Re: Vote Robinson for DPL!
On Wednesday 23 February 2005 10:30 pm, John Goerzen wrote:
> I looked at your wiki page. The only items that look relevant going
> forth are "I outlined next steps to correct procedures going forward"
> and "Checks are now once again being processed by volunteers in two
> assorted places with no secure storage and no professional accounting
> help."
>
> Regarding the first point, could you post a URL to these suggestions of
> yours?
The discussions were on the SPI board list and are not publicly available. My
general suggestions were:
We should pay an actual person to perform clerical services for SPI. For
$18,000 we could have paid a trained office temp to do 50 hours of clerical
work a month for the next three years. 50 hours a month should safely allow
that person to:
- Open all the mail, scan it and upload it to a secure web server.
- Sort and file all the materials.
- Take all materials older than 12 months and send it to a permanent, secure
document archive service such as iron mountain.
50 hours, actually, is probably way, way to much time. I would imagine typical
traffic load will require no more than 10 hours a month. I would be happy to
host the files and the temp at my office facility but we could have backups.
I'm sure Progeny, Ubuntu, HP or even the government of Brazil would help us
come up with something more secure and professional than having all Debian's
legal documents sitting at someone's house.
I'll add this stuff to my Wiki entry.
> Regarding the second point, I agree with you that professional
> accounting help should be found. However, simply saying, "see, we're
> paying someone to help!" doesn't magically make things better. As you
> know, there has been some resistance to spending money on this. It
> doesn't really take a pro to write log transactions and send things off
> to a bank, either.
It is taking a long time. Any reasonably conducted business should be able to
cut a check on a 30 day cycle. It should also be totally possible for most
businesses to expedite a check in 24 hours. I know I waited six months and I
know of at least one other person who is more than a year out. I'm certain
that there are other Debianers who have had problems but aren't talking about
it.
> Regarding secure storage: what is there to store? Checks are being sent
> off for deposit almost as soon as they come in, and bank statements,
> canceled checks, etc. are made available electronically. Having an
> Internet bank is, I think, a great benefit there -- and the geographical
> proximity to Branden probably helps, too.
Businesses should store five years of financial transactions in case there is
an audit. At Brainfood we store seven. How good do you feel about SPI going
through an IRS audit right now? I've been through them and it wasn't fun and
we were well prepared.
> We probably have some non-treasurer things -- incorporation papers, etc
> -- that should be in a safe deposit box somewhere. I'm aware of that.
> It just hasn't been at the top of the list given all the other urgent
> needs we have around here. Or are you aware of things I don't know of?
Where is the correspondence for that lady that brought charges against SPI
being stored? With Greg?
--
Ean Schuessler, CTO
ean@brainfood.com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com
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