[Businessmtg] Alison’s questions

[Mary Abbott]

Alison.

Thanks for asking these important questions. A PR is our prudent reserve. It is based on our yearly budget. As a group, it was decided that we would have a year’s worth of prudent reserve that we keep in our checking account. So at any given time, should donations completely  stop, we would be able to operate for a year. Right now our prudent reserve is $1,300. Our expenses, right now, are a few hundred dollars more than that. Our biggest expense is our server rental which is $99 a month. Although our expenses have increased some, because our prudent reserve is for a years worth of expenses, that means we are in no way close to running out of funds or being unable to fund additional basic expenses for a short period of time. We average about $250 month in donations. My guess is that if I were to send out an additional request for travel expenses for our new GR we would get substantially more in donations earmarked for that travel.

I think that, as treasurer, I do need to create a new budget in the coming months when we have an idea of what travel expenses might be and to update our current budget to be more reflective of our current expenses. I don’t think that there is need for worry or hurry on this issue. In addition, I think this would be a good topic for the new steering committee to discuss at our first zoom meeting in 2022.  Whatever we do, we need to stick to the policies that have been passed by the membership. That current policy is to send any funds above our prudent reserve to the WSO at the end of every quarter. However, should we decide to increase the prudent reserve to cover updated expenses for 2022, that could be taken into account  for the last quarter in 2021. Then we still follow the current policy and remain prudent about having sufficient funds on which to operate for one year. 

Thanks again for your questions, Alison. 

Mary A.  
Sent from my iPhone