After the string of emails today and the IRC chat that we had over the financial situation of the Coop, I wanted to summarize the most important issues that I felt have been raised. In addition, I wanted to propose a solution that is similar to much of what has been discussed and is one that I would like to see implemented immediately.
First, I see it as a serious problem that the Coop has no money for repairs and upgrades. In the new setup, if one of our machines dies it is uncertain how the Coop would respond or survive. At best, it would be left to individual wealthy members to bail us out as they saw fit. At worst, the Coop would dissolve. Second, there is an uncertain situation where the Coop is in debt to Adam because he has been paying for the Peer 1 hosting costs out-of-pocket (currently the debt is about $4000). Although Adam seems to be uncertain about how or if he will have members pay him back, this dependence and ambiguity is exactly the sort of thing that in my opinion the Cooperative should be trying to avoid. Although I am deeply grateful to Adam for having helped us out in this situation, in the future this could lead to members imposing conditions on an organization that is supposed to be democratic. Because of the above points, I think that HCoop is currently in a poor situation financially and administratively. Technically, however, there is a lot of promise in the new server configuration that the board and the volunteer system administrators have been spending long hours on. I think that one of the most important things that we can do now to ensure that we remain strong as a cooperative as we go through these technical changes is to implement a system whereby a certain amount every month is set aside, either to repay our debt to Adam or to save for repairs and maintenance. This is necessary to ensure that the organization continues to be democratic and sustainable. Although it is clear that we must focus the majority of our energy on the user migration to the Peer 1 network in order to avoid wasting unnecessary resources, I think that we can make a simple change to the way that we collect dues in order to resolve the issues mentioned above. Specifically, we should stop charging a deceptively low amount to users that does not take into consideration the outstanding loan from Adam and the need for the Coop to maintain reserve funds. One possible solution to this would be to add an extra "hosting cost" of $150 per month to the costs that we divide between users. This could be used to repay the loan from Adam or to maintain a fund for repairs and upgrades that the Coop needs. It would be used by the discretion of the board based on their votes. I think that this is a rather straight-forward step that can be taken immediately to address some of the most critical issues faced by HCoop. Finally, I would like to propose that we minimize ambiguity in future loans or donations to the Coop by accepting these funds with predetermined conditions into a fund maintained by the board. Currently there are a lot of technical and administrative changes occurring in the Coop as we rapidly expand. I am looking forward to supporting technically and administratively as I have been in the past with these changes. I am also hoping to see the board respond to the two issues summarized in this email by a vote in the near future. Thanks to all who participated in this discussion today, and everyone who has been putting in lots of time during an exciting transitional period for HCoop. Justin _______________________________________________ HCoop-Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://hcoop.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hcoop-discuss
