next message in archive
next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects
Index of Subjects On Tue, 25 May 1999, Doug McCann wrote: > Thank you Mike for your comments. > > The VDN rates and description are meant to stimulate discussion about > our fees and to solve a couple of administrative issues. > > To rationalize the fees that we levy, it is important to identify the > various services that we offer. It is then possible to link costs. As > a not-for-profit organization the costs are aggregated to become a basic > fee. Costing is a very tricky thing. Different "plausible" models can give very different cost structures. For a business, you charge what the market will allow, and try to keep costs low enough so you end up with a profit. For a non-profit, you still can't more than people are willing to pay, and you try to balance costs and income. > Sustainability is the next issue. Through voluntarism, corporate and > personal generosity we can offer services to those who cannot afford the > basic fee. If donations are greater than the shortfall from those in > financial need, then the organisation will flourish. If not, we must > provide a mechanism to offset the shortfall. This could be a 'built-in > donation' or an implicit fee related to the value of voluntarism. The problem with coercing people into 'volunteering' is that you don't always get good skill levels or work products. Many organizations that rely on volunteers actually spend a very large part of their resources overseeing the work of volunteers. CCN needs to maintain professional levels of operation, and many of the tasks require some knowlege and skill. > Setup and maintenance could be deemed such a fee. Volunteers are > offering their time and expertise, that on the open market, would have a > value. By volunteering, they are making a donation to CCN. All >accounts on CCN require some level of administrative maintenance -- > notification of account renewal, file backups, etc. Banks, for example, > have various service fees related to the type of account opened -- > yearly fee for a credit card, etc. > > We could break this down to an administrative fee for basic services, an > administrative fee for specialized accounts. The number of fees we > create is only limited by imagination. Or we could just have one or two > as catch-alls. > > Some administration fees could be one-time fees. If members are > uncomfortable with a general levy, then we should be more specific, so > they can choose to accept or reject a fee/service. The result could be > that specific services and related cost would be shared among fewer > members, thus the basic fee for a service would be higher. It is > important, that the member know what they are paying for. This sounds like quite a lot of work to set up and administer. A simple fee structure means more volunteer effort can go to running the things that affect users directly -- how many volunteers like doing financial administration? > [...] > -- George White <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca> Halifax, Nova Scotia
next message in archive
next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects