[Imc-finance] SEATTLE IMC'S COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT IMC-FINANCE PROCESS

[Sheri Herndon]

In our last general meeting and on-line with the spokescouncil and 
liaisons, a number of questions were raised about imc-finance 
process.  Alot of these concerns came up because of the amount of the 
brasil request (nearly 10% of remaining network funds) and some of 
the questions we had surrounding the proposal.

Here are those individual and collective comments.  We did not yet 
consense to these comments as a general collective but felt they were 
important enough to share with the finance list at this time.  We 
will be continuing this discussion at our next spokes and general 
meetings.

1)   We need global financial reports and general priorities. 
Perhaps a small and transparent group of finance people could make 
these decisions rather than the whole collective making decisions 
without having all the information at their fingertips.  The process 
seems too cumbersome.

2)  We don't need detailed budgets, but rather a simple priority list 
("money in this account should be spent on these 5 goals") and basic 
finance info (income and expenses last year, projected income and 
expenses for the rest of year, etc).

3)  It is a waste of resources to ask hundreds (thousands?) of 
members to vote on these global finance proposals.  We can be 
democratic without requiring that level of involvement.  The global 
liasion process should help make this more efficient.  Specifically, 
this was way too many emails for two
proposals.

4)  A recommendation was made that all proposals should include:

	a.  a unique global proposal number or name (YearLocal-NAME, 
like: 2003 ImcSeattle-FebruaryConstruction)
	b.  a dedicated url for each proposal (list or wiki) and one 
for comments (wiki)
	c.  cost as a percentage of this year's planned expenses in 
that category (i.e. we need $500 for cameras, which is 2% of this 
year's projected media equipment budget.)

5)  The global account may need clarification.  A current balance is 
often stated, but perhaps seeing more info posted to a public 
website/wiki would be helpful.

Seattle IMC collective hopes that liaisons and others on this list 
will discuss these issues pertaining to how to improve the process on 
the finance list.

sheri
seattle imc






-- 


In sum, we are an army of dreamers, and therefore invincible.  How 
can we fail to win, with this imagination overturning everything.

-- Subcomandante Marcos