Virtual cards, emails, and sustainability
Published on December 16, 2022 by Sam Wight
Hi folks! Another quick update.
One of the major reasons why we chose to be fiscally hosted with the Open Collective Foundation is that it uncouples the server from mine and Zak's finances. Prior to joining the OCF, all of the donated funds sat in my bank account. All of the expenses were paid on my PayPal, and I had to do a bunch of math in my budgeting program to make sure I was refunding myself right. That wasn't something I minded doing, but it's another bus factor.
One of the wonderful things about being fiscally hosted by the Open Collective Foundation is that I no longer have to do any of that. OCF handles all of our tax stuff and handles paying most (or all) our expenses directly from our collective budget. I'm in the process of making virtual debit cards for each of the services we use that automatically charge the money to the collective so we don't have to do reimbursements anymore. And on top of that, we get free Google Workspaces, which means all of our accounts can now be tied to the [email protected] email.
What this all means is that the bus factor's effectively become zero. If I or Zak get burnt out and decide to leave, the server's able to keep running. The admin team will still have access to the finances, the accounts, and everything else. It's no longer tied to an individual person.
This also gives us the ability to try new and exciting things as far as governance goes. Now that we're no longer worried abut managing finance specifics, we can try out other things with managing the server. We're in the process of looking for an admin to help scale up the size of the moderation team, for example, but we could also possibly do an election type deal. It's honestly super exciting, and we have y'all to thank that we're able to do it.
So thanks for your patience during this conversion and your generous contributions! It's seriously appreciated :)
- Sam
P.S. Our monthly contributions just hit $200/mo!! That's more than our monthly expenses!! And we have 3 months of expenses in the budget right now!!!!
One of the major reasons why we chose to be fiscally hosted with the Open Collective Foundation is that it uncouples the server from mine and Zak's finances. Prior to joining the OCF, all of the donated funds sat in my bank account. All of the expenses were paid on my PayPal, and I had to do a bunch of math in my budgeting program to make sure I was refunding myself right. That wasn't something I minded doing, but it's another bus factor.
One of the wonderful things about being fiscally hosted by the Open Collective Foundation is that I no longer have to do any of that. OCF handles all of our tax stuff and handles paying most (or all) our expenses directly from our collective budget. I'm in the process of making virtual debit cards for each of the services we use that automatically charge the money to the collective so we don't have to do reimbursements anymore. And on top of that, we get free Google Workspaces, which means all of our accounts can now be tied to the [email protected] email.
What this all means is that the bus factor's effectively become zero. If I or Zak get burnt out and decide to leave, the server's able to keep running. The admin team will still have access to the finances, the accounts, and everything else. It's no longer tied to an individual person.
This also gives us the ability to try new and exciting things as far as governance goes. Now that we're no longer worried abut managing finance specifics, we can try out other things with managing the server. We're in the process of looking for an admin to help scale up the size of the moderation team, for example, but we could also possibly do an election type deal. It's honestly super exciting, and we have y'all to thank that we're able to do it.
So thanks for your patience during this conversion and your generous contributions! It's seriously appreciated :)
- Sam
P.S. Our monthly contributions just hit $200/mo!! That's more than our monthly expenses!! And we have 3 months of expenses in the budget right now!!!!
Noel Hidalgo
Posted on December 16, 2022