2021-02-05 Hypha: Equity4Who Fiscal Sponsorship Interview

When? Fri, Feb 5 @ 9-9:30am ET
Who’s here? Patrick (patcon,pc), Dawn (dc), Payton, Meaghan, Ben (bl)

Resources

• Hypha Fiscal Sponsorhip Agreement

Notes

OC = Open Collective
E4W = Equity4Who

Intros

• Equity4Who: Payton, Meaghan (UofWaterloo students)
• Payton. 4th year student. Admired mutual fund initiative. Following from afar. Joined for past year.
• Meaghan. Also final year. 2-3 ppl who started, but no longer on team. Group is pretty high turnover.
• E4W mission: challenging state of equity at UW.
  • hands in few different pots:
    • mutual aid. biggest project. lots of passion for it. immediately redistribe funds.
      • types of things: meds, groceries, diapers, menstrual products, … (see form)
      • important to serve racialized students.
      • original mission: counter institutional history of UW re anti-black and anti-indigenous behavior.
    • education. teach-ins. online rn.
  • all money from gofundme going into personal bank acct and e-transfered to community members
  • tax issues for individual? looked into incorporating, charity, nonprofit, but high burden
    • 5 students + 1 alumni. no expertise in finance/law and all the steps
  • meaghan: heard about “fiscal sponsorship”. contacted UK org. referred to OpenCollective. pointed to us.
    • pc: what’s platform in uk? #ask
• Hypha: Patcon, Dawn, Ben
• dc: similar trajectory, re: finances. took us a lot of time to figure out how to hold money.
• dc: we are based out of Toronto/GTA. fulltime student at UofT. seen similar things. agree with failure to support.
• pc: we’re in tech, but technoskeptical
• bl: background in eng, trying to do finance and accounting. not a lot of canadian context for new ways of doing fiscal sponsorshop (e.g. opencollective). figuring it out. first in canada. have had pro bono legal review, so reasonably confident in our approach. here for logistal questions.
• Meaghan: read the guide, do have questions
  • fees and expenses? 5% for Hypha
  • not moving a lot of money. a couple thousand. quick turnaround.
  • doing fiscal sponsorship bc don’t want to spend lots on lawyers
    • eager to minimize fees, but ack that there are costs. want to get as much as possible to recipients.
• ben: fiscal sponsorship overview + breakdown
  • fiscal sponsorship can mean a few things.
  • can be very heavy. taking on legal contracts like leases. NOT what we’re doing
  • Hypha dealing in donations, NOT services. we’re starting with support for no-strings donations, so no taxes need be charged. but using our system for transactions like selling event tickets would be different (taxes).
  • need records for payouts. claims can be through OC website. needs to submit receipts/invoices. accountant needs them.
  • meaghan: current = excel spreadsheet.
    • requested funds. uw email. $38,000 in backlog of requests. working through.
  • payout ways we currently use: bank transfer, and paypal.
  • pc: can we do e-transfer? bl: requires more clicking, and our bank is not great.
    • #update confirmed later than only one member of our co-op (yj) can perform e-transfers, so that’s too complicated for us.
  • bl: fees. money in = 5%. money out = no extra charge.
    • #update bl realized there were still processing charges on payout (which e-transfer may not have), but just minimum of payment platform, e.g. paypal (nothing taken by OC platform or Hypha host)
    • 5% breakdown
      • 15% of that 5% goes to our platform (OC)
      • ~85% of that 5% goes to our accountant
      • ~10% to us (very low)
    • very transparent platform. will show outflows of money. can be realname or anon.
    • international payments possible
  • meaghan: hypothetical on OC, once we get money and approve someone, we ask them to go over and fill out request to get money on OC. how do we know it’s that person?
  • pc: can treat open collective as authoritative place, then spreadsheet for complementary info
    • meaghan. outstanding list already exists in spreadsheet. don’t want to get them to re-ask.
    • meaghan. use an “identifier number” to connect? pc: email could work, esp if only one transaction/person (aka per email).
    • payton: visual demo? YES.
  • ben: demo
    • can create “anon account” and use it to send all paypal or bank payouts
  • payton: if ppl submit a request, can it just wait there indefinitely? yes.
  • meaghan: how soon are requests approved? bl: we could commit to no longer than 2 days. but could very well be sooner. (ben trying to batch for sanity)
  • pc: what’s the volume. payout as soon as we get, so volume varies with how much we’e getting in donations.
    • e.g. donation of $200. $40+$100+$60. all at once.
    • rarely huge volume.
    • do you collect physical addresses at moment? lawyer made us think more is better.
  • pc: can we set up demo collective/org for them to explore? bl: done
  • meaghan: can we keep using gofundme? yes, can do mass deposit into OC
    • can we have gofundme go directly into Hypha bank account?
    • bl: technically, could happen, but administratively would be very tough, so no.
    • pc: also double-fees from open collective and gofundme.
      • proposal: keep both open for a period, but start directing people to OC for donations. after the month transition, officially close gofundme, and do a mass deposit. we’ll waive import fees.
• E4W
  • pretty non-hierachical. some advisors
  • pc: any chance of scope expanding? e.g., running events, etc.
    • payton: high focus on serving and redistrition, so unlikely
    • if need new scope, then we would raise other money.
  • meaghan + payton are +1 to notes being public (first names)
  • payton: bank account is contantly zero’d out, so trying not to hold much funds.
    • pc: at least financially, would seem very easy to wind down project at any point

Questions

• What does your collective do? What is the scope of activities you expect?
• Who do you serve? associated organizations?
• Size of your group, what does membership look like?
• How much money are you expecting to flow through?
  • Balance: couple thousands dollars
    • Don’t want to spend money on professional fees to figure stuff out
    • Want money in community
• Reasons you want to use open collective?
• How is the donation and payment process working now? How do you hope it changes?
• Example of what an expense looks like?
• Who are we expecting to pay out to?
• Volume of transactions (dollar amt)?
• What is the decision-making structure?
• Risks that you see?
• Plans for the future? 6 months? 2 years?
• turnover?
  • payton: personally, might be first and last year working for them. core group.
  • recruiting of new ppl less certain.
  • meaghan would likely be the main contact person rn.
  • bank account person is in advisory role.

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