Financial Agreement
Context
This agreement defines how Enspiral handles money as a collective, specifically the funds in the accounts of Enspiral. Our goals are to ensure legal compliance, financial solvency, and operational reliability, make financial flows across the network as transparent as possible, and direct significant resources to discretionary funds to be decided through participatory processes.
Type of Funds
Money held by the foundation falls into the following two categories.
Core Fund
The core fund is controlled by the Foundation Board. These funds are flagged for operational expenses and providing an economic runway for Enspiral.
The board is expected to maintain a viable level for the core fund account (e.g. minimum of 12 months of fixed expenses) and to periodically allocate any surplus to the approved collaborative funding processes of their choice.
Collaborative Funds
Funds allocated to an approved collaborative funding process governed by the rules that define the specific process.
Income
Enspiral receives income from individuals, companies, trusts or other entities. Income can be broken into the following categories:
Gifts
All one-off gifts to the foundation go to the core funds.
Membership
Except for membership fees collected directly by Enspiral Nodes, all recurring membership fees are considered global memberships and go to core funds. The board is responsible for setting global membership fee levels and processes via the membership fees guide.
Sponsorship
A recurring sponsorship with Enspiral. All sponsorships have a written memorandum which outlines the terms of the sponsorship and where funds are allocated.
Sponsorship monies can be allocated to any fund, as defined by the sponsorship memorandum.
An agreement (in the form of a memorandum) with the Enspiral Board and the sponsor. The Board will sign off on and maintain a record of all memorandums.
Other income
All other income is allocated to core funds.
Outgoings
Money spent by the Foundation falls under the following categories.
Fixed Costs
The board is responsible for managing the fixed costs of the network from core funds, which are expected to be kept at ‘minimum viable’ to ensure smooth operations of core processes for the network.
Discretionary Costs
All discretionary costs are managed through an approved collaborative funding process and taken from collaborative funds.
Emergency Costs
The board can approve one-off expenditures from any fund when exercising their emergency powers.
Collaborative Funding Processes
A collaborative funding process must have a facilitator who takes responsibility for the process. Specifically the facilitator is responsible for:
- Ensuring the rules for the process are clearly documented and approved by the board
- Budgeting for the process, including themselves running the process.
- Facilitating the process
- Reporting the outcomes to the network
- Holding entities that receive funding accountable
Funds may only be allocated to a collaborative funding process that has clearly documented rules that have been approved by the board. If no such rules have previously been defined, a proposal must be made to the board and approved.
Overall Compliance & Reporting
All financial compliance is managed at the discretion of the board. The board will provide a periodical financial report on Enspiral's funds/accounts balances and budget/financial forecast.