View source for Developing and maintaining healthy financial habits for community-based orgs

=Healthy Financial Habits for Small and Scrappy Organizations=

Mayday Space is a collectively-run grassroots org in Bushwick Brooklyn that is an activism and organizing hub.

==What folks here have experience with==
* Working at big big non-profits and tiny ones 
* Systems administration, supporting accountants
* Collective budgeting 
* Public access TV

==What is it like in your org?==
Design Action: 12 person collective, 6 committees
* plus a book-keeper and rotating financial committee
* committees can make budgetary requests - how much money do you need, how much money have you brought in for this area of work, how much money do you anticipate bringing in for your area
* recently raised our hourly rage simultaneously with raising top level of sliding scale fee, ongoing struggle to push back against austerity and fear 
* collective budgeting: committees put forth their own budgets, then smaller group goes back and synthesizes, refines

==What questions are Mayday tackling right now?==
* the person who held the most financial literacy just left the collective, staff taking webinars with book-keeping co-op 
* need to build up this muscle in other folks
* what practices have worked for you in buiilding shared financial literacy in your org? 
* ultimately, wanting to build habits of communication about a topic people don't like!
* talking about budgets is not just about spreadsheets, it's a narrative 
* Critical Resistance: people are making decisions about finances that they are not actively involved in, doesn't feel great 
* what worked better: 4 general meetings: preparing folks with financial literacy education 
1) financial values 2) spreadsheets 3) what are you options for engaging with the budget process 4) consenting on the budget and a fundraising plan
* thinking about budgets as quarters is a good cadence
* Critical Resistance and Design Action both do year long processes and review it after 6 months 
* Bookkeeper sending a spreadsheet with our earnings numbers every week, so that we consistently practice thinking about our financial goals 
* "a budget is a moral document"
* telling a story about how the money is being spent is useful 
* Design action had class conversations to develop shared understanding about how we make and propose money decisions 
* knowing the "why" behind why we have to do certain things
* having an organizational wiki - what the org uses and doesn't use, if we don't want people to use a thing (i.e. paypal) it says why in the wiki, feedback from people was: this works!
* how do you establish the norm that people go to that document?
* no quick fix! establish some hierarchy -- if you need to know about X go to Y person
* use humor! get thru the emotional barriers to financial literacy. use bitmojis lolz
* take the fear factor out of it if it feels more fun 
* helping ppl understand that the work is a thru line - programs and budgets woven together, like a sewing machine where two threads are being woven together from the top and the bottom