GOAT fiscal hosting policy, inviting comments

[gbathree]

So in the last few months, GOAT has accepted funding for various small projects (see a list here) from booth reimbursements to major projects like the Community of Companies. I recently requested GOAT (and NMCC, GOATs fiscal sponsor) to accept funding on behalf of Our Sci for a collaboration with UBC / LiteFarm and run that through our Open Collective for transparency and ease of reimbursement.

As the person who is running the aforementioned funding through GOAT but who also has administrative access to GOATs Open Collective, the potential for conflicts of interest is clear.

This prompted me and @julietnpn both review two things:

1. who has the opportunity to use GOAT as a fiscal sponsor (ie… shouldn’t just be me because I close to this stuff) and
2. what are the processes for expense approvals (to make sure we’re managing funds without stealing stuff).

So we did a few things:

1. We added language on goatech.org describing the option to provide financial hosting so others can also do this.
2. We created a written policy of how one can do that, and the details of any engagement are decided. It’s intentionally broad as projects can vary a lot and we need discretion.
3. We updated the ‘Policies’ page in Open Collective to link to the aforementioned document, and noted that an additional approval for expenses is required if that person is also an admin (ie… admins can’t self-approve alone an expense.

Lastly - I’m posting here and on Element to ask for feedback from the community on the above and also to communicate the option of fiscal hosting through GOAT NMCC when and where appropriate.

We thought we’d offer a 5 day comment period (till March 10) here before moving forward on the current Our Sci / UBC proposal. If needed we could extend and have a meeting to discuss if the conversation requires it. It’s short because of the funding turnaround needed on this particular project is fairly quick.

So please → post any comments, questions, concerns here!

[jgaehring]

This is a great idea!

@gbathree

what are the processes for expense approvals (to make sure we’re managing funds without stealing stuff).

Could it be required to add a description of greater length to the Open Collective project’s “About” section,^[1] with relevant links etc? I eventually pieced together that “Open Ag Tech Enterprise” in the project title was roughly the same as the “Community of Companies” you mentioned above, and that the “Community of Organizations” referred to in the GitLab issue for the UBC/LiteFarm collab is also the same – is that correct? – but it took a while getting there. And btw, that’s a really awesome project! I love the new conventions wiki, too, first I’m seeing any of this and I’m so glad it’s able to move forward. Huzzah!!

Beyond the approval process, I think fellow GOATs would get a lot of value from hearing about stuff like this, and in exchange for fiscal hosting, it seems like a small price to ask for a decent overview with the most pertinent info and helpful links for where to learn more. Specifically links to the source code and docs (eventually, where relevant) would be a nice requirement, too, since we are GOAT. A good opportunity to show off the material results of the funding.

@gbathree

We created a written policy of how one can do that

I put some comments on the policy document there, I hope they make sense.

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1. The OC Docs neglect to mention it, but after creating a project, I believe you can add a description longer than 150 chars, like this one. ↩︎

[gbathree]

Good point - I think if we’re really going to invest in Open Collective as a tool for transparency, we need to ensure that documentation is reflected there. I’ll update the about pages with more information and key links on the existing ones, and then if we create this new proposed one there too.

• Updated the Community of Companies one here.

Yeah, excited about the conventions work, we’re hopefully going to build out our first real connection to LiteFarm and Cool Farm Tool (FINALLY) in the next few months. Rose and @OctavioDuarte have put a lot of work into it, and we’re feeling good about it.

[laurieWayne]

Hi GOATy friends:

I like the SOP doc, especially the “what to do”, and I like the idea of GOAT acting as facilitator and enabler for money to ethically flow into worthy and aligned projects. In the interest of clarity and noting that if someone can explain a thing to me they can explain it to anybody, I have a couple questions!

Is the idea that people or companies that become hosted/sponsored are publicly saying they are part of GOAT from a technology and philosophy standpoint, and they want and are agreeing to financial transparency, and GOAT is saying “you can be included in the nonprofit umbrella provided by NMCC and we will do things in Open Collective to make sure your project is transparent”?

I’m super out of the loop, sorry: does GOAT itself exist as a legal entity? Wondering about how the relationship between GOAT the Community and extra-human beings like LLC’s, corporations, and cooperatives plays into the relationship with NMCC which I think as fiscal sponsor has some kind of legal responsibility for the management of money it passes along, and that is why it needs a cut.

I added some possibly trauma-informed suggestions to the doc (ok to reject if not useful) as I have been part of a nonprofit that took on fiscal sponsorships in totally good faith which ended up being problematic and distracted precious energy from our mission, and part of pass-through funding things that likewise didn’t go well and those were likewise way too extra. Of course the ones that worked out were wonderful!

[julietnpn]

Wow, really great questions @laurieWayne !

Goat itself doesn’t exist as a legal entity.

I’m not sure if we need to specify any explicit philosophical or organizational commitments at this juncture. We don’t want to introduce additional complexity / overhead until its really required. At the moment it is unclear how widely this service is needed or will be utilized. With that said, I think that for the time being, folks engaging will inherently be values aligned because its a service we’re offering to the community specifically. But yes, they’d be agreeing to financial transparency. And we (GOAT) would work with the organizations involved in the project being financially managed on GOAT’s open collective infrastructure to define a protocol appropriate for that project.

I see this as an evolving process that will be refined as we work through it, with the Our-Sci & UBC collaboration as our pilot. So while there is 5 days comment period on this specific contract, the comment and refinement period for this service broadly should be ongoing.

Thanks for the doc suggestions - I don’t have the answer to those, but I’ve tagged the necessary GOATs for review.

[gbathree]

Yes, good questions. One thing that GOSH did is they set a clear line for ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the community - things like ‘you’ve been to a conference’ or ‘you’ve been active for >X years on the forum’… that kind of thing. That’s an interesting and non-organizational way to draw a boundary we could use too.

But overall I agree with Juliet - let’s let our function be driven by need and demand, and keep it as simple as possible until the community screams otherwise.