When

• Sunday, May 18th @ 4PM EDT

Agenda

• Paypal - Update on our identification status with Paypal

• NewServerDiscussion2014 - Funding scheme for the $3000-$3500 needed for server purchas

• Net Neutrality Protest - baudtack proposed imitating this as a symbolic gesture. Seems to be a reasonable thing to be discussed

• How to begin working on ProposedBylawAndPolicyChanges

• Starting the drive for new members

• Sticker designs? The T-Shirt? LogoDiscussion for long-form hcoop logo?

Paypal / Finances

• Still limited to withdrawing $500/month (but Stripe has pulled in ~$700 forestalling certain doom for several more months)
• Annual update has been filed covering the worst case "we need a copy of your articles of incorporation listing the current directors" printed by the State scenario

• SteveKillen and ClintonEbadi still need to go to the bank to add ClintonEbadi as a signer on the account

  • Aside from being good housekeeping (treasurer changing and all), this will allow ClintonEbadi to attempt extracting the needed "Signature Card" from the bank

New Server

• We have nearly $4000 on hand (~5 months of operating expenses), but also ~$5000 in active balances (nearly six months of dues)
  • Dues currently exceed expenses by less than $100/month, and there are still a few more likely departed members to cull from the rolls (more like $40-50).
  • Not unreasonable to expect the coop to have ~$400 outright this year to spend on hardware instead of hosting charges if membership remains steady.

ClintonEbadi's idea:

• It would likely be fiscally irresponsible to have less than 90 days of cash on hand (~$2400)
• The coop could spend up to ~$1500 right now while remaining fiscally conservative, perhaps $2000 if we want to be a bit more daring, and maybe even $2500 pending some calculations

  • ClintonEbadi implementing queries in the portal to display average member balances, dues vs expenses, coop balance vs member balances, monthly change in membership, etc. (and over time) would possibly enable spending near the higher end on the server. Without this information, it is difficult to forecast things beyond "if we have $2500 left after buying the server, we will at least have enough money coming in to cover expenses for the rest of the year".

• The coop should not spend more than can be "repaid" in 2 years
• A new server will probably end up costing ~$3300 (hardware, drives for the backup system, caddies for drives we order)
• We're at capacity now, and need to act soon to prevent a service quality meltdown similar to 2008/2009
  • Ideally: new machine appears and is online in July, but we would likely be OK until Octoberish
• Ideally we would raise ~$1500-2000
• The Idea:
  • Beg for money from the members, asap
  • Create a "new server" balance in the portal, and request that members email the board to have some portion of their balance transferred to the new server fund.
  • (Possible a good idea to encourage the use of Stripe for anyone wanting to add to their balance to transfer, because of Paypal difficulties)
  • Raise funds for at least 20 days (unless we somehow hit the full amount of the hardware we need; we cannot profit and returning money to members equally at the end of a year is complicated)
    • We still need to fix Paypal to access all of ours funds, and that will take until at least early June (one week lag between dances with Paypal)
    • Can re-evaluate situation then (further call for funds, spending lots of money if we're bringing on many new members, etc.)
• Another idea:
  • Also ask members to increase their pledge, if they want to support the new hardware cause and do not want to make a one time transfer (with this and better statistics from the portal, we could responsibly spend more of our cash on hand). Now that members+pledges exceed month expenses, not many members just adding a single pledge would be a huge boost to our new hardware

Records

• http://logs.mattcarberry.hcoop.net/hcoop/2014/hcoop.2014-05-18-20.12.html