Single Expenditure and Reimbursement Policy

Summary

Single expenditures are important to the operation of HacDC and its Events and Projects. However, multiple single-expenditures that are really outlays for a particular Event or Project, form a defacto ad-hoc budget. These de-facto ad-hoc budgets can become quite large and Membership only can only know how large, after the fact. Ad-hoc defacto budgets can easily consume most of the HacDC funds and push-back other Events or Projects that require real budgets. Real budgets are burdened by approval whereas ad-hoc defacto budgets do not require approval, even though they can theoretically spend as much funds as a real budget.

Potential Solutions

• Lower the limit of single expenditures to $100 and record the expenditures in the weekley finance report and require pre-approval for reimbursements over $100
  • Pros:
    • HacDC members are able to execute single expenditures
    • Any quickly organized Event/Project that attempts to use multiple single-expenditures as a defacto ad-hoc budget would be limited from doing so.
    • HacDC members would be informed at least once a week as to what single expenditures have been executed
    • Depletion of HacDC funds by defacto ad-hoc budgets would be limited
    • Single Expenditures would be limited in purpose for providing one-shot low cost resources (food, soda, etc) for Events and Projects
  • Cons:
    • Quickly organized events would require the organizers to get approval from HacDC membership for funding beyond single expenditures
    • Quickly organized space building/storage infrastructure improvements would require the organizers to get approval from HacDC membership for funding beyond single expenditures
    • Quickly organized Projects over $100 in total costs would require the organizer to get approval from HacDC membership for funding beyond single expenditures
    • Quickly organized projects that may require reimbursements to be implemented would require the organizers to get approval from HacDC membership.

PROPOSAL

The following Administrative Policy is submitted for discussion:

• Single Expenditures
  • Single expenditures under $101 do not require approval.
  • All single expenditures must be recorded by the Minster of Finance in the weekly Finance Report as a line item that shows the day, amount, and purpose of the expenditure.
• Reimbursements
  • Reimbursements over $101 require pre-approval by quorum of the voting membership.