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The last official treasurer's report for Cberspace Communications,
before this one, was at the end of July, 2008. So this covers the
period from August 1st, 2008 through August 31st, 2010 (25 months).
Beginning Balance $6,238.21
Credits $720.00 Member contributions
$9.15 Interest on our savings account
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$729.15
Debits $2,400.00 Provide Net colocation (to
10/22/10)
$1,549.17 Phone bills
$105.95 Hardware
$78.00 Renewal of our P.O. Box
$63.80 Renewal of our domain names
$40.00 Corporate fees
$13.05 Paypal fees (income = $300)
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$4,249.97
Ending Balance $2,717.39
Our current balance breaks down as follows:
$2,540.02 General Fund
$177.37 Silly Hat Fund
The money is distributed like this:
$767.76 Checking account
$1,942.68 Savings account earning 0.10% interest annually
6.95 PayPal account
This is my last treasurer's report, and though it has been a pleasure to
serve the Grex community since 1996, I am quite ashamed of how badly
I've done my job the past two years. I'm glad that tsty will be taking
over, and I hope Grex manages to get back on an even keel.
I recommend closing the savings account and moving all the money into
the checking account. It never did earn much interest, and as you see
above it's currently earning .1% annually. So our $2000 will earn
approximately $2 over the course of a year. Not worth the hassle.
If Grex is to survive, the biggest challenge will be rebuilding the
membership, which has been allowed to deteriorate to almost nothing,
through lack of reminders to renew. I offer little defense, but I will
say that it used to be a lot easier to contact members when Grex had a
working email system. Future reminders will have to be sent a different
way. I recommend being stricter about removing members from the rolls
when they don't pay on time. I was always lenient about that, and it
got to be a big drag on my time and energy, reminding people who were
overdue and nonresponsive. Eventually, I just couldn't face it anymore.
There used to be a lot of complaints that Grex had a lot of money, and
therefore shouldn't be asking for more. I always fought that attitude,
which seemed like the M-Net model of funding: only send in money when
the situation is desperate. Grex had many years of financial stability
precisely because people sent in money regularly, without waiting for
things to become desperate. Of course, it took a lot of organization
and nagging to get them to do that.
In any case, those days are gone, and maybe that will be a kick in the
pants for those who didn't want to contribute when Grex was flush.
That's not he case anymore, as you can see; we currently have about one
year's operating expenses in the bank. So the time to start raising
money is now.
The membership sysem should be revamped, though. Members should be
required to provide a working email address, so that the treasurer can
contact them. An automated reminder system would be a good idea. I
never wanted to do that because I never wanted to put any financial
information, other than the treasurer's reports, online. But that was
too rigid. Automating the system of reminding members and removing them
when they don't pay on time would make the treasurer's life a lot
easier.
Also, if it were up to me, I'd dump the requirement that members provide
ID. The internet has passed the point where that has any value, and it
was a big hassle for the treasurer to keed track of everyone's ID
information.
A significant portion of our members, on the order of 50%, were always
people who never used the conferences. And a large number of people who
used the conferences regularly never became members. That always
puzzled me, and it still does. I'm sure no one's coming for the
free email anymore, so what is it really that draws people to support
Grex?
Grex needs to explain to its members why they should support the system,
and that means deciding what its mission is. It used to have to do with
providing local access to the internet, but we're down to one phone
line, so that's clearly not it anymore. (Though it's certainly a part
of what we told the IRS when we applied for and received 501(c)3 status
in 1998.) This is a big challenge.
10 responses total.
Interesting comments, Mark. I'm curious why you say that email doesn't work, or whether that's in reference to its utility (which I agree is small, given the amount of spam that deluges Grex daily). I agree with about all of your points, including with respect to automation, doing away with the ID requirement (or just use something like PayPal for that).
Thanks for the update, Mark! Being in the dark about our financial status has left us spinning our wheels. (Can we plan to buy something expensive like a new system? What are our monthly expenditures? What money do we have coming in? Are there patterns to our cash flow? How long can we stay in business if nothing changes?) It's hard to plan anything without accurate information. So, I hope TS can continue to post financial statements on a regular basis going forward. It is vital to our understanding of how the system works and what we can do to improve it. The Board did discuss our mission and decided a) that changing it would mean re-filing our 501c3 status, and b) that what we have right now is generic enough to suit us for many purposes. So we're leaving our mission statement as it is. We do, however, need to decide the specifics of implementing that mission, hence my attention to planning. The Board does have planning on the current agenda and has done so several times in the last 9 months. Unfortunately, it tends to be the kind of item that most would rather delay while they concentrate on day to day affairs and system status. We definitely need to spend the time now to make important decisions for the future of Grex. It will be onerous for some or all, but if we spend the time now we won't need to do so significantly in the future. If you have ideas for improving the system going forward, please add them to the Town Hall item (agora 12, coop 284) so that we can discuss and potentially add to our plans. Your opinions and expertise are welcome and much-needed. (And that goes for everyone else, too!)
am at aruba;s house now receiving hte file cabinet ... and more directins. this ought to work... janc still has to get his papers ot tcf bank ... aruba called him about 8 mins ago ... hel;ll try to get hte bank stuff taken care of ... this week (he said).
Has there been any consideration of putting grex email in the cloud (on Google as a 501c3?)
Re 4: Some consideration, but I there would need to be more investigation of that to see if it would work for us the way we'd like. Definitely the spam filtering would be good, if it applies to accounts like ours. Re 3: Did janc go to the bank to give them his notarized form? This has been dragging on for far too long. It should be taken care of post haste, but I realize we don't have much say in it at this point.
We've been discussing putting grex email into google's cloud for years. I even remember Mike McNally giving his thumbs up after his experience with the ISP he worked for did so.
Of course, as one user pointed out, Google's policies of handling the information that goes through their servers may not be the best if you want to keep your privacy. So, that's a point against for some people at least in perception.
Drift is the nature of the beast, I guess. :( What is the advantage of using GMail for "@cyberspace.org" instead of "@gmail.com"? I can see the advantage for an organisation, but what is the advantage for a user? I'm going to put this in the 'where do we go from here' item, for follow-up.
I think we'll get even fewer members in the cloud.. unless we can offer something that no one else has.. and it better not be 'Grex' (i almost stuck you instead of we >:; SDF even had a special offer some time back: free membership for Grexers..
The user gets to have the unique address of @cyberspace.org It is well worth the migration, imo
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