Doing a little information gathering and wondering if a committee can use its funds to pay a member or guest to teach a class?
Iād say āyesā to the spirit of your question and āhmmā¦not sureā to the actual implementation, where things like arms-length transaction, cronyism, mission oversight & potential for misuse/abuse come into play.
It already came up at the board/finance/chair/HA/PA meeting that one option would be to increase stipend allowances to cover honorarium costs. Stipends currently allow committees to do what they need to run their orgs like: purchase consumables; get new parts for maintenance of things; expand capabilities/functionality via new tool/new resource purchases; etc. I donāt see increasing this amount to allow committees to choose which classes will be eligible for honorarium as radically different in spirit, although classes/offerings would still need to be scheduled via Calendar/Event portal and be subject to HA scrutiny.
But as some of the folks that were generally opposed to this pointed out, it is very different in practice since committees would then suddenly be dealing face-to-face with individualsā feelings and their money.
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i like the idea of members bringing their own consumables for their own projects. as a business owner that pays for a storage unit and used to buy tools for that storage unit to work in, i would also have to buy my own consumables. the fact that there is an honor system on consumables seems pretty wild, especially if there are no persons to reel back the tape and study where things are not getting paid for. i just joined a few months ago and i still get asked to teach classes but i would need to take time out of making money on my own projects to teach classes. thats why i want to get paid to teach.
I understand your point/position, but you have indicated this on the other general threads on the topic. This thread is about whether a committee should use its funds to pay a teacherā¦is there something in your answer or that you have in mind regarding whether that is a good idea or not?
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Iāve long felt that this should be the case. As an example - when the traveling CNC/Aspire team held their conference at DMS they charged $300 a ticket for 30 people and sold out ($9k). DMS got none of the money although we did get 3 people who got to attend for free. Had DMS completely put on the conference, and even if they paid the speaker $2k and expenses ($2k) DMS would have netted $5k. So if a committee wanted to do the same they could certainly raise some money, but the guest speaker/artist would have to be vetted in some fashion. cheers!
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This is the kind of thinking we need to be doing. There are some very famous woodworker and woodturners who could put on a demo or a class and we can charge a high fee, pay the famous person a healthy sum and still net a good amount for the committee/DMS. And maybe even gain a few members in the meantimeā¦
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This is one where we pretty quickly get into a grey and potentially dangerous (to our nonprofit status) area. Paying a non-member to benefit the organization- probably ok. Functionally, this isnāt all that different from paying a contractor to run electricity or do plumbing.
Paying a member? Way easier to screw up. Iām not saying it isnāt possible, but Iād say a set of policies would need to be drafted, vetted by a lawyer familiar with nonprofit issues, and applied exactly as they are written.
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That might be a good idea. It will make each committee be a little more accountable for classes I guess. I do like the ideas posted. If Creative Arts has the most classes and have teacher pay capped after so many, maybe the art teachers can charge a premium to really show some good quality sessions. Same with Jewelry or Automotive. Iād pay an hours worth of wage to a professional for knowledge. If there are 10 people paying for an hours worth of wage, then more power to the teacher! Might be a good way to weed out bad classes too. If the class isnāt good, it wont be recommended by students.
And yet, I see the logic here.
Committees advocate for, then procure new tools requiring training. They are empowered to pave the way for new tool purchases, pending their ability to gain consensus agreement to purchase it, as well as a means to fund said tool purchase.
With that purchase comes an inherent obligation that they have not factored into their ātotal cost of ownershipā when buying the new shiny tool, the cost incurred to train users on it throughout the life of the tool.
Committee āAā gets sponsorship and funding to buy a complex or dangerous āthingamabobā.
āThingamabob is purchasedā
āAdditional cost liability is now incurred in the form of ārequired trainingā.
Based on the above logic flow, the Committee responsible for bringing the new āthingamabobā in-house should also be charged with incurring the ongoing ārun-rateā cost to train on it.
My .02 cents
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Agreed. I think if we take a snapshot of training required last year and training required now the graph would be suspiciously close to the honorarium inflations
Iām all for telling us how much honorarium funds are allotted out, or how many classes we as a Dept can have, to get honorariums.
I am just thinking at this time that requiring each teachers to attend the committee meetings to scheduled the flowing months classes bases on required classes, project classes in high demand, or new trial classes to see if there is a demand is a good idea. I plan for the Committee to be very involved in what ever is decided so the favoritism mention in the meeting last week is not an issue. Class reviews will also help with this.
I look for a crazy teacher scramble to other Departments so they can try to reach the the quantity of classes they need to teach since the volume will be cut in half.
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Chairs want to adjust that to something like a Google calendar with public editing privileges or even one attached in the area like Printmaking. Requiring all teachers attend a comittee meeting to get their honorarium will cut out a huge swath of the current teachers. Youāll also run into a problem where now people have to publicize who they are giving the match to
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I know that when I was a member of the American Association of Woodturners (AAW another non-profit) the guest presenters at the yearly symposium were paid. Not all of the overseas presenters may have been members. The remainder of the 50 some odd teachers were members of AAW, did 2 or 3 rotations of their class and got a small honorarium. No problem in either case.
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Historically speaking we have had a member sponsor an outside teacher for honorarium. Not making the case for either way but it has been done. Juts need to make sure the actual instructor gets a 1099 if the cross the $600 threshold.
Edit: The committee also made up the difference for $300 in the class Iām thinking of.
The question asked was ācan a committee use its funds to pay a member or non member to teach a class.ā The situation you are describing is not that. If the question was ācan DMS pay members and non members a $50 hororarium for teaching?ā I think the answer would pretty clearly be āyesā.
the reply was to your response questioning whether there are IRS non-profit status if presenters (both member and non-member) are being paid to do so.
As far as honorarium, itās always been stated on the main splash page and further down (the wanna teach? page) that even non-members can teach (hell I did it before I became a member) and get honorarium.
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Yes Nick, Iām aware. There is a difference between that policy and an individual committee giving an unspecified amount of money to a member.
GlassWorks has been lucky I think Most of our teachers have been attending the meetings.
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We really do need to get a lawyer that specializes in nonprofits and preferably creative nonprofits to come in and talk to the members. Not just the board of the officers but the members so we all have a better understanding what is within our rights to do as a nonprofit and what is it
I have been active in multiple nonprofit groups since I was 15 years old some of them small like A Dog Training Club to some of them very large like the sca and Mensa and this is the only group Iāve ever seen that is so scared and focused on what they can and cannot do is a non-profit. I can only guess. Some of this is because everybody can Google things and think they find out accurate information which is not always true. And some of it Maya Benson conditioning from the past by folks who were also unclear on what I nonprofit could and couldnāt do and found it a handy excuse the destroys things they didnāt like.
Iāve even had people told me that having a bake sale would not be alone. I wish somebody would look at all the nonprofit groups that have bake sales and such. I am going to also make this part it is extremely rare for the IRS to remove a nonprofits Scottās. When I find it I will find and Link the piece that WFAA did on this. They are nowhere near as quick to kill nonprofits ass some folks can decide. In fact what WFAA found out is it people that had convictions for embezzling from nonprofits, could get out of prison and start a nonprofit and get a get it approved
We need to go get more accurate facts than what we have. I know groups that are nonprofits that pay teachers. I donāt but these are groups that are a lot older and a lot more obvious to authorities then DMS is. I know that I do not have a full understanding of what nonprofits can and canāt do. I want more information we all should want more information. We should likely make a list of file are these ideas so they can be brought up and variations on them so that when we get a lawyer and we can talk to him.
I think the board might be actually looking for us a non-profit specialist lawyer but I know such things take time I would like to see them find someone that will talk to us and either a reasonable right all pro bono just to inform us even before we actually engage one.
maybeā¦
Flagging my post as off-topicā¦
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