Bill- The problem is we can't charge more than some members use the exchange, and we can't plan for everything. We may still go to the membership and ask for support if need-be, but we can't have the cost of the exchange be too high...look at the other competitive exchanges of our size...all are doing something similar. Believe me, the board spent ALOT of time working on this...ALOT. :-) Reid On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Bil MacLeslie <bil@iphouse.net> wrote:
On 12/1/16 9:39 AM, Jason Hanke wrote:
Arin: $300
Accounting: $1800 (includes postage for billing) Hardware support: $15000
Two questions.
1 - How does $1800 / year cover the costs of actually DOING the accounting, e.g. creating new members & invoices, processing payments, calling on collections, etc. This number seems low to me. Additional thought, some entities will want to pay with a credit card, we should prepare for this and cover the costs of processing payments in the budget.
2 - Where is hardware refresh in the budget? I see a clipped sentence in your message ( This would cover hardware support and Arin fees and accounting expense with the remainder going) - maybe it was in there?
We have been lucky to secure donations of equipment, but what about the future? Your budget should include setting aside dollars for hardware expansion and refresh, and not just switches, but route servers too.
Additional thoughts, if new technologies emerge and a hardware vendor that has said technology doesn't feel like donating equipment, how would we proceed without a hardware budget? And... by accepting donations from hardware vendors, we are setting the precedent of "picking a winner", and could cause headache/heartache in the future.
I strongly suggest we use the port fees to pay for hardware refresh as well as hardware maintenance.
Bil
-- Bil K. MacLeslie | TGWGTD | ipHouse | www.ipHouse.com Office: 612-337-6337 | Direct: 612-337-6206 | Cell: 612-618-1218
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