[D-Space] Introduction and a few thoughts

[Paul Campbell]

On Mon, 06 Dec 2010, Alex King wrote:

> Yes, absolutely, we want to include as many people as we can from the 
> start, and we're certainly hoping to sign up as many financially as we 
> can.  The bank account will be opened I guess as soon as we can gather 
> some signatures on a form, and if we do the signing Wednesday night we 
> can probably open the bank a/c Thursday.

well the bank needs to have a copy of our 'rules' - we probably need to find an 
existing set we can live with and adopt them first - the bank wants copies of 
IDs (xeroxes of driver licenses will do) - we need to start the process - we 
don't need to have an account for me to sign the lease

> I also agree there is no critical need to incorporate immediately, and 
> it's likely to take a little longer because the paperwork needs to be 
> done and people signed up formally.  But the advantage of getting 
> charitable status is that contributors could get tax benefits, or 
> contribute under payroll giving and get a rebate. 
> (http://www.ird.govt.nz/income-tax-individual/tax-credits/payroll-giving/)  
> This could be a significant for some people (myself included), so from 
> that point of view I'd like to get charitable status as soon as possible.

IANAL but I think that simple membership (since it gives you a benefit in 
return) may not be deductible - but contributing tools or money over and above 
the standard membership may be

> We want to have as flat a structure as possible right from the 
> beginning, with everyone invited to all meetings, and all business done 
> in the open.

I completely agree

> One thought regarding a few people putting in a lot of extra up-front - 
> maybe we want to structure those contributions as loans, so that there 
> is an expectation that they could be payed back in the future if we 
> attract enough members and become financially successful.  We won't be a 
> for-profit organisation though, so once our debts are paid, if we have 
> excess income (a long way off at this stage) we would reduce our 
> membership fees.

yes my thought was that we loan the money to the organisation, the money ends up 
on the books as a liability and once we get charitable status we 'donate' the 
money - we'll have to talk to the accountant about it to make sure this is OK - 
we're not trying to do anything shonky here 

> 
> My second thought is that there are a heap of community buildings that might
> > be used. There's community house, which can be used for meetings. The Corso
> > building on Moray place (although it does smell strongly of weed), and
> > probably a dozens other buildings that i've never heard of. Not to mention
> > that we're still in a recession, so there's a heap of buildings for lease
> > around town that could be used.
> > If we work at trying to get other community groups involved, or at least
> > passing the word along to their members, then there's a good chance that
> > other buildings will show up - like they say, it's not what you know, but
> > who you know".
> >
> >    
> True, if anyone knows of a better building, let us know.  I happen to 
> know the space at CORSO pretty well, and there isn't any spare space 
> there at the moment.  Paul has been looking for a while, and this is the 
> best that has come up so far.  That doesn't mean there isn't something 
> else out there, but it's the best we know of.

I did look for several months - I could easily have missed stuff - I was being 
rather fussy about how far things are from the Uni (for students) and bus routes 
(for high school kids) - it think it has to be somewhere that carless geeks can 
get to

(my original thought was that the old gardies seems to be empty right now, my 
contacts at the Uni didn't pay out though)

> One thing I think we maybe should explore would be whether the landlord 
> would be prepared to let us have free rent for the first month, or 
> discounted rent for an initial period while we build our membership.

I think we're already sort of getting a month free - I kind of get the 
impression that the people running the space are not rolling in dough - they're 
renting to artists and bands for practice space 

	Paul