[Imc-africa] preliminary finance report

[fabian]

A report back from the budget team, finance committee, on IMCA spending
in Dakar. 

With some delay, due to difficulties in co-ordinating reporting across
three continents and the complexity of working with several
organizations rather than just one, we can now offer some sort of first
overall report on the finances of Dakar. This information has been
compiled with the help of many people that need to be thanked for their
inputs and keeping with us on the case. This report was compiled by myself with input from Amy.

So here's the basic digits:
Overall we have fundraised $ 38000 and the good news is that this is
also what we have spent.

Our fundraising was based on three mayor sources of income:
- Global IMC Funds and Umverteilen Funds accounted each for a litte bit
less than a third of the budget while differently sized gifts and
donations administered through Philadelphia IMC, DDTV and UC-IMC made up
the rest of the income.

On the spending side, unsurprisingly most of the money went into paying
for people's travel: Over $26000, just about over two thirds of the
budget. This includes Visa related costs and health fees.

Housing in Dakar accounted for $3500, while another $1500 went into
infrastructure and communications on the ground, including things like
phone credit, generator diesel and mattresses.

We spent under $1850 on food and welfare, a remarkable low figure
considering that this was used to feed 50 people over two weeks.
If we had paid out a daily allowance of just $7 per person (probably
this would have not been enough in Dakar) instead of cooking together
like we did, the cost of food would have risen to near $5000 ($7*50people*14days).

We also spent about $3000 for Radio installation. The costs include some
people traveling to Bamako, Mali after the convergence with the Malian
delegation to help up building the Radio station there.

We are still sorting through a few details on the google docs
spreadsheets, and then the next task is to prepare reports for the
funders and organizational sponsors. as soon as we get the main ledger
and summary statement in order, we will upload it onto the
docs.indymedia.org interface. in the interim if anyone else wants to view the numbers "in progress" please let me
know and I'll add you to the google docs.

We would also like to give some recommendations with respect to planning
Durban:

Clearly the highest costs for the collective budget is travel. In this
light I think it is important to be realistic about the size of
delegations for next time. We spent a total $26000, however nearly a third of the group, including all MayFirst people and most of the Nigerian delegation were not paid for by our funds while the whole Malian
delegation was really cheap because they traveled by coach.

I think there is a clear case to limit the amount of centrally-rased
money to give to travel per delegation and leave the rest to local
fundraising. Amy has proposed that the limit be 4 delegates; Molefi
proposed 10, I'd suggest we even consider keeping it at 2. Moreover,
groups who decide to travel in different cheaper (and considering the context of the next convergence: less carbon intense) ways, for example by bus caravan should be encouraged to do so by way of financial incentives and support from central budget.

More practical proposals include:

1) create a clear accounting structure BEFORE any funds are spent. The
process of organizing the accounts afterward is actually helping us get
clarity on this, and hopefully we can propose a structure well in
advance of our time on the ground in durban.

2) clarify the nature of funds and the fiscal control of them: this time
we had three different kinds of income:

a) donations specified for certain costs on behalf of the funders.
b) donations non-specified and under fiscal control of the collective
decision making of IMC Africa virtual or actual convergence
c) donations non-specified and under fiscal control of organizations
that closely collaborate with IMC Africa and contribute to the convergence.

Ok, that's all for now. Please send questions or feedback. Also, going
forward, it would be great to have additional participation in the
finance committee. Please reply if you could help.

Best 
Fabian
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