Accounting in the FEC

Are you trying to request money from the FEC?

Please fill out this form.

 

Okay, now have some historical notes that are not totally accurate, to later be made into something like a coherent and updated website.

 

 

AKA - What's involved in using FEC money and hours

See Current FEC Budget and Accounting spreadsheet

Overview


FEC communities pay dues in dollars and hours. Often a member communities will spend money for the FEC then ask for reimbursement. This document explains FEC policies around spending FEC reimbursable money and using FEC Hours

Dollars

 

General

* If anyone wants to spend money and be reimbursed by the FEC, they must discuss their expense in advance with the meta for that budget area todo: we need to put the budget on the net and link to it.
* Anyone can submit a proposal to the FEC assembly to have a project be reimbursed partially or in full by the FEC. Assemblies happen twice a year.
* The FEC does not reimburse for food (exception, sometimes small communities hosting assemblies receive financial support for their food costs)

Events


The FEC provides funds for travel and entrance to events to put FEC communities more in the public consciousness.

* Many event travel budgets provide only a fraction of the cost to attend an event. Often, community members will need to find supplemental funding from their community outreach budgets (or any other budget), or from their own pocket
* The FEC does not reimburse for food when attending an event or traveling to an event
* Anyone who receives FEC money to attend an event must talk up the FEC at the event. "Talking up" could include:
o Handing out literature and, if possible
o giving a talk about the FEC
* Upon return from an event, a recipient of event funding must write up a report on co's experience. Submit reports to [email protected]
o Describe how much the event cost
o Describe the organization and how the values of the organization might relate to the FEC's values
o Describe the event

Labor Exchange


To aid in labor exchange between communities, the FEC provides LETS (Labor Exchange Travel Subsidy) to each community.

* The community receiving the labor has a certain amount of money it can spend, in 2005 it's $500/community
* Anyone wishing to receive LETS to cover their travel must check in with the community they'd like to do LEX at BEFORE traveling to determine how much LETS they can use
* It's perfectly acceptable for a host community to offer less LETS money than will fully cover the cost of travel
* A host community can spend all its LETS money on one trip, or lots of different trips. However, please spend LETS money wisely. To get LEXers to or from the west coast, there may be no cheap and comfortable method other than flying. For travel between Missouri and Virginia, driving (preferably bringing several people at once) or taking the train or bus are the most reasonable and inexpensive methods. Flying into rural airports tends to be unreasonably expensive.

Hours


How FEC hours can be spent is a question whose answer is in flux. Interesting things to consider:

* Can hours be taken for travel time to events? For travel to do LEX?
* How much say does the FEC have in allocating the dues hours owed by member communities?
* What does it mean for the FEC to budget a certain number of hours for a project?
* How are FEC hours worked reported at our various communities?