Loomio

Afrikaburn

BRS BurningSeed Restructure Stakeholders Public Seen by 6

Afrikaburn takes place in South Africa in April each year. The not for profit company that runs the burn and related events throughout the year was established in 2007. Their page relating to governance can be found here.

BRS

BurningSeed Restructure Stakeholders Sun 19 Jul 2020 2:09AM

Leanna has shared this page about Afrikaburn on Discord, and their Memorandum of Incorporation (constitution) can be read below.

MF

Madeline Fountain Sun 19 Jul 2020 7:29AM

I read the financial statements and they are a thing of beauty for nerds like me who read this stuff in detail. I would love to see that level of disclosure in the new orgs and think it serves 2 purposes:

  1. Oversight is a great motivator for better consultation when it comes to grey areas and marginal calls about how resources are distributed or otherwise leveraged.

  2. By providing financial statements prepared to International standards/conventions the company does not have to do the extra work of editing and interpreting what it thinks the members should know. Providing a technical document with everything in it empowers the members to seek what they want to know for themselves. It is not paternalistic like the current "need to know basis".

Notes about their spending:

  • They have a pretty high total of annual payments to their 6 directors (about AUD240k)

  • Employee costs of about AUD600k?? Need to see how many people they employ. There are also seperate stipends paid of roughly AUD32k . It looks like about 30% of revenue is spent on paying people adn that is not something I would support at this stage for our orgs.

  • The ticketing fees alone are AUD85K and we currently use the same vendor...might be worth shopping around for an Australian vendor who are likely struggling to save their businesses right now. Also the burner profile data is currently held under the South African jurisdiction and not subject to the Australian Privacy Principles or laws. Also a privately owned ticket company earning almost as much per year as the spend on art doesn't pass the pub test me.

  • Arts development of AUD100k so paying people receives 8x what goes into the Creative deliverables. I don't support that. It is a typical problematic model seen right across the arts sector where artists get screwed and the people administering the events are taken care of. It is exploitative IMO.