Financial Procedures

From 1st Presbyterian Church of Second Life
Revision as of 21:47, 2 May 2010 by Neill (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

Adopted by consensus of the 1PCSL community on Sunday, April 17th, 2010, after one week of public review and discussion:

  1. We will have a budget for commitments and plans for the 12 months that lie ahead, and will solicit donations and pledges for donations that match any commitments we make. We will not turn plans into commitments without pledges that would cover the cost of those plans. (This is using a "Rolling Budget" concept that plans 12 months out and adjusts the budget based on changing income and expenses that are outside our control as those changes happen, and with this method can adjust the budget based on new plans or pledges at any point. However, the adjustments are for the future, and in the present and past we conform to the previous rolling plan using traditional accounting and cash-flow methods.)
  2. The “banking” for our community will be done through the account of an avatar created solely for the purpose of collecting money and paying for community expenses. We will maintain no funds for the community outside of the funds that flow through this avatar. This avatar is named "Treasurer1PCSL Faith", and 3 people will have the credentials for the avatar at any given point of time. Currently those people will be Menchor Barbosa, JoySophia Northman (RL: Maria Kettleson Anderson), and Miguelski Simsider.
  3. All budgeting, banking or accounting will be done in Lindens, and translation to dollars will be done by anyone who wants to do that at the time they want the information. This matches normal accounting and banking practices for any enterprise wholly conducted in any other country, where the accounting and banking are done in that country’s currency and only compared to other countries’ currency when there is some need to do so.
  4. All pledges will be made in Lindens, and the burden for converting dollars to Lindens will rest with the person making and paying the donation or pledge.
  5. All fundraising and accounting will be done outside of the non-profit tax-exempt requirements at this point, which means that none of those pledging money would be able to claim this as tax-deductible contributions for income tax purposes. For other purposes, each contributor should consider his or her own account history showing transactions to "Treasurer1PCSL Faith" as his or her receipt of those transactions.
  6. Books external to the account of "Treasurer1PCSL Faith" will be maintained by one person, and the account history of "Treasurer1PCSL Faith" will be kept by another person, and the two will be reconciled monthly. (As stated above, this would all be done in Lindens, not in dollars.) A monthly income/expense statement and a monthly balance sheet will be created and maintained from this process, and monthly reminders of pledges will be sent as part of this process. (The division of labor at this point will be Menchor doing the bookkeeping and reminders internal to Second Life, and JoySophia doing the external accounting and reconciliation and reporting.)
  7. This will be our plan for 2010, but will be open to revision as reasons for revision become apparent.