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Finance Committee Notes: GPUS Finance
Committee Conference Call Agenda Approval of minutes of Oct 25 meeting 1. Database and Income reporting systems - Doug Jeff & Emily (lead person for the database working group) doug says he has discussed with emily 4 specific things the db needs right away which David was directed to work on in a priority list starting with Best Efforts reporting, getting the merchandise report to agree with the fundraising report, plus two other more minor fixes. Emily says that she has discussed with David and he says the best efforts work will be easy to fix. Emily reports another goal is before jan. 1 to work on the income reporting system so the treasurers report, financial reports and database numbers agree. Doug Jeff Jake and Emily are working on this. 2. Revisions to current Fiscal Policy - Rules and Procedures - LaVerne has edited draft 7 and has sent to the list. Lots of grammatical corrections, not many substantive changes. LaVerne went over some of the changes with us. David Powerd from TX asked a question that jake answered. Can read it on the list. 3. 2005 Budget - Draft version 8 is on the voting page. Not sent to the fincom list. Dean Myerson and Henry Lawrence commented that committee budgets are zero, he thinks too much of the budget to DC office. Discussion of tier 1 budget with zero amounts. Mark says this is not intended to allocate money to committees this is a survival level tier and will increase if the money comes in, ie, will then be a tier 2 budget. Tier 2 funds committees if the money comes in. Jake will put this position out as being from Fincom. Our DC office lease currently runs till Oct 2005. Noted that staffing is a much bigger expense than the office rent. Comment recievied that states sharing is only 1/7 of sustainer contributions and not 1/2. CC is low, caucuses and diversity given too much money. We note that not all sustainers have elected to share. Mark says the web site does not have a way to elect to share and that we should work on promoting sharing with sustainers. Discussion of sharing with states. Discussion of asking state treasurers to make sure they can accept funds from us and report back to us on the answer for their state. Discussion on committee budgets. Mark says the numbers were throwen in there. Moneys in the tiers were based on what we are currently seeing in the income area. We could put together a more detailed budget for the committees. Doug notes that in the past the committees have had to submit a budget request to us. Jo added that also the committees had to submit a workplan for the year. However, the assumption is that there is no money currently. However jake states that if money becomes available money can be allocated to committees by the steering committee based on recommendations from Fincom. Starleen Rankin comments more money should be allocated to media committee. Note that we do not have more money for any of the committees. On Fundraising Director position Jake says the position is still there but Kara Mullen's contract will not be renewed for the next year. Her last day will be Dec. 31. Comment that there is no money for annual meeting in the budget. However annual meeting should be self-supporting. Marnie asks did we make any attempt to reduce office expense like rent. Jake notes that we are still under a lease. Oct 2005 the lease will be up. The location of the office, ie, Wash DC, is a function/desision of the national committee not Fincom. Anticipated that next year the SC will need an amended budget if money comes in in excess of tier one. Doug suggests that instead of calling it an amended budget we stay that if we exceed our budget the SC can then allocate money to committees based on a higher tier for them. Others have concerns about the committees raising their own money. Much of this is in the fiscal policies jake noted. 4. Schedule for our upcoming meetings- discussion of starting the week of Dec 6. having a joint fincom/funcom call. Maybe 3 hours, half for each committee. Funcom needs to discuss and agree to it. Next meeting of Fincom not set as of end of meeting. Respectfully
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