Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: contingency fund questions

[Mac Thomson (mac]

Our annual operating budget includes a 10% contingency budget which is  
available to teams who have extra expenses beyond their budgets.  Our  
Steering team authorizes the spending from the contingency fund based  
on requests from the teams.  Any operating profits plus a direct  
contribution from dues goes into our reserves fund each year.  After  
about 25 years, we plan to have that fund built up to about $150K -  
$200K.  The money is earmarked for specific anticipated repairs and  
replacements, rather than just a miscellaneous emergency fund,  
although it can serve as that in a pinch.

Cheers,
Mac

--
Mac Thomson

Heartwood Cohousing
Southwest Colorado
http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


"A closed mouth gathers no foot."
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On Nov 12, 2009, at 4:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:

> Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:18:00 -0800
> From: Jodi Coleman <jodicoleman1000 [at] gmail.com>
> Subject: [C-L]_ contingency fund questions
>
>
> Last year (our second since moving in), our community created a  
> contingency
> fund for unexpected and emergency expenses.  We took the excess from  
> our
> first year's budget (and the excess from each budget thereafter) to  
> create
> the fund.  We created the contingency fund so that each work team  
> wouldn't
> feel the need to have a sizeable miscellaneous/emergency line in their
> section of our budget, and instead they would know that money could be
> available to them if they needed it.  Going into our third year, we  
> now have
> a healthy amount of money in this fund, so we are now needing to  
> decide
> where to cap it.
>
>
>
> We are wondering how much money (what percent of the budget) other
> communities have in their contingency funds.  I have read that several
> places have 10% of their budget as a contingency fund.  Is this 10%  
> of your
> operating budget, or is this the whole budget including any  
> additions to the
> maintenance reserves?  Have folks found your systems to be  
> adequate?  Any
> advice folks have would be greatly appreciated!