Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: Annual Budget Party Idea

[Diane Simpson (coho]

Here is the Annual Budget Party idea.
--Diane Simpson


Making Meetings Fun

Case example: the budget

The annual budget is often dreaded by many people. Lots of intense
arguments over sheets and rows of numbers, tiny minutiae that seems only to
matter to the detail oriented. This is often a meeting people gladly skip.
How can you make the annual budget meeting more fun?

Here is one way: Make it a party instead. The way this works is to divide
up your budget into 2 parts: Operating expenses and projects and
acquisitions.   Operating expenses are the bills you have to pay. This
hopefully does not eat up all your money. This is usually very simple to
pass because once you get past your first couple of years you will know how
much insurance, taxes, utilities for the commonhouse, etc. actually cost
and you already have set a level of monthly dues. Very little debate is
usually needed for this part. The operating costs are usually relatively
fixed costs that you can get agreement on. Do this part first and save all
other budget items for the party.

A typical budget might be 2/3rds fixed expenses, 1/3 acquisitions and
projects. It is sometimes tricky to pull out projects and acquisitions from
expenses. Is the cost of  replacing silverware an acquisition or a fixed
cost for the community center team? Where budgeting typically gets
difficult is deciding on the projects and acquisitions. Do we want to buy a
lawn mower, or a tea set? Do we want to plant the play area lawn or build
the deck off the community center? This is where making this into a party
makes it easier and also fun to decide about these priorities.

Materials needed for a budget party:     Displays for each project and
acquisition     Play money     Pledge forms     Fully Funded signs
Place, time, and setting for party Setting up the party Give everybody
notice that projects and acquisitions will be needing a display for the
upcoming budget party. Each group or person that has a passion for a
project or acquisition for the group is assigned to make a compelling
display with information about it. They also should be ready to answer
questions. The amount of money needed has to be clearly displayed.

Set a date for a budget party. One attribute that can make this fun is to
make it a charity ball dress up event, where people come dressed up in
fancy clothing, snacks and wine are served,elegant chamber music in the
background.   To set up the play money, you will need to take the total
money available for projects and acquisitions and make up play money
(monopoly money works great for this) and divide this money into all the
units. So for example, if you have $3,000 and 30 households, each household
gets $100 in play money, which should be divided into 20, 10, 5 and 1
denominations.

At the party  The project and acquisition displays are setup around the
room, each with a small box or envelope under them. People who are
supporting the displays stand around and answer questions or "hawk" their
display. If you really get into it, displays can be supported by drama,
songs or slogans. For example, a display for a water fountain at the play
set can have a couple of kids "dying" of thirst in front of the display.
Each household then "spends" its portion of the budget by placing an amount
of money in the box or envelope for each display they want to support. When
a project is fully funded a bell is rung or some other type of
announcement/fanfare is done, the display is then covered with a sign which
says Fully Funded!

When all the money in the room is spent the partially funded displays can
be funded by taking money from the least funded and putting it into the
displays that are  closest to being funded. So for example, if there are 6
displays that are not fully funded, the one with the least money has its'
money put into the display closest to being fully funded. Leftover funds
can be placed in a slush fund which can be used for anything the group
agrees to.

If there are people in the group who are not present for the funding party
you can leave the displays up and have them fund them during the week, or
you can redistribute those funds to those present at the party.   One
addition to the budgeted money is to allow donations to be made. If for
example, a person wants to donate money above and beyond their assessments,
they can write a pledge on a pledge paper and place it in the display
container.

The issue that gets raised with this process is that this is actually
voting, not a consensus process. Things may very well get funded that some
people don't want, or don't like. If you find people dissatisfied with the
outcome you might want to spend some time working on the issues people have
about particular projects after the party.


Rob Sandelin Community Works!


>I don't have a copy of Rob's post, but there's an article in the Winter
>2000 (#109) edition of Communities magazine describing the Budget Party
>idea (page 32).
>
>- Mac

    @@              DSIMPSON [at] JPCOHOUSING.ORG                  @@
   @@@@       Diane Simpson  http://jpcohousing.org          @@@@
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