Toward an annual budget

This seems like a reasonable 2024 budget; and I like that we are setting aside some amount of cash for the members of the circles to compensate them.

It would be nice if the Community Contributions were split between the Tech WG and Community WG. Right now it looks like they come out of the Finance WG's budget, but are directed by the Tech WG; which may mean that fediverse projects that aren't "Tech" oriented will not get funded.

It feels a bit off that contributions back to the community are confined to Open Collective. Especially because most of the non-tech-oriented projects rely heavily on GoFundMe, tip-jars, paypal and other high-accessibility fundraising means.

TL/DR: I'm glad we have a budget. This looks reasonable from a cashflow perspective. It would be great if the budget proactively signaled an interest in funding labor outside of tech.

@Zee Spencer Thanks for this—and you caught me with an error. We initially had planned to have the contributions going through the TWG budget, but at our meeting today we decided to propose running it through FWG instead. This is because (according to my read of the TWG's last minutes) the TWG has a lot more on its plate and is in danger of burnout. The FWG has capacity to take this on. And of course that process would involve consultation with the broader community, including TWG members. I've just corrected the proposal above to just have that managed by the FWG.

The restriction to OC is primarily logistical right now. We cannot currently make payments otherwise, unless somebody submits an invoice. So I think this is a good way to start, but especially after we move to our more durable fiscal host (that's another discussion) we can open it up beyond this. So in our pilot phase I think it would be best to stick to projects on OC (which is most well-aligned open source projects).

Hi Nathan,

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@freescholar Wow, nice! So y'all didn't end up going with Decidim?

Hey @Nathan Schneider, while I understand using OpenCollective for record-keeping; and for ease of logistics, I still think restricting payments to only existing OpenCollectives is a policy that will prevent us from funding the work of the moderators and communiyt organizers who actually make the Fediverse work.

Open Collective makes it straightforward to reimburse someone for "fronting" a payment to an outside entity. Payments from Social Coop to significantly important vendors, such as infrastructure providers, already use the "submit an invoice and get reimbursed" flow.

I am not dismissing the added logistical burden of needing to submit an invoice, rather than paying directly from Open Collective to Open Collective; but it feels inequitable that we are comfortable paying for some things with an invoice/receipt, but not others.

To be blunt, it feels a little like a reflection of entrenched patriarchal white supremacy, in that we are unwilling to value the labor and energy of the Black and Indigenous people of color who do the vast majority of community-organizing and trust and safety work sufficiently because they don't want to use "our preferred vendor" for payment processing and we don't want to do the work of submitting a receipt for reimbursement.

@Zee Spencer Thanks for raising this concern. I agree it is a real constraint. We could certainly do a reimbursement process for the donations, if people are willing (in the US, doing so does mean some care with respect to taxes). In any case, we were suggesting the OC restriction as totally temporary, until we settle down with our fiscal host (which is in flux) and possibly get access to a debit card. My view is that getting this contributions started has been a long process that has been repeatedly flummoxed by perceived complexity. So I think there is value in trying to reduce the complexity. But I'm open to adjusting, and I suspect others would be too.

On the question of justice, I think it is worth pointing out that, as vendors go, OC is a pretty decent one. The organization is women-led, with a CEO from the Global South. It has made an explicit commitment to supporting mutual aid organizations.

But I agree keeping to one network (even just initially) could introduce unwelcome constraints and get us started on a bad foot. I'll remove that from the current proposal and defer the question to the post-budget process.

To be clear, I love OpenCollective and use them for Zinc's projects gathering income from community and to publicly account for spending. My concern isn't that OC isn't a just vendor, but rather that we are adding a constraint whose consequences will primarily be felt by the non-white, non-programmer members who steward the federated web.

Thank you for removing the constraint that recipients of Social Coop's discretionary funding to support the federated web must use a particular vendor to get paid for their contributions!

I would like to see the people who do ongoing work (whether that's tech or moderation or whatever is a non-one-time-activity) to get paid in a way that they (and their spouses :-)) are happy. I can't tell from this budget whether this might be true or not.

@Johannes Ernst The goal is certainly to provide stipends for people doing some volunteer work. It's not living wages. But it is based on what the WGs have been asking for (or more). I think if we wanted to make living wages a goal (rather than stipends for volunteers), we would have to rethink the budget and labor allocations. I would support that, but I haven't heard WGs asking for it.

@Nathan Schneider Thanks for circulating this. I am not involved enough to understand how social.coop operates in terms of its budget. However, I believe that cooperatives all over the world should be reimbursing its working members for the work that they do at market rate (or at least some semblance of market rate), even if this involves increasing subscription rates. I know that we don't succeed in our worker co-op (ChiCommons LWCA), but we are working toward it. Even if we are willing, as cooperative proponents, to 'volunteer' some of our time, anything operational (central to the ongoing sustainability of the cooperative) should be reimbursed at wages commensurate to the type of required work. This is a longer term proposal than a comment on this specific budget.

Thank you for pushing forward a budget. The co-op adheres to the International Cooperative Alliance "Cooperative identity, values & principles." Should we be budgeting in a paid membership to the Alliance (or do we already)? It would be nice to reciprocate more formally to groups from which we pull our foundational character.

@Eric Leland That's a great idea. We can discuss specific contributions and memberships once this basic framework is in place. But another dimension is that we might have an ICA membership through our fiscal host.

Looks like a good starting point.

Can someone clarify why there is an itemized list of software under the OpenCollective item? I don't understand what that item is saying.

@Dynamic Those are just examples of potential projects. But we'll sort out the specifics once the basic budget framework is in place.

@Nathan Schneider

Are we only giving money to OpenCollective in order to fund specific projects, or are we giving money to them as general infrastructure which might help support specific projects?

I have trouble keeping track of our various affiliations, and I don't know what specific work OpenCollective does or how their funding model works.

Let me echo the excellent point of Johannes Ernst · @J12t · 13 hours ago

“I would like to see the people who do ongoing work (whether that's tech or moderation or whatever is a non-one-time-activity) to get paid in a way…”

I’m delighted to see we have a healthy buffer in resources and stewardship of that for long term sustainability is important but also conscious of how huge the amount of work of some of our key members are doing and suspect they have been somewhat over modest in their request for compensation. I would thus also like us to consider rewarding their time and contributions more (but have no strong feelings on specific amounts).

Apologies for arriving late into this discussion. With my fiscal host hat on, and as has been previously discussed we'd like to begin to be compensated for the time involved in dealing with the book-keeping and managing expense claims, etc.

I'm aware that others here have suggested that there needs to be a distinct proposal on this - perhaps around agreeing the principle of making a contribution to the service provided by the fiscal host (which we've up to now provided at zero cost to social.coop), and I'm fine with that (but not had time to kick that off due to other pressures recently, including being unwell for several weeks over the Christmas period), but at the same time I'm keen to get something into this discussion on this issue.

It's hard to pin down what might make sense for all concerned, but from our side, looking at the time it takes each month, and the nature of the work involved, I think that a monthly fee of around £50 would be a reasonable start.

@Graham Thank you for this reminder. I think that is very reasonable. Typically fiscal sponsor fees are arranged as a percentage of turnover. You can actually set a percentage for transaction fees in Open Collective. Would it make sense to just do that?

At the current rate, a 5% fee would be just over 50 GBP/month. How does that sound?

@Nathan Schneider @Graham There is required time and expenses that perhaps scale with our contributions and there is also a fixed set of time each month, so perhaps we stick with 2% of fees (the current agreement) and add an additional £50 each month? We may also need to account for additional transfers to P6 to cover chargebacks and disputes (Stripe)?

@Nathan Schneider I'm torn on this. On one side, setting a 5% fee sort of automates the process and scales up or down in line with the amounts of money being handled. On the downside, with our current system of book-keeping, it radically ramps up the number of transactions that we are dealing with, and the consequent book-keeping workload, so is somewhat counter productive. I think what I'd like to do is - for the time being - agree a flat fee and simply put in a claim for that just like any other expense claim, whilst at the same time I can work with colleagues at this end to see what we could do to change how we handle book-keeping for Open Collective stuff that might address this issue. We've learned a lot and are continuing to do, so this would act as a useful spark to encourage some fresh thinking about how we might approach this.

@Graham Platform 6 was not established to be a long-term fiscal host, but given the way social‍.coop operates and recognizes membership, we will need one. Does Platform 6 itself intend to continue serving this role or is Platform 6 transferring its engagements to Innovation Cooperative as previously mentioned?

@Andrew Escobar (Andres) · Finance Working Group This isn't the right thread for this discussion. However the plan for P6 to become subsumed into innovation.coop remains and is - albeit very slowly - progressing. If, as a when that plan changes I'll be sure to share useful information early.

@Graham As I mentioned in our latest FWG and in an email to P6 and Innovation, do let us know how social‍.coop can support that transition and account for a one-time expense in the draft budget above (beyond recurring contributions to our fiscal host).

For addition information, please see the high-level “Budget” on Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/socialcoop#category-BUDGET

Social.coop collects monthly recurring contributions of £1,000 GBP (about $1,250 USD) and about £13,000 each year. This draft budget by Finance Working Group is therefore £13K each year — though that includes £2K in reserves. There is also a current “cash” balance of £24K (over two years of operating expenses and contributions at this budgeted level).

I've just updated the budget above...

• @Graham added a 600 GBP annual contribution to P6. Can do that annually.

• I put all work stipends at 1k per working group as a baseline. We are paying substantially less than that now. But we can definitely move those up with time.

• I increased the reserves contribution to save money for paying higher stipends later, after WGs start using the full 1k allotment.

Curious if folks from the Organizing Circle could comment: @Matt Noyes

@Nathan Schneider @Flancian @Eduardo Mercovich @Kathe TB @MarieVC (social.coop/@MarieVC) @John Allsopp

Here from the organising circle, and new to this.

Two main takeaways from the draft budget.

1. Stipends are a strange beast.

   As soon as we decide to pay something, the next questions are how much and why. These lead to other questions, some of which are hinted at in the comments above.

   I have sat on all manner of boards, in a volunteer capacity, for 30 years and I have never been paid a single dollar for any of those roles. Yet, here I am again, as all of you, each of us with some personal and some charitable motivations. Do we risk unbalancing these motivations with pay?

   Are we missing something now because we are not being paid?

   Like I said, I'm new, so I can't appreciate how much of a burden other individuals carry in the working groups, so feel free to chime in.

   In short however, I am not in favour of offering stipends.

2. Overall mission

   This line from @Nathan Schneider 's opener is instructive: "The fact that we are so significantly underspending means that we are not effectively stewarding our members' resources to build the cooperative fediverse"

   Our wiki says that the mastodon server was one of the fruits of the #buytwitter campaign.

   Is the mission of social.coop now mainly to have a great mastodon instance?

   An inspiring CO-OP mastodon instance?

   To evangelise coopoertivisim in the digital age?

   The budget seems to be, let's give back (financially) to our core and wider community, but I'm not sure to what end?

   A question to ponder - Is our 'federated' tech stack what a digital coop should look like (as a model for others to draw inspiration from)?

   If not, what should it look like?

   A proposal - sharpen the mission and keep some dry powder to deploy in the effort to make it evident.

   In this vein, I am not in favour of donating to other organisations at this stage.

@John Allsopp I agree with most of this and appreciate the perspective you bring. On stipends, I think the model we have had in mind is moving toward a cooperative of some kind in which labor contributions are compensated. The stipends are a gesture toward that. Speaking as someone on a fixed income, the stipend is helpful even if it is less than what I donate to Social.Coop (I think?)

@John Allsopp Thanks for this. It's helpful to hear—almost all the voices I have heard in the co-op are in favor of both paying for labor and making collective contributions to other projects in our ecosystem. I'm curious to see if others find your arguments persuasive.

Hi all, according to the proposal we passed for creating an Organizing Circle, the OC is supposed to, among other things:

• Provide financial oversight for Social.Coop, creating and approving an organizational budget, including budgets for each working group (WG); approving any expenses above budgeted amounts; and approving expenses not coming from WGs. 

• Pay stipends to OC members, modeled on the stipends currently received by CWG ops team members. (Not all working groups -- for example the Tech WG -- will want to receive stipends, in which case they can receive a budget they can spend on needed resources, tools, services.)

• Facilitate a strategic planning process and adopt a strategic plan (subject to member approval), with regular periodic reviews and updates of the plan. Finally, because budgeting flows from strategy, we need to facilitate a strategic planning process.

So, I think it makes sense to first get the OC organized, which we are working on in our bi-weekly meetings, then facilitate a strategic planning process, then facilitate the creation of an annual budget (based on this thread and another about participatory budgeting...)

@Matt Noyes The FWG decided to move forward with this proposal based on your statement that we should do so. That statement was more than two months ago, and the OC is still not in a position to act on these things. So I think it's appropriate for the FWG to continue its work, on the assumption that the OC will assume aspects of it once it is ready?

It sounds to me like the OC's remit would entirely eclipse what the FWG currently does (budgeting, stipends, oversight, approving expenses). Is that correct? Should we be working on sunsetting the FWG?

@Nathan Schneider I noticed that, too. What were @Matthew Cropp and I thinking? ;-) Personally, I think the FWG should do this: create an organizational budget, including budgets for each working group (WG); approve any expenses above budgeted amounts; and approve expenses not coming from WGs. The OC can approve the budget (or organize a membership vote) so that the decision is not just decided by the FWG. You have been holding this key element down, including processing invoices, and it's working so better not to change it? Since @caitlin is on the OC, we should be able to coordinate better. What do you think makes the most sense in terms of the FWG's scope?

@Matt Noyes I don't fully understand what's going on with OC. But it seems to me that it should be a coordination body, mainly, with most of the context-specific work (like developing a budget, approving invoices, etc.) kept to working groups that are focused on the given context. So I would expect the FWG to remain essentially its current scope but for the OC to provide more consistent information flows across WGs and higher-level oversight.

@Nathan Schneider That's my sense, too. If Social.Coop becomes a formal cooperative, we would need to convert the OC to something like a board, though that could be done without taking away from working groups.

@benjamin melançon. I like this idea, and I am wondering how to move it forward.

@Ed Summers edsu Totally fair. Currently this budget already involves a significant increase over what is currently being paid to working groups for stipends. We can certainly continue to increase that in future years. We didn't want to over-do that for now, however, since there were some concerns about paying for labor at all.

@Nathan Schneider

I’m in favoring of paying folks, all of the member-contributors who serve on Working Groups, even if the actual payment is a symbolic amount, such as $1/year, which someone might think is hardly worth the hassle. For the most part, these payments aren’t about fair pay. …