Here's a small puzzle:
(1) The board made three motions at the last meeting:
- to pay $150 for 501(c)3 application, if the money can be raised in
a fundraiser.
- to pay $200 for a mail machine disk, if the money can be raised in
a fundraiser.
- to pay $600 for 4/670, and to hold a fundraiser for that amount.
Note that the 4/670 spares were held to be sufficiently urgent that we
wanted to be able to go after them without waiting for the fundraiser
to finish, so that motion was worded differently.
(2) At this time, the $150 for the 501(c)3 application has been raised.
In addition, $459 of the other $800 for the other stuff has been
raised.
(3) Charles has assembled most of the mail machine (largely with parts
he donated). It is waiting on a disk (and a keyboard, but that should
be easy to find. We'd like to be able to buy the disk and continue
work on the project.
(4) Spare parts are a higher priority than the mail machine, but we are
still shopping for a good price on those.
So, can we go ahead and by the disk for the mail machine on the presumption
that the rest of the money for spares is going to come in? Or should we
wait till we have all the money for the higher-priority item, the spares,
before we spend any money on the lower-priority (but more immediately useful)
item, the disk?
23 responses total.
Don't buy anything on the presumption money will appear. Please don't go further into the general fund until that balance looks a little better. We need take a deep breath, stop spending, and evaluate why folks are not supporting this fund drive before we start writing more checks.
I say don't buy the mail disk until after the money is in. Buy the spare parts when we get a good deal.
We should wait until the money comes in for the spare parts. I think we are in danger of getting over-extended and in deep financial doo-doo.
my inclination is to buy the spare 670 parts whenever the "right" price becomes available, and to maintain the lower priority of the mail machine.
*sigh* I hate to admit it, but I have to agree that, as tempting as it it is to go ahead when we're so close, it is more prudent to wait.
I think the issue is a matter of cash flow. We expect to have enough to pay for everything, assuming we take in as much money in dues and auction proceeds this year as we did last. But to pay for it now would mean dipping into our $2000 cushion, which we agreed not to do unless it's an emergency. I think if some staff member were willing to buy the disk and set up the machine, and be reimbursed later in the year, I'd go along with that. Of course there's always the possibility that there will be some disaster requiring all of Grex's resources, and we won't be able to pay for it until later than this year. I'm well aware that if momentum on a project like this gets squandered, it's hard to build it up again later.
Yeah, that's pretty much the answer I expected from sane and sober people. It's a bummer. We need more people to donate to the fund-raiser, and there hasn't been a new pledge in days. What do we do?
Like some others here, I would like to see us go ahead and buy the spare parts, while holding off on the mail machine disk. We are almost up to the amount we need for the spare parts. There are a couple of problems here, I think, that made me reluctant to vote for having a fundraiser. With the other recent, successful, fundraisers, we have been running on a really slow computer on a really slow Net connection. People were complaining pretty constantly about the slowness, and we were having fundraisers for things that would make it much faster. It was a really easy sell. Now we are on hardware that is fast enough, on an Internet connection that is fast enough. Convincing people that there is a problem which really needs to be fixed is somewhat of a hard sell. That's not to say that adding the mail machine won't have lots of benefits. Even Grex's spiffy new computer will get slow with enough load on it, and the mail machine will make the useful life of the 670 much longer. Setting it up now rather than waiting for the 670 to become unbearably slow is good future planning, assuming your goal is to avoid agonizing slowness. I suppose that should be pointed out in the fundraiser item. Maybe, though, this is a lost cause and after the fact fixes for sloness are what sells. I've also been wondering if we've had too many fundraisers recently, and maybe people are feeling as if they have given what they can afford to give. The ISDN fundraiser was more than six months ago, though, so I don't think that's the case (or am I forgetting a more recent fundraiser?).
What are called "fundraisers" are pretty ad-hoc, sort of sprung without much discussion, and certainly no vote. This rather diminishes their apparent import. It is amazing they work as well as they do, but it is usually the same people that donate, a rather small group.
Agreed. Fundraisers should be fairly unusual events and the merits of holding one most certainly calls for discussion in co-op, not just at a Board meeting prior to a vote. I would think the Board would want membership feeback on such an issue.
Whether or not to hold a fundraiser to pay for priorities the membership has already established seems a bit redundant a subject for widespread discussion. The membership decided to obtain the new machine, and spare parts are essentially part of the deal. If anything, it seems that it is only a matter of a minor deficiency of foresight not to have included them in the costs originally determined, or to have made incremental allocations in the past year since the new machine was obtained for their purchase. It is good that the leadership of Grex goes to great lengths to employ inclusive decision-making techniques, but there are limits of practicality. If either the membership rates or the fee amounts were to take even a slight increase, then there would be less frequent need for fundraisers. *That* is a pair of subjects ideal for widespread discussion
My point was that I wished to consider whether fund raisers would be more effective and reach their goals more readily if the membership (and interested users) were involved in the development of the goals and the approach to be used in a fund raiser, and in the decision to proceed, compared to a small group declaring a fund raiser in an ad hoc manner without such democratic consultation with everyone.
Very likely. Our situation now is that if we want Grex to continue to grow then we need a bit more income. I entered an item here asking how people thought we might be able to increase our income by adding members or whatever. That amounts to kind of a belated discussion of the question, but it hasn't led to many ideas. Our staff has sort of the mental habit of always looking for new, inexpensive (though often labor intensive) ways to expand the performance and capabilities of the system. Right now performance is OK. Should we relax on issues like the mail machine until Grex once again starts feeling the squeeze? I don't know. When Grex is slow I hear theories that people don't want to give money to such an unusable system and that when the system is faster people will give more money. When Grex is fast, the opposite theory seems to come into fashion - since everything is great, people don't want to give money. I agree that we are effectively hitting up the same people over and over again for money. How do we reach more of our user base?
I still believe that a wrapper on email and party programs which functions like a shareware registration notice (it tells you that you can help support this free service and as a bonus, the message will go away if you do) is a really good idea. it is a mild inconvenience, but i think it is well within justifiable reason to slightly inconvenience users of s free service to tell them how they can help provide the support the service needs to keep running for them to use.
Clever folks will be able to make the wrapper go away without becoming members.
If the new computer crashed and burned tomorrow could we go back to the old computer as a backup to get online and ask for emergency funding?
Re #9,10,12: I was the one who pushed for a fundraiser at the last board meeting, so I will take the rap for not consulting the users before going ahead with it. The fact is, I didn't know what else to do. Staff informed the board in no uncertain terms that we ought to get the spare parts right away (or at least, they wanted the authority to get them as soon as a good deal came along). The mail machine was almost ready to go too. We also felt strongly that the 501(c)3 application ought to go through as soon as possible. As I told everyone at the budget meeting, we expect to take in $1300 over and above our operating expenses this year. (That's an estimate based on last year's receipts.) That *is* enough to pay for the items mentioned above, but if we were to get them right now, we would have to dip into our emergency cushion. And in any case we are cutting our margin pretty fine. The only way I could think of to increase our cash-on-hand right now was to hold a fundraiser. (There was also the hope among those present at the board meeting that the usership was "on a high" from the speed of the new machine, and would therefore contribute a lot to helping out. That hope has proven to be false.) I agree that it would be nice to hold fundraisers less frequently and only for more specific goals, but I just didn't have any other ideas for getting us some cash *now*, nor did anyone suggest any.
Re #15: I wouldn't mind Grex being supported by less clever folk, so long as they get the message.
Even if they can turn the wrapper off, they will have seen the message at least once. (Was that your point, Rane?)
Mark, I'm sorry you felt so pressured. You shouldn't need to feel that way and I hope next time you can simply say you have concerns about a purchase and ask the Board to take it to coop for discussion.
This response has been erased.
Re #21/20: that, and a lot might be persuaded to join, even if they can't turn it off.
Re #20: Mary, it wasn't as if I felt that these purchases came up out of the blue; they were in fact agreed upon at the budget meeting. It's just a matter of cash flow - we didn't have the cash on hand to do them right now. So if I had asked for a discussion of the purchases in coop, it would have been to discuss timing only. I suppose I could have done that.
You have several choices: