New space purchases

[Lex Bailey]

Is that ... the hackspace mailing list? Is that still used for anything?

   yes!

what for?

   it's still part of the official purchasing procedure

oh okay.

Hi All,

As you (probably) already know, the hackspace is going to move to a larger space soon.

During the move, we're going to need to purchase various things for the new space, and we'd like to be able to do it without having to get every purchase individually approved before we buy it. Instead, we'd like to use the purchase procedure to preemptively allocate £1,000 of hackspace funds for "various moving purchases". We (the trustees) believe this should be plenty of money for the things we've anticipated needing and a bunch more spare for whatever we haven't thought of. Anything not spent from this pot after the move will then revert to being regular funds again and normal individual item purchasing procedure will resume.

Multiple people have generously donated to the move fund, and we've actually had a total of about £1,070 in donations for the move so far! This is amazing! :D

Thankyou very much to everyone that has donated for the move fund already. Others are welcome to do the same, but honestly I wasn't even expecting us to have this much so quickly, so don't worry at all if you aren't able to donate.

As per the procedure, this message is the start of a 48 hour period in which you can share your thoughts on this proposal. (well, okay, I'm sending this really late at night, so we'll probably start the timer from the morning)

We're doing it this way because we will need to buy various things but don't know exactly what we'll need. For example, we need to change some of the wiring in the new hackspace, we'd like to be able to buy the right wire in the right lengths very shortly after measuring what we need. We might need various screws, brackets, etc to fit the air con, door locks, shelving stuff. All this stuff we want to be able to buy without much notice so we can get the new space ready swiftly.

There's also a whole bunch of things that we haven't even thought of yet that will come up. The money we're allocating here is specifically for things that we deem essential for getting the new hackspace ready for us to move in.

Thanks,

Lex

[Lissa Moriarty]

This sounds sensible to me, in principle, but I'd suggest we clarify this part:

> Anything not spent from this pot after the move will then revert to being regular funds again and normal individual item purchasing procedure will resume.

I'd suggest that be termed a specific date, possibly some weeks (maybe a calendar month) after the scheduled move, to allow for anything that runs over that we reasonably need to complete.

Cheers

Lissa

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[Lex Bailey]

Yeah, that sounds sensible. our current aim is to be fully moved by mid-March. So perhaps the last day of March should be the deadline in that case.

[Joseph]

I also think it sounds sensible, and putting a deadline for purchases is also a good idea.

Perhaps publishing a list of the things that have been purchased would be a good idea too, if nothing else but to keep track of what the money has been used for.

Joseph

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[Lex Bailey]

Excellent point. We will track all the spending in the main accounting spreadsheet anyway, since we have to, so it should be fairly easy for us to regularly publish specific purchases for the move.

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[Simon Greener]

I completely agree that pre-approved spending will allow the move to proceed far more smoothly.  I like the idea of a date limit too! What about some sort of limit to the scope of the pre-approved purchases?  

By 'limit to scope' I mean to keep the focus on enabling the move, making the place safe and secure, while avoiding query-able nice to haves and so be sure to never wander in to a grey area of spending on indirect purchases, like tools, food and drink, people transport and what not.  If I donated to the move fund I would be peeved if pizza was ordered from it.  I am not saying it would be, its just an illustration.

Having said all that the trustees are sensible (its why they're trustees, a clue is in the title) so we could just let them get on with that they think is best.  I'm just kicking a can around here. I'm new.

Simon (Grasis).

[Lex Bailey]

eek, this one went into my spam folder :(

Yep, the scope of the authorisation is only things that are necessary for the move. If we're ordering pizza then it'll be out of our own pockets :)

Just to cover some specific things you mentioned...

I'm fairly confident that we have all the tools we'd need already. We might end up "borrowing" tools from the hackspace or bringing our own tools from home to do the work in the new building. So we probably won't need to buy tools with this money, but if we discover that we do need a specific tool at short notice then I'd expect this money to cover that as long as it's reasonably priced.

Nice-to-haves will be done through the normal purchasing process.

As for transport, we won't spend any of it on people transport, for sure, but if we need to move large things around (for example, we probably need some materials from B&Q or similar for modifying the shelves for the new space) then we will likely spend money on hiring a van to transport that if nobody has a large enough vehicle. Obviously we'll try to minimise the number of times we need to hire a van.

Indeed, this does put a lot of trust in the trustees to spend the money appropriately, but as per the suggestion in Joe's email, we'll publish details of all the purchases we make so you can hold us to account, or VONC someone and call an EGM 😆

Thanks :)

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[Lex Bailey]

wow, time flies when it's Christmas!
this has now had well over 48 hours, and it looks like people are generally happy with it, and minor concerns have been addressed.

let's call this approved.

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