[Noisebridge-discuss] Panic! Noisebridge will close down in July UNLESS YOU READ ALL OF THIS EMAIL (Part 1 of many)

[Danny O'Brien]

On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 01:15:47PM -0700, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:
> 
> I'm so confused.  Around the end of January there were great announcements of panic, imminent shutdown of Noisebridge, desperate pleas for donations, etc.
> 
> Then I came to a Tuesday meeting where we looked at the treasurer's report and I asked just how terrible things were and the general sentiment seemed to be that, yes, we should try to collect more donations at events like 5MoF, but no need to worry, things seemed mostly okay.  No one seemed especially concerned.
> 
> Now we are in Screaming Panic Mode again -- from Panic! to Like, whatever... to Panic! in the space of about two months.
> 
> How worried should we be, really?  Is there objective data I can track?  Are perceptions wildly divergent among different people, or merely among different points in time?  Help.

Well, in some sense panic is in the eye of the panicker. I wrote out
that fundraising email in January, because I was concerned that we were
slowly running out of funds. I wasn't *entirely* sure, because I was
mainly going off me extrapolating out of our public financial reports,
but it seemed fair to be worried.

The most detailed analysis so far is from Kelly's report from two weeks ago.
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2013_03_12#Financial_Report

I became treasurer last week, so the current panic is from my estimation
that if, as Kelly's last estimate indicated, we would be out of money in
July, the correct point to panic would be around about... now. So
basically I've been slowly worrying since December, but now I have some
sort of semi-official ability to freak out in public.

My strategy was to first ensure that we didn't have to go into panic
mode any longer, by establishing more regular income from individuals,
rather than living off the occasional large donation.

In happier news, if you catch up with my updates, you can see that we're
doing a *lot* better. We've now pretty much covered the gap between
average outgoings and incomings through many many more monthly
subscribers, which reduces the instability a great deal. The next step
is to begin to build up our reserve back to the point where have three
months expenses in the bank -- ie around about $18K. The fundraiser has
done a lot to get us there, but I also plan to go around some of the
traditional organizations who have given us largest one-off donations in
the past to see what they can provide.

I am working to provide lots of objective data for people to track and
hack on very soon.

d.

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> --Ping
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