Re: Love your budget process?
From: Diana Carroll (dianaecarrollgmail.com)
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 13:24:58 -0700 (PDT)
We are a new community and have only done three budgets so far, so our
process is still in flux.  Most recently, we did something similar to what
Sharon describes.

The trustees put together a "base" budget of non-negotiable on-going
expenses (electricity, plowing, etc.) and then solicited from teams a budget
with three "tiers": a baseline/bare minimum budget (for some groups this was
0), a "would be nice" tier, and a "dream" tier.

Based on this, the Trustees put together three proposed budgets for the
three different tiers.  We sent it out before a meeting, and then at the
meeting took feedback and modified the tiers until everyone agreed and we
reached consensus.

Then we did what I think is a very different process than most groups:
people "bid" how much they wanted to contribute to the budget (with some
guidance and requirements.)  Based on the results of the "bid", the trustees
said "We got the Tier 1 budget."  If folks wanted to bid more to try to get
up to the tier 2 budget, they could do that, etc.  This year, because money
was tight, we ended up right at Tier 1, but I think in subsequent years
we'll be able to have some of the "higher end" budget items.

I have no idea if I "love" this...it's brand new for everyone.  But it got
done what we wanted it to, and I (as treasurer, bookkeeper and one of 6
trustees) have been reasonably happy with the budget we ended up with.

- Diana (MOsaic Commons)

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Sharon Villines
<sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>wrote:

>
>
> On 6/29/2011 12:13 PM, Robert Heinich wrote:
>
> > We are a 13 year old co-housing community in search of an improved
> > budgeting process.
>
> We were fortunate when we started to have members who were experienced in
> doing budgets in the Ethical Society, non-profits, etc. where the process is
> cooperative and not competitive. We have used the same process since we
> started.
>
> Each team submits a dream budget based on their wants and needs. Any
> individuals who want to add something speak to the teams — Admin, Community,
> Facilities. We have smaller "pods" that are sub-teams but the budget
> categories are in three large groupings.
>
> The Admin team compiles and adjusts the requests in terms of budget
> categories and discusses the draft with the membership at a big meeting.
> They give a figure in terms of "If we do all these things, we will need to
> increase condo fees by __%" and we discuss the feasibility of that. What
> items people think should be removed or which are too high.
>
> Admin talks to teams again and usually comes back with 2 more drafts before
> we agree on one.
>
> We start collecting figures in late August and approve a final budget by
> Thanksgiving — first week in Dec at the latest. Our management company needs
> time to send out new payment coupons, etc. before the end of the year.
>
> The only change we have made is moving the begin date for the process to
> late August instead of October — which really didn't work. Too much
> pressure. Now it works very well.
>
> Sharon.
>
>
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