[Noisebridge-discuss] accountability of money

Patrick Keys citizenkeys at gmail.com
Sun Dec 19 18:01:58 UTC 2010


Since I have a college degree in management, I notice certain things.
Because it's raining outside, I'm bored, I care about noisebridge, and 
I'm also loaded up with caffeine, here's a few things I notice:

* There's seemingly no accountability for money at noisebridge.  If 
there's a set of books anywhere (income statement and balance sheet), 
it'd be nice to know where those are located.  apparently noisebridge 
has a bank account and pay bills, but how any of that actually gets done 
seems rather haphazard.

* No accountability means no metrics.  Occasionally, I hear about how 
noisebridge doesn't have enough paying members to cover its overhead. 
But I've never heard any exact figure about the number of actual paying 
members.  Nor have I heard about any goals for paying members.

* There's no system of checks/balances on spending of money.  People 
routinely take the drink money and donations to pay for things, myself 
included.  There's no system of knowing who took the money and how much 
we got for it.


Here's my suggestions, which I encourage everybody to constructively 
criticize:
* A dedicated accounting computer running quickbooks here at 
noisebridge.  If nothing else, we could keep track of cash flows, do 
online banking, and manage memberships.  There'd also potentially be 
some sort of paper trail if noisebridge is ever audited, as non-profits 
are always ripe for audits.

* Knowing exact numbers on paying members would allow us to set goals. 
If we need about 60 paying members to break even (and we do), then 
knowing we only have (for example) 40 paying members at least lets us 
set a goal of attracting 20 more paying members.  Meeting those goals 
allows us to set new goals and expand noisebridge with new features.

* The checks/balances of spending money kinda bothers me the most. 
Sometimes the vibe feels like the default conclusion is to assume people 
stole money, when in fact they used the money to buy drinks or snacks 
for everybody.
My solution to this one is to have a real procedure in place for taking 
money.  I think there should be a general policy of having a buddy 
system of another person (a witness) physically see you when you take 
money from the donation bins and seeing you count the money taken.
I also feel like there should be a requirement for having some sort of 
receipt for whatever was purchased with the money, writing your name 
somewhere on the receipt, and leaving the receipt somewhere for 
book-keeping.  If somebody thinks 20 dollars is missing, then all it 
takes is a simple look to see if there's a receipt for about that much 
that explains where the money went.
The concern is also not to make sure that the money was properly spent, 
but that we got a good value.  For example, 12 packs of sodas are 
buy-2-get-3-free at safeway.  if you're buying them anywhere else, then 
you're wasting money.



Like I said above, please constructively criticize all of these 
observations.  My goal, like yours, is simply to keep noisebridge fun 
and sustainable.


Patrick



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