Reports

• Jamie: infrastructure

• Mallory: International work, Policy wok.

• Enrique: Laneta

• Hilary: finance

I joined May First in April 2011 as an administrative coordinator/member associate. My early tasks have focused on implementing new accounting procedures and protocols, conducting all the financial bookkeeping/record keeping to more accurately track May First's finances, and helping to create and implement a new membership payment policy.

The new accounting system has been put in place. We are using GnuCash, an open source operating platform. While the system has a few of functional limitations, it has been a useful program for tracking basic revenue and expenses. I have been able to reconcile Gnucash with our main bank account at Citibank and our online merchant Paypal. I believe our records now represent a comprehensive and accurate picture of May First's finances for the year 2011 and will serve as a basis for building and maintaining more accurate budgets and projections moving into the future.

The system is limited in running reports, such as aging receivables and other member payment tracking information. There is a need for more hands-on data entry to make the software truly functional in that respect. This is currently in process. But I am running GnuCash alongside the previous database program, so all the relevant information is available.

The new membership payment policy has been the other major undertaking. We set a new deadline for member dues payments at 90 days. Jamie has created an alert system to track the deadlines and he created a payment plan option so that groups can spread out the payments. We are also offering dues reductions or scholarships for groups unable to pay. The new policy went into effect August 22nd. We are just now starting to reach the first deadlines. I have been doing a lot of targeted outreach to groups with delinquent payment records to settle their past due amounts. We've been able to identify a number of defunct members. Others have been responding to the notices with payments; some with criticism. I think as a first run we are going to discover a variety of problems, bugs, issues and opportunities to refine the process - but there is a lot of potential to alter our language, the alerts, etc. The main goal is to better connect with members, open new lines of communication which will help us better serve the membership, and ensure greater accountability of members to the shared infrastructure.

• Ross: support and occupy

• Alfredo: USSF, POC techies of training, Occupy