved unanimously.

• Proposal: The Caitlinator will start a Loomio thread to set future priorities for budgeting. It will be a "sense-making" thread.     Several categories for sense-making: core expenses, cash reserves, discretionary expenses, and community contributions. The FWG and OC invite open comments, questions, and feedbacks for next year's budget. This thread is a "meta-discussion" about how to set priorities for spending. How much do we want in cash reserves or discretionary funds? 

•  "We are looking for guidence on some of our budget process from the coop. Specifically we know we need to cover core expences (eg server costs) and pay our glorious volunteers a modest stipend. We want to support feature development as idenentified by TWG. However this still leaves some money unallocated. We have identified a need for cash reservers and in the past we've allocated community contributions. The question on the table is are there other expenses that do not fall inot these categories that should be considered? After X time we'll coninute building in this thread the level of cash reservers we want to keep and any other broad guidence to guide future budgets?"

• Tech

• Too busy. Servers are up! 

• Community

• Doing great. :)

• Legal - defunct-ish

• Alex is taking this on and getting onboarded today! YEAH! 

1540 [10 min] Selection report out

• * Going well. Lots of work

• * Onboarding call talked about process and bylaws (informative)

• * Meeting 2 discussed selection criteria. More questions are requested - extending the current form. Looking to add folks to new Zulip (there is a way to have them as guests, and their access limited to a certain channel > https://zulip.com/help/guest-users). 

    * meeting in two weeks

    * Try to stick to end of calendar year for OC At-Large and Legal selection. with a strong encouragement to select members before end of Novembers

    * 3 for OC and 1 for legal - might be more of a vetting process then a selection

    * Selection criteria is here https://www.loomio.com/d/VeuZvyM9/organizing-circle-and-legal-working-groups-jury-meetings/2

•     + location

• + identity

• + "sniff test"

• + experience in cooperatives

1550 [10 min] Onboarding to... 

1) OC, old 2024 thread for onboarding new members: https://www.loomio.com/d/m9QOpEi7/new-member-onboarding-to-the-organizing-circle-welcome-new-person- 

2) other working groups

3) social.coop and cosocial.ca: had a 1st meeting, agreed on doing a kind of hackatón before the end of the year, around 1st Dec week. We are preparing everything to make it as useful and enjoyable as possible. 

1600 [10 min] Proposed budget actions

• + see above

1615 [15 min] Close out

Tasks

• What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

• Putting big topics into a kanban (edu, from https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true)

• Melissa will welcome CWG volunteers via email (today/tomorrow)

• Melissa (and anyone who wants to stick around) will welcome Alex Rodriguez in 9 minutes in this room. Caitlin will join. 

• Ammar will follow up on jury meetings

• Kathe will post recap

• Caitlin will post to the entire Social.Coop on Loomio about the budgeting topic above 

• Caitlin will talk with finance working gorup about onboarding new volunteers

• Marie will statt new thread for next meeting (needs a new meeting room!)

• Ammar will make agenda for next call

Feedback

• What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

------------------------- 

2025 BUDGET - PASSED  

member contributions: 14,000 GBP

core: 3,055 GBP

payment processing: 952

fiscal hosting: 600

hosting: 780: 70×12 = 840

domain name: 90

May First: 200

Loomio: 373

stipends: 3,500 GBP

Organizing Circle: 1000

Finance: 500

Community: 2000

Tech: 0 (based on past TWG decisions)

strategic & community: 4,680 GBP

community contributions: 3,600

• - particpatory budgeting

meet.coop: 1,080: 90×12 (paid automatically via open collective)

core + stipends:

1. approved as they come in (though no approved budget for 2025)

1. combined annual expenses (6,555 GBP) are approx. half of annual member contributions (14,000 GBP)

1. given current balance (approx. 29,000 GBP) provides for a 5+ year runway for core + stipends

Recap

Most of this meeting addressed budgets for this year and next. We also heard updates from the working groups and Selection Jury. There is an ongoing conversation about a hackaton for onboarding material with cosocial.ca.

Community Working Group is moving along, generally positive and support the collaboration with cosocial w/re onboarding material. CWG is also helping to onboard the first member (who was invited a few months ago) of Legal Working Group. Finance Working Group has a budget update (see below). Tech Working Group has no update but servers are up!

The Selection Jury has met and is sense making and gathering information for OC and Legal WG member selection. Volunteer recruitment for Tech and Community working group has been generally successful. We could use a few more volunteers for Finance, as well as broader OC/LW candidate pools.

The proposed 2025 budget was unanimously approved. These include:

2025 BUDGET - PASSED  

• member contributions: 14,000 GBP

• core: 3,055 GBP

  • payment processing: 952

  • fiscal hosting: 600

  • hosting: 780: 70×12 = 840

  • domain name: 90

  • May First: 200

  • Loomio: 373

• stipends: 3,500 GBP

  • Organizing Circle: 1000

  • Finance: 500

  • Community: 2000

  • Tech: 0 (based on past TWG decisions)

• strategic & community: 4,680 GBP

  • community contributions: 3,600

    • participatory budgeting

  • meet.coop: 1,080: 90×12 (paid automatically via open collective)

• core + stipends:

  1. approved as they come in (though no approved budget for 2025)

  2. combined annual expenses (6,555 GBP) are approx. half of annual member contributions (14,000 GBP)

  3. given current balance (approx. 29,000 GBP) provides for a 5+ year runway for core + stipends

We decided to start a "sense-making" thread to illicit feedback on future budget considerations. Several categories for sense-making: core expenses, cash reserves, discretionary expenses, and community contributions. The FWG and OC invite open comments, questions, and feedbacks for next year's budget. This thread is a "meta-discussion" about how to set priorities for spending. How much do we want in cash reserves or discretionary funds? 

Some suggested text include: "We are looking for guidance on some of our budget process from the coop. Specifically we know we need to cover core expenses (eg server costs) and pay our glorious volunteers a modest stipend. We want to support feature development as identified by TWG. However this still leaves some money unallocated. We have identified a need for cash reservers and in the past we've allocated community contributions. The question on the table is are there other expenses that do not fall inot these categories that should be considered? After X time we'll continue building in this thread the level of cash reservers we want to keep and any other broad guidance to guide future budgets?"

The numbers shared here were “just for illustration pending input” as part of the base operations budget for FWG to meet OC policy. Having received no input or response from other working groups, FWG submitted a budget to the OC that mirrors Budget 2024. I have posted it to Loomio for clarity:

Budget 2025

UPDATE: In this meeting, I said that I would post a sense-making poll for discussion of the proposed 2026 budget. I just did it! It is here: https://www.loomio.com/p/EYwd7onD/help-social-coop-make-sense-of-the-proposed-2026-budget-what-can-we-do-together- I left it open for comments through March 31st, which is Transgender Day of Visibility. 🍭 Just for fun. Plenty of time for new OC/WG members to think. ... Maybe next week, I'll create a link to in the the Social.Coop Announcements. I do have permissions, and I just figured out how to make that happen.