Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: "Typical" annual operating expenses

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Slightly less than half of the Budget at Sharingwood goes to supporting
social functions. It is the key thing we do. We divide up our budget by
teams, social team, childrens team, library team, retreat team, etc. Each
has its own budget that the team controls and spends. We just passed our
annual budget for next year yesterday. It took 5 minutes for the copmmunity
to approve, so it appears our community is well satisfied with the results
of our approach. (also we have been doing this for more than 16 years now)

Our landscape team has an budget this year of $1200 which is about 6% or so
of our budget. They are maintaining paths, and community gardens. We do not
have expensive landscaping requirements, in fact most our community
landscaping is the undisturbed native vegetation which of course, requires
little maintenance.  Since we are privately owned homes on individual lots
our annual budget only includes replacement reserves for common elements,
which keeps our monthly assessment to a modest $60. We have about $3,500 in
unallocated annual project money which anyone with a project proposal can
ask for. We also have a $1,000 dollar buffer fund to pay for bills which
might be higher than anticipated. For example, the rate we pay our childcare
providers (community teens) just went up and the extra amount was covered by
this money. 

We split our budget into two parts, operating expenses (taxes, bills,
insurance) and team budgets. This makes it easy to track and understand.
Teams evaluate their work, generate ideas within the team, then make a
proposal for how much money they need. Since teams do all the work and have
considerable expertise in their focus, there is seldom any problem with
giving them the money they ask for. This year, the primary comment to team
budget proposals was to boost a couple with more money.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: OCC11NG [mailto:normangauss [at] charter.net] 
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 8:55 AM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ "Typical" annual operating expenses

Included in our proposed $7,200 Social Expenditures are the following:

Celebrations                                 $1,000
Saturday Morning Bagel Gathering $1,200
Consultation with Professionals      $1,000
Retreats and Workshops               $2,000
Child Care at Community Events    $   600
Replenish Toys                             $   400
Childrens Committee Meetings       $   200
Holiday Celebrations                     $    200
Childrens Outside Resources        $    400
Books & other Resources              $   100
Community Life Administrative        $   100

Seems kind of extravagant to me.

Norm Gauss

----- Original Message -----
From: <Juniperjojo [at] aol.com>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 6:08 AM
Subject: [C-L]_ "Typical" annual operating expenses


> Norm,
>
> What do you include in your "social expenses" category? Eight percent 
> sounds
> kinda high to me. We have a "fun" line item that I think is funded to the 
> tune
> of about $150 annually, which is way less than 1% of our budget. But we 
> may
> have other items that you would lump together under the "social" category.
>
> Hard to answer your question precisely without knowing what's included in
> that category.
>
> Jenny Cook
> Great Oak Cohousing
> Ann Arbor, Michigan
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
> 
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