How money works at Enspiral is determined by the Financial Agreement. This page is to provide information and transparency about our financial situation.
This post on Loomio includes regular financial updates.
EF has six bank accounts in Kiwibank:
Income and expenses
Money in this account has been pre-allocated to future spending and is not for allocation to any new projects. This includes money allocated to 10 years of Lifehack website hosting (final payment April 2028, hosting to expire March 31, 2029).
For 2021 financial year this account will "rest" at $7,520 at the start of each month. Any money above this amount will be transferred to the mission account. Each year, due to LifehackHQ account, this "resting" figure will reduce by $740 until the lifehackhq website hosting expense expires on 31 March 2029. The above figure of $7,520 includes the first two year's worth of payments (and as such, the 'resting balance' has reduced accordingly by two lots of $740 from $9,000).
Mission Account
This money is money beyond the runway and is unallocated.
It is money accessible for projects/jobs that progress the mission of "more people working on stuff that matters".
Proposals to access this money are created through an advice process with the community and then go to the board for final consent.
Collab funding
Money in this account has been allocated to collaborative funding processes and outcomes of those processes.
Working groups account
The Working groups account holds money allocated to specific working groups. Ops can provide the budget allocations to each working group at any point in time.
Gatherings account in 2021 the Gathering's funds have been separated out from the general working group account to make it more visible.
Runway Saver
This bank account holds 12 months of fixed operating expenses to create spare capacity purposively to accommodate future disruption.
(Example; Balancing the books crisis that the Enspiral community went through in 2016-2018, where the revenue model for the community dried up and our expenses maintained which meant that we were quickly losing money and going into a state of bankruptcy.)
As of 14 June 2021 the average outgoings for the previous 12 months were $3100 per month with a total of $34,959.
If the core expenses increase (eg $100 per month for website) then then runway saver account needs to be increased accordingly to represent 12 months of this new figure. However, at the current time, the balance is $44,837 which is 14 months runway.
This money is not accessible for new project spending
The account is a savings account which requires 30 days to get access to the money.
EF receives money from five sources:
- Individual contributions via Subscriptions
- Venture Contributions
- CoBudget
- Google Workspace Subscriptions (these should be close to cost-neutral)
- Sponsorship to WG-Catalysts
- Gatherings surpluses
EF spends money generally in the following areas:
Accounting and Operations
Software services (loomio, domain registration etc)
Google Workspace
Collab funding
Newsletter
Information about the current finances can be found here in Loomio, if you are an active contributor of Enspiral.