Phage Finances and Infrastructure 2010-2013Christina Chu

Summary

• Outline of issues past and present•Where does the money go? • A 4 year Burning Man summary• Infrastructure discussion.•What’s Next?

Camp Stats• 2010: • Camp Size: ~84 • Tax Rate: $210

• 2011:• Camp Size: 101 (actual reported, unaccounted is possible)• Tax Rate: $200 early (54), $250 regular (43), 4 exempt, late fee (0),

refunds (6)• 2012:• Camp Size: 103 • Tax Rate: $210 early (53), $260 regular (44), 3 exempt, late fee (3), Tax

Transfer (8)• 2013:• Camp Size: 107• Tax Rate: $200 early (40), $250 regular (60), 4 exempt, late fee (3), Tax

Transfers (7)

What Happened in 2010?

• Very late payment or non payment of Camp Dues• Ended in Debt – see 2011 meeting minutes• $2000 owed to Robb Walter for Storage• Indeterminate amount to Busby for Art car, but didn’t

want to be paid back. • We offered Busby tax exemption, and future repairs• Farley was phage treasurer in 2010

• Kitchen way under budgeted• Less than $2000, insufficient food for the week

• No specific data on spending, no spreadsheet, only short summary on portal

How did we fix issues in 2011?

• Two Tier Tax Structure: • Early/Regular ($200/$250)• Refunds before Burningman, but were a headache

• Ended BM with 100+ camp members but was necessary to pay off debt + new container.• Container replaced Storage fee.• Late joiners helped give us an safety margin if

overspending happened.• Created detailed Excel spreadsheet to track spending

information, dropbox’d receipts, area leads, etc.• Detailed Budget Spreadsheets available:

http://bit.ly/phage2011budget

What happened in 2012?• Two Tier Tax Structure kept• Replace Refunds with Tax Transfers system• Consolidated funds into Wepay• Instead of 3 different places • Possible to have multiple managers, good transparency

• Expensify for managing receipts. (big time saver)• Increased Kitchen, SL, and Art Budget.• 4 different spreadsheets split between various people• newbie, joining, paid status, contact info, 50-100+ emails

per day in last few weeks. Too much overhead!!• Detailed Budget Spreadsheets available: http://bit.ly/

phage2012budget

2012 bonus funds

• Extra funds from Glasser (only asked for 50% reimbursement for truck fee) • Glasser Collected Yurt Fees in 2012. • Did not collect in 2011

• Above items gave us ~ $2500 after Burningman ended in 2012

How did we fix issues in 2013?

• Created ThePhage.org –• Registration: reduce excess email chasing by collecting

camper info in one place. Overall workload 10x Easier to Manage.• Directory + Camp information in one place.• Site needs team to update and support

• Kept 2 Tier tax, Wepay, Expensify and tax transfer• Automated scripting to check payment vs registration

status.• Increased SL budget as requested for repairs• Detailed spreadsheet: http://bit.ly/phage2013budget

Container Costs

• 2011: New Container Cost $3600• 2013: New Container Cost $4075• 2014:• We are on the list for a 2nd container as per April

group decision – cost TBD. Do we want this?• Annual moving fee is ~ $828 per container• For 2 containers the moving fee is: ~$1656/per year• 2 containers, + RP container + truck = structure for

Relaxomat Tent (4 corners)

ThePhage.org

• About the Site: • Wordpress• Gravity Forms: • Don’t require coding expertise for info collection• Forms allow automatic user account registration

• System helps centralize information • A Major Time Saver for organizers

• People: • Hosted on Doug Campbell’s server for free. Bandwidth a little low

• Content Manager: Sidney Cox 2013• Code Monkey: Christina 2013, Evan Greenlee 2014• Seeking additional contributors to keep it going.

Cost savings

• LED Purchases in Bulk: • 2012 Strangelove LED Purchases : ~$2500 USD• 2013: ~$750 USD – purchase batched with Flaming

Lotus Girls and cost savings deal brokered by Bunnie.• Seeking more deals like this if possible. • Please talk to me if you have ideas• Example: Costco card

Combining Resources

• Generator cost currently shared with FP, RP• 2013 Total cost $5165.91, Phage paid $1721.97• Costs divided equally this year, usually Phage pays around 40% or

~$2066 since we are the largest camp.

• Consider sharing Water resources and Showers with RP in 2014 to reduce cost.• Need point person to lead initiative

Spending and Overspending

• Strangelove Budget increased every year for repairs• 2011 - $1778.45 USD• 2012 - ~$3500• 2013 - ~$4116

• Kitchen Budget• 2011 - $2878.75 (insufficient)• 2012 - $3321.73 (sufficient)• 2013 - ~$4250 (3500 is sufficient)

• Without reserve funding we’d be in debt • ~$600 left in 2013, not enough for ~$800 container fee (April).

• Please try to keep within your budgets if you are a team leader.

2011 SummaryExpenses Amount SpentArtCar $1,778.45 Container $3,600.00 Creative $3,718.75 2010 Debt* $800.00 Generator $1,288.50 Kitchen Expenses $2,878.75 Ranch $1,500.00 Tools/Repairs $879.01 Trash & Moop $488.98 Truck $1,975.90 Water $200.00 Total $19,108.34

Income (Taxes) $21,769.43

Expenses - $19,108.34

Net $2661.09

*Portion of debt was paid as free camp tax to Robb and friends. Actual cash paid was $800

2012 SummaryExpenses Amount SpentArtCar $3450.55Truck $1300.00Grey Water $340.00Kitchen $2984.85Kitchen equip. $336.88Generator $1828.48Ranch $1580.00Art Grants $4547.22Container Fee $827.82Other (tools, trash, moop, etc) $1842.53Gravity Forms $219Total $19,257.33

Income (Taxes) $23,839.54

Yurt Fees $820.00

Expenses - $19,257.33

Net $5402.21

2013 SummaryExpenses Amount SpentStrangelove $4,116.11 Truck $3,547.48 Grey Water $948.76 Kitchen $4,251.19 Ranch $1,755.00 Generator $1,721.97 Art Grants $4,305.37 Misc $2,003.54 Totals: $22,649.42

Income (Taxes) $23,258.88

Expenses - $22,649.42

Net $6011.67

Yurt Fees* $1440.00

* Fees collected for 2 years by David Brown : 2013 and 2014? Need to confirm. Amount just received, so rest of slides not yet updated to reflect this. Donations also not inclluded here yet

2013 OverspendingArea Actual Spend Initial Budget Overspend % over

Strangelove $4,116.11 $3,500.00 $616.11 17.0%

Truck $3,547.48 $2,000.00 $1,547.48 77.0%

Grey Water $948.76 $500.00 $448.76 89.8%

Kitchen $4,251.19 $3,500.00 $751.19 21.5%

Ranch $1,755.00 $1,500.00 $255 17.0%

Generator $1,721.97 $1,700.00 $21.97 1.2%

Art Grants $4,305.37 $3,500.00 $805.37 23.0%

Misc $2,003.54 - -Totals: $22,649.42 $16,200 $4,445.88

2013 Income 2013 Expenses 2013 Balance

$23258.88 $22649.42 $609.46

Ending Balance per Year (Dec)

2010 2011 2012 2013

-3000

-2000

-1000

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

BalanceDebt2014 Container

General Payment schedule• Reimbursements - September – October• Gravity Forms License - December• Container Fees – April • Tax collection – starts in late May or June typically. • 40/60 or 50/50 split between early and regular.

• 50% of large budget items disbursed before playa (Aug). Remainder paid after expenses have been reported (Kitchen, Art Car, Truck if needed)

• Ranch fees paid in cash before playa ($1500)• Yurt Fees are helpful if someone is able to collect

What are the issues for 2014?• Strangelove is nearly 20% of total budget.• Finance, Data wrangling and Gatekeeping should be split

between 2 or 3 people. Too much work for one person.• Camp Size Control• Do we really want to support a camp of 107 people?• How do we better distribute labor in the camp? (One person

should not do 6 jobs.)• Tax Transfers • many were super late, & right before the Burn• Newbie latecomers are difficult to integrate into the camp.• Transfers are confusing to some people

• Overspending control in the group:• Be More Proactive about controlling spending at every level.

Final Word

“What Makes a movement strong is not the number of people willing to give money, but

the number of people willing to believe there is hope.” – Simon Sinek

What do you hope for in 2014?

For More Details• Contact: phage.finance at gmail.com