Newcastle 2019/Fund

Agenda: Fund

Background

The idea in its current form was kickstarted at CoTech Hack in November 2018. It resulted in a proposal to establish CoTech fund, a one-year pilot, that was voted through on Loomio. Each co-op contributes £1 per week per worker-member. 9 co-ops (58 members in total) agreed to contribute to the fund.

Following from there a bank account with Unity Trust was set-up and it has three signatories: Chris Lowis (Go Free Range), Polly Robbins (Outlandish) and Aaron Hirtenstein (Agile Collective).

Further details were worked on at the Gathering in Sheffield in April 2019, here's the summary on CoTech Wiki & the doc on CoTech NextCloud. The final discussion with all present members arrived to a conclusion that Loomio will be used to spend the money from the fund. "A person/co-op can suggest what they want to spend money on and members will have a week to inspect the notion and block it if they disagree. If there are no objections, the spending is approved." It was also suggested that only co-ops who contribute to the fund can propose what money should be spent on and only they can object. So far it has not been specified anywhere. We are now looking into setting up a pot of money to be spent at the gathering to test-drive the fund.

Objectives

Write-up a clear set of guidelines for joining the fund, maintaining contribution as a co-op as well as spending the funds. We need to deliver a concise policy and financial standing order. (Other suggestions for objectives welcome!)

What will be prepared before the conference

• Ideas for streamlining the process for both the contributors/spenders as well as other members of CoTech (emphasis on transparency)
• Ideas for the next step of the fund once all the necessary processes are in place.

Who should join this working group

Everyone who thinks that shared financial resources can strengthen our collaboration.

Who to contact about this working group

Szczepan from Animorph (sz at animorph.coop)

Timeline (if applicable)

Hopefully we can get it all done on the first day and spend some fund cash at the bar!

Minutes

Pilot Fund has to be evaluated by the end of February 2020.

Proposals for spending from CoTech Fund:

1. To reimburse costs incurred on Code-Operative - they will send through the expenses summary to treasurer at coops.tech

Vote on Loomio will be set up once we have the amount.

2. To pay for some of the costs incurred on WebArchitects who run CoTech infrastructure. Breakdown: a) coops.tech domains name, £62.82 per year

 https://webarch.coop/domain-names

b) Discourse server, 4GB RAM, £1,450 per year

 https://webarch.coop/discourse

c) Nextcloud server, 8GB RAM, £2,750 per year

 https://webarch.coop/nextcloud

d) 2 x static hosting accounts for coops.tech and dev.coops.tech, £60 per year

 https://webarch.coop/shared-hosting

e) wiki.coops.tech hosting, £115 per year

 https://webarch.coop/mediawiki

f) Shared hosting for Lime survey, £115 per year

 https://webarch.coop/shared-hosting

Everyone at CoTech uses a), b), d), e) hence the amount proposed is £1687.82.

The need for the spending process should be aligned with how we implement governance. Fund joins Governance and decision making group.

No objections to setting up the payment as a one-off for 2019. Vote on Loomio will be set up.