[HCoop-Discuss] Budget Issues, Membership Meeting, and Overhauling HCoop

[Clinton Ebadi]

Greetings,

As the result of the last few general member meetings on IRC, plans
have been drawn up to perform a hardware upgrade and to adjust our
dues structure to return to financial stability. A number of important
events are occurring within the next week:

 * A poll has been opened at
   <https://members.hcoop.net/portal/poll?id=28> asking members for
   input on potential dues adjustment plans
 * A general membership meeting has been scheduled for October 18 at
   18:00 UTC
 * A board meeting and vote on service upgrade related matters will be
   scheduled shortly thereafter

What follows are brief summaries of the major topics to be
discussed. This message has also been CCed to hcoop-discuss for
discussion.

* Datacenter Move and Hardware Upgrade

A wiki page has been created at <http://wiki.hcoop.net/Migration2009>
with semi-finalized plans for a datacenter move and hardware
upgrade. This should allow us to:

 * Increase reliability
 * Decrease costs in the long term (12-18 months)
 * Increase capacity allowing expansion

More details are available on the wiki page. We are also open to
remaining at Peer1 with a modest hardware upgrade to increase
capacity.

* Dues Restructuring

Presently our monthly costs are $6.06 per pledge [0] as of the October
Peer1 billing cycle. With dues fixed at $5/month/pledge this is
causing us to run an appreciable monthly deficit.

The board is proposing that we alter dues to reflect actual costs by
fixing them to a function of our monthly recurring costs:

 * Dues would be adjusted quarterly
 * Dues would be set at (recurring costs) / (number of members)
 * The board would be authorized to add up to $3/month for a
   non-recurring costs fund (with excess funds above a certain amount
   disbursed to members at the end of the fiscal year).

Tentatively dues would be set at $7 for the December dues cycle unless
there is major opposition.

Switching to this model would have several advantages:

 * Dues would reflect actual costs, but remain stable most of the time
   preventing the issues with varying dues each month that we had
   before the fixed dues system was enacted
 * We would avoid running a deficit again
 * We would have funds for regular hardware upgrades and emergency
   replacements for failed hardware
 * With enough members (e.g. 300) dues could even end up lower than $5/month

There are, naturally, a few potential disadvantages, and so we require
member input in order to make a properly balanced decision.

A poll has been set up at [1] asking the maximum amount each member is
willing to spend on HCoop per month. It will be open from October 13th
through October 19th; please take the time to respond and to discuss
your opinion on hcoop-discuss.

A wiki page has been created with budget projections and more
information at <http://wiki.hcoop.net/DuesRestructuring>.

[0] http://wiki.hcoop.net/HcoopBudget
[1] https://members.hcoop.net/portal/poll?id=28