Participatory process for annual budget

[jessykate]

Facilitate a participatory process to select and agree on amounts for budget line items for the year.

• natural review period for budget items
• peeps might be more invested in the success of a budget they've helped to create?
• helps create transparency

[jessykate]

putting myself on this only because i offered to help (and so i can remember that i offered to help), but if someone else gets inspired to run with this, then by all means :).

[joshuavial]

I really like the idea of an annual budgeting process for ongoing maintenance work (like newsletter) and think it would compliment monthly budgeting cycles quite nicely. Some dynamics that might be interesting to play with

• restrict participation to only those who are active in monthly rounds instead of the whole group to
• any unspent money gets spent by a small group of high context folks (I'd suggest selecting a group of volunteers instead of overloading an existing role like board or catalyst)
• board releases funds from reserves as part of the round and offloads some of their core costs into the yearly buckets
• do a big sponsorship / donor push before hand so we have a decent size pot of cash to allocate for the bigger projects.

[chime-mu]

I really like that idea as well and would like to help work out the details.

I believe it will create increased visibility and sense of influence with Enspiral.

It's also one of those things it make sense to understand better from a Greater Than perspective.