Loomio
Wed 22 Nov 2023 10:29PM

Toward an annual budget

NS Nathan Schneider Public Seen by 208

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.

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 invite your feedback to help make this more accurately reflect our needs and wants. Please share suggestions in the comments below.

Because we expect to see a new governance structure arise in Social.coop in early 2024, we anticipate that it will be an active participant in budgeting. But we hope that this thread can help inform and guide that process, and we in the FWG want to be active contributors to that.

MN

Matt Noyes Thu 23 Nov 2023 5:00PM

I like these ideas, but perhaps instead of starting from "we have money, how are we going to spend it" we need to start from "we have goals, and potential projects, do any of them need money?" Budgeting is a strategic planning conversation. What is the implicit strategy here? It seems like keeping Social.Coop sustainable and building some kind of solidarity network of platforms. Is that right? Much of that does not require $, but in some cases it might. So, I wonder what is it that we want Social.Coop to be?

NS

Nathan Schneider Fri 24 Nov 2023 3:51PM

@Matt Noyes Thanks for this.

For context, please remember that we have had ongoing discussions about this, going back about a year: https://www.loomio.com/d/jSvw79qE/we-have-room-in-our-budget-to-do-more-what-should-we-do-

The results of that initial poll were that the things the membership was eager to do more were 1) pay working groups more, toward sustainable compensation, 2) invest in new services, and 3) donate to FOSS and fediverse ecosystems. So this proposal really does not come out of nowhere, or out of a random desire to spend money. This is an attempt to actually follow through on stated wishes of the membership.

RG

Robert Guthrie Fri 1 Dec 2023 2:07AM

Loomio developer note:

Just popping in to say that in future, Loomio will not show a link preview if that link already has a preview earlier in the thread. Thanks for showing me what needed to happen :)

NS

Nathan Schneider Fri 1 Dec 2023 3:48PM

@Robert Guthrie In general, two things:

  • I'm really not into link previews. They're really big, distracting, and steer focus away from the discussion.

  • I usually try to delete them, but recently that has become impossible for me in current Firefox. Here's what it looks like (notice the button in the top-left):

RG

Robert Guthrie Tue 5 Dec 2023 8:00PM

@Nathan Schneider thanks again (and sorry to the people expecting this thread to be on topic). I've fixed the buttons now.

In summary the link previews will be now be fewer, smaller and the buttons will work :)

NS

Nathan Schneider Wed 6 Dec 2023 4:54PM

@Robert Guthrie Thanks. While I can see the value of link previews on a social network, I don't think they're appropriate in a governance-focused context—they take up screen real estate that should focus on what people are actually saying, not what they are linking to.