We're a lean, keen, scrappy machine of a creative co-op shop. Over the years we've figured out loads of money-related things and have documented our decisions into this fine wiki page.
- We always pay cooperators first, including their expenses.
- Then we pay our bills because keeping our lights on is only slightly less important than keeping our cooperators lights on.
- Once our cooperators and bills are taken care of, we pay out member expenses. Expenses are always paid before day rates
- Then we pay project work.
- Finally, we pay out internal work. In-person meetings take precedence over those that happen online
- If our account balance is under £5000, we pay for the bank account, which is dumb. We use this as our low-limit. Over 5K, we start paying out internal work so long as that won't take us under £5k and we can pay everyone at the same time (e.g. "all members for internal work in September")
From the day rate we charge clients, we take off a 25% co-op 'pot' for internal costs and co-ordination:
- 2 in person meetups a year (in person — travel expenses + paid days at co-op rate)
- Monthly co-op days (online — paid days at co-op rate)
- General co-op work (in person and online – paid days at co-op rate)
- Relevant stuff members go to (in person — travel expenses + paid days at co-op rate)
- We keep (membership fee x number of members) in the Co-op account so that it's never at zero
- Pay people for stuff they would have invoiced for at the time if money had been available (daily rate at conference for example)
- Allocate funds to upcoming items on the financial horizon
- 51% goes into a fund, the members decide what this fund supports
- Divide remaining 49% equally and share out
Sometimes we have stuff to do that isn't attached to client projects. For example, redesigning the We Are Open Co-op's website or a member attending a networking event. We believe that work should be paid, so to request a budget, members bring a proposal to our weekly meeting. We use consent-based decision making.
When we work with people who are neither members of our co-op, nor interns, we work out their day rate as follows.
This is worked out as 50-60% of the member day rate. So, for example, if we charged a client a day rate of £625, this would leave a member day rate of £500 after the 'pot' has been taken off.
50-60% of £500 means that the minimum cooperator rate is £250-£300. We work 7-hour days, so this is a minimum hourly rate of between £35.71 and £42.86.
Our admin rate is 50-60% of the cooperator rate. This works out at a range of £125-£180. Again, we work work 7-hour days, so this is a minimum hourly rate of between £17.86 and £25.71.