Hi all,
Great discussion so far. I want to add a few things as I do not see them
mentioned in the email thread so far.
As a current Local Planning Committee (LPC) member for the C4L18 DC Conference,
here are some things that I would like to share.
--- Having a separate fiscal sponsor allows a more diverse group of C4L people
to propose and host a conference in their area. Previously, only those
affiliated with large higher ed institutions ('and' those who were in an
empowered position such as dean, AD, AUL etc., to persuade their library to
take up on the fiscal sponsorship responsibility) were able to propose and host
a conference. But with a fiscal sponsor, that limit will be lifted. My hope is
that with a fiscal sponsor already determined, more diverse and grassroots
groups of C4L members will be able to volunteer and participate in C4L
conference planning and hosting in terms of affiliation and location.
(Also note that it is entirely possible that someone or some group of people
without such affiliation still want to host a conference while no one or no
group with such affiliation want to host a conference in the same year. In the
current system, we get no conference. This is exactly what happened after last
year's conference until DLF stepped up for us for the 1-year contract, which
they initially did not want to do. If they didn't change their position, there
would have been no DC hosting proposal, period.)
--- As many of you know, conference planning is complicated, such as
negotiating hotel contracts, finding a reception venue, catering cost, etc.
These are definitely not our expertise and shouldn't be although LPC will
inevitably deal with a good deal of them. My experience so far working with DLF
(Bethany) and Concentra (Jen) has been terrific, and I believe our conference
tremendously benefit from their expertise in conference planning, budget
management, negotiating etc. Their expertise in logistics saves us money. If
our goal is to create the best conference experience (including conference
planning experience for LPC and other committee volunteers) and if we can
afford to pay a small fee for fiscal agency and professional conference
planning, then I say that's money well-spent and worthwhile investment for the
long-term sustainability of C4L and C4L conference.
--- Regarding the need to create C4L as a legal entity, that is NOT required to
enter a fiscal sponsorship agreement AFAIK. Note that this year, the current
LPC is ALREADY working with DLF as a fiscal sponsor for the 2018 DC conference.
Fiscal sponsor is there to make things easier in terms of fund transfer and
fiscal liability on behalf of the Code4Lib community. I highly doubt any org we
discussed as potential future sponsor would be remotely interested in taking
away our autonomy. The fiscal sponsor has no saying in programming or anything
else. Its involvement is limited to the conference logistics only, and all
decisions are mediated and finalized by the C4L LPC.
Personally I would be more worried about C4L autonomy if we start setting up
bylaws and the formal board and electing people to. I am not saying that that
is necessarily bad. But as a community, we have been operating successfully so
far based upon group consensus (from discussion + occasional heated arguments)
and I like it that way. Making C4L a legal entity with the board that formally
governs with bylaws is a far far greater change to C4L as it currently is than
getting a fiscal sponsor with a 3 or 5 year term limit for a fee in order to
get us more stability in annual conference logistics.
Cheers,
Bohyun
--
Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS
Associate Director, University of Maryland Baltimore
Health Sciences and Human Services Library: http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/
Vice President/President-Elect, Library & Information Technology Association:
http://www.lita.org
<http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/>
________________________________
From: Code for Libraries <[email protected]> on behalf of Kyle Banerjee
<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2017 3:25:04 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Fiscal Continuity IG report redux [silence has been
deafening]
On Jul 24, 2017 11:28, "Tod Olson" <[email protected]> wrote:
If we go the fiscal sponsor route, the fiscal sponsor would be able to
receive such payments, assuming the Journal is part of Code4Lib for these
purposes.
Of the things issues surrounding governance and finances, I wouldn't invest
much energy in journal royalties -- it's a simple issue and the distance
between best and worst case scenarios is narrow.
C4l's strength and weakness is the same exact thing -- things happen
because people do things. The domain name, systems, and everything we rely
on are controlled be the individuals and entities that stepped up --meaning
that management of these things is dispersed. I would think it would be
desirable to consolidate management of all core assets as part of the
process of finding a fiscal home.
Kyle
