# 2019-06-25 Toronto Workers Co-op: Contracts & Money

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Time: Tue, Jun 25 @ 3-4:30pm ET
Location: https://meet.jit.si/hyphacoop
Attending:
- patcon
- yurko
- elon
- ben
- dc

Notetaker:
- dc

[TOC]

## Before Meeting

- Go through existing discussions
- From [last All-Hands](https://github.com/hyphacoop/organizing/pull/56/files)
>- Aether project checkin
- research previous examples of work arrangements
- external hourly rate? or other ways
- patcon constant struggle by hourly rate
- dawn prefers by hour
- yurko in the end it's by hour anyways (hours are a commodity)
- client perspective vs. project team perspective vs. cooperative perspective

>- aether
- first call: what is aether. hellos.
- second call: business. engagement. #todo convo about contracts
- scope of work (in proposal hackmd)
- july call
- logisitics. schedules.
- dcwalk: wanting to collect examples of pricing/contract before 2nd meeting.
- Should have meeting about this before 2nd aether meeting
- Read _Sales and Service_ and _Neighbour Pricing Guidelines_ from [Business Plan](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U8C1XZcDpu1r4ciecbKEZ6vOL41nTinfqPCbZDhkAWc/edit?ts=5ceac2f3#heading=h.gtw17hki1zup)

- Submit examples of pricing/contract to [Loomio: Contracts & Money](https://loomio.hypha.coop/d/rF1n9tKz/contracts-page_with_curl-money-moneybag-)
- [Loomio: Building rubric for evaluating opportunities and leads](https://loomio.hypha.coop/d/kpo0C7am/building-rubric-for-evaluating-opportunities-and-leads)
- Think about questions listed in the Agenda

## Agenda

- Categories of work
- Terminologies such a
- billable vs. non-billable
- generative vs. regenerative
- regenerative = donated time?
- subcontracted
- Expectations
- How many hours do you expect to spend per week on Hypha?
- How regularly do you expect to work with Hypha?
- How much do you want to be paid per month a year from now?
- Distribute revenues internally
- Communicate that in our business plan
- Bill clients externally
- Communicate that in our business contracts
- Things need to provide to Aether on Thursday
- Are we going ahead with this engagement?
- Term of commitment
- Expectations of work and compensation
- Contract dates
- Send contracts for review
- Sign contracts (how many days for review?)
- Document templates we need (a little out of scope but putting here for now)
- Proposal to Hypha (integrated with rubric?)
- Proposal to Client
- Contract to Client
- Invoice to Client

## Summary

- 3-4 months initial commitment
- internal: prepared to commit 15 mo.
- may want to re-open conversations about below-market rate after initial phase
- Questions for meeting:
- burak has models of contract? (dc)
- jurisdiction? (dc)
- agile practices? (patcon)
- Contract dates
- Send contracts for review
- `July 14` review contract
- dc: I think it would be good to pad this. Before dweb seems hectic
- Sign contracts (how many days for review?)
- `July 26` sign contract
- `July 31` Logisics meeting (aka meeting 3 of 3)

## Notes

- dc: flagging new terms (e.g. regenerative), maybe we flag in parenthesese, but don't start with that as our term if we aren't using it (seems like just Ben)
- ben: billable vs non-billable? do we all agree
- patcon: can it go on the client bill without them taking issue? If yes, then billable.
- dc: many are ruthless with making sure all billable is billed (e.g., mark it for accts)
- dc: reflecting questions: we use ~hours~ to understand our work, but we may represent that differently to clients
- ben: when does sales work become project management, and thus billable?
- dc: regeneration is a critical part of the business
- dc: point of signing a contract is a defining moment, before that it's non-billable [name=patcon] +1
- ben: lets members set rate, and takes a cut of that.
- higher cut for non-members. incentivized membershiphip.
- patcon: personal billable hours
- patcon: do we will to ourselves?
- clarity: non-billable != unpaid
- dc: very resistent to calling ourselves clients
- ben: treating internal teams as customers can create friction. but makes API clear.
- dc: not resistent to being attentive to clients, but it's the conventional "client" language that concerns. we don't _have_ to, so why use it?
- ben: (park) figure out productive interface between WG and larger membership
- dc: there are so many strategies to do that (like co-budgetting in a planning call, which I've done before)... that don't rely on a client-service premise

(Working) Definitions:

- "Billable work" (i.e., generative work): All work attached to client projects (and ideally accounted for)
- "Non-billable work" (i.e., regenerative work): Work not attached to client projects (this could include internal projects)
- "Subcontracted" : any work that we hire an outside individual (contractor) for (this could be both billable and non-billable work)

- Expectations Check-in:

1. How many hours do you expect to spend per week on Hypha? (in one year?)
pat 20-30h/week (want to treat this as a full-time. 30h is what feels like modern fulltime in my mind.)

dc 0-15h/week (I'll still be PhDing)

elon 0-15 (depending on workload and projects)

yurko 0-10 (dependig on projects etc)

ben: 30/week (can be more if not stressful and meet my financial goals)

BEN summary: pat and ben seem to want this to be a 50% job for them, yurko/dc have clear other commitments and 10-15 h being consistent, elon wants 0-15 h and I would like to hear more decision making process

2. How regularly do you expect to work with Hypha?
pat: want to start picking up leads and pushing forward. want to get to place of constant focus. want to get permission to bring projects in, and find flow for that, finding collaborators.

dc semi-regularly, but perhaps less touching active client projects for next 0-2years

elon regularly when there work to be done

yurko a needed depending on projects

ben: regularly, remotely most of the year, but hopefully have months work with people physically each year

ELON summary: Ben is fine working regularly, Yurko and Elon depending on the project, Dawn semi-regularly and Pat to find collaborators and bring in projects.

3. How much do you want to be paid a year from now?
- Per centage of income as hypha?
- Amount to live on a year?

pat free-$100. comfort with lifestyle. might scale as that changes and i get back up to basline, but still minimal. cost of living will be low, but don't want to work very few hours, bc that's hard for anyone to rely on. Was told $100 minimum for traditional corp clients with previous devops work. Did $60 for lots of flex, and knew i was a steal. would love to not think too much about it, but want to make it.

dc this seems impossible to answer -- depends on projects? I would anticipate us being able to pay for non billable work; and with a floor salary of $20/h for all work. I feel comfortable with us all earning the same amt or up to an agreed upon ratio. My typical range for PM, facilitation, etc... client work has been $25-40/h in 2013-2017 dollars, so imagining some inflation on that. (So in 2019-2021 dollars... $40-60/h?)
- "we don't do unpaid work"
- we don't hide work from one another

elon 20-100

yurko Still trying to figure out "what im worth", been doin work for about 80-120 depending on task. Flexible.

ben: CAD 80-100/h for regular clients, 40-50/h for neighbours, willing to do free work for aligned ecosystem projects (internal or external) that we all agree on is important, think I should be paid differently according to performance in specific domain and not by the type of work (e.g. I am a terrible designer but I want to learn so I get paid CAD 20/h in that work until I am more productive at it)

PAT summary: some ok doing pro bono #terminology. ben interested to vary rate based on type of work. floor salary of $20/h suggested. dc ok with same rate or max pay ratio. range $20-$120/h. ppl will ito work for less at first. dc specifically wants unbillable to be paid.

- patcon: emotional labour? soft personal convos where org benefits.
- ben: so long as we're consistency.
- #action fix clockify hours with ben
- dc: trust ppl to know
- #action start loomio thread for sync'ing hour thinks.
- sounds like HR. HR is "support the management" -- Matt, Fourth Pig.
- build confidence with one another.
- patocn: clarity: thread should not be policing, but advice and headsup.

- thoughts on Qs
- patcon: some resistence to thinking too much money,
- dc: how much do you need to be comfortable? that's very different than hourly rate.
- i need x% living expenses convered
- my cost of living is xxx

4. What % of your income do you expect Hypha to provide?

pat would love for 100% (this reflects my interest in bringing personal leads under this banner)

dc 10-25%

elon 50-60%

yurko 0-20%

ben: 50% (also would love for 100%)

DAWN summary: We have a portion of members who expect for Hypha to be supplemental, with core members seeing it as at a minimum offering 50% and ideally 100% of income.

- patcon: clarification, my 100% feels like it hinges on permissions to bring efforts under unbrella. don't need someone else wot supply me.

5. What amount of $ do you feel comfortable living off of in 2019-2021? (independent of winning a lottery) (aka "gross" but not including capital gains or other income you don't want to count)

pat: open to subsistence in toronto for a short time. but would like to get to modest minimal lifestyle, so no pressure to be elsewhere or move. $20,000 if vanlife. $50,000 if renting.

dc: $35,000 - 60,000/y (depends on how close it aligns with things I care about) if I pursue post docs, academic trajectory, I'm anticipating in the 60,000s ramping up over years to $100,000 if I'm tenure track

elon 10-15k

yurko ~60-90k

ben: 2019: CAD 40000, 2020-21: CAD 80000/y

YURKO summary: Large range for the yearly income from 10,000 to 100,000. Elon 10-15k, Pat 20-50k, Dawn 35 up to 100k in future, Ben 40k ramping u to 80k yurko 60k to 90k.

- #action research: what do others doing nonprofit/coop tech work earn in toronto?
- #future #ask do we have specific concerns about what might be stressful in the future?
- #future: BUSINESS PLAN
- viability (salary and income expectations)
- "important that we work on some projects together to build identifiy, but also that folks be able to bring work in"
- patcon: not sure if the project partner is open to agile, which feels like a risk. what if he is assuming greatly more deliverability than we can offer -- how to we reattach that to capacity, or even imagine it gets reattached to reality
- #action sketch out a couple ways for doing project management

- Distribute revenues internally
- Decoupled from external billing (e.g. non-billable is paid)
- Proposal: Take
- Flat percentage cut off hours (e.g. 10-15% of invoice, or hours)

- Bill clients externally
- Proposal A - Contract for rough hourly rate + monthly cap of salary; define X period to revisit and ensure working; define reporting req'ts
- I've (dc) shared an example of this in gdrive
- patcon: what about demo? dc: can put it in deliverables.
- Proposal B - Contract for agreed upon "deliverables" and date to be done by, with invoicing schedule
- Could look at the Salesforce + https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/design examples
- Proposal C - Plan to ramp up to agile processes. "assembled team has ability to deliver X effort points per week at $xxx" (patcon)

- A, C seem most realistic; B difficult in current
- Voted: all in favour in proposing A, C

- Things to know for contract:
- Burak has models?
- Jurisdiction applicable in?

- Things need to provide to Aether on Thursday
- Are we going ahead with this engagement?
- Good first project
- Things got surfaced late in leads process
- Term of commitment
- Internal window:
- Potential window: 15 months going well
- Agreed: Proposal 3-4 months initial contract.
- quorum among project team
- patcon: 1 month escape clause suggested
- Expectations of work and compensation
- ben: I am happy collecting $30 of 40 (25% cut) for this work, but open to less
- yurko: I am happy collecting $30 of 40 for this work, but open to less
- patcon: I am happy collecting $30 of $40 for this work, but open to less (as long as convos about "less" are transparent, as this is a for-profit org with a tension to offer less)
- elon: I am happy collecting $30 of $40
- dc: I think you should look at this as a "cut" for this contract only, 25% MAX cut feels where I want you all at, recall from business planning... 10-15% for "employee deductions" and administration
- Contract dates
- Send contracts for review
- `July 14` review contract
- dc: I think it would be good to pad this. Before dweb seems hectic
- Sign contracts (how many days for review?)
- `July 26` sign contract
- `July 31` Logisics meeting (aka meeting 3 of 3)
- patcon: #research project kickoff
- 3 words
- yurko: i need laptop
- ben: reasonably productive, lunch
- patcon: it feels good
- elon: it seems ok

## Follow Up

### Actionable Items

- [ ] ...

### Upcoming Discussions

- ...

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