User:CraftyElk/board todo

Now that we have money and need to pay people, what do we need to do?

1. What do we expect them to do?
   1. They’re not volunteer sysadmins anymore, there is a formal relationship between Weird Gloop and them.
   2. Are they full-time employees, expected to maintain and develop the wiki full-time and be on-call for emergencies?
   3. Or are they more akin to contractors, contracted to maintain infrastructure, with little to no restrictions on the how, why, and when?
   4. How much control does the board exercise over them? Presumably they report to the board, but less like an employee reports to their manager and more like a CEO roports to their board
   5. How much do we pay them? $80k/sysadmin is pretty typical if not a bit low for a mid-level sysadmin, senior ones command 100k+. We need to do salary negotiations. Remember to add on 7.5% for FICA, FUTA/SUTA (minimal), and others?
2. How do we pay them?
   1. Option 1: legal incorporation in the US. Fully-owned Delaware C subsidiary by Weird Gloop UK
      1. Incorporate a Delaware C?, wholly owned by Weird Gloop
      2. Obtain an EIN from IRS
      3. Open bank accounts (BoA, Chase, doesn’t really matter)
      4. Set up payroll software (I recommend Square Payroll)
      5. Sign employment/contractor agreements with our 2 FTEs
      6. Consideration: can/should we apply for 501c3 status? Benefit of no taxation and ability to receive from DAFs, downside of much more paperwork and legal headaches
      7. Legal consequences: idk what’s the accounting magic, maybe we recognise all profits in the UK, maybe in the US, maybe both (please no)? Have to ask tax lawyers
   2. Option 2: admins are independent alien contractors
      1. Don’t set up a US presence at all
      2. Just send them the money, up to them to file their own taxes
      3. Easy for us, not so much for them
   3. Option 3: PEO/EOR
      1. Everything is taken care of automatically
      2. Very expensive - think 500/month/employee
      3. Can be cheaper, have to look around
3. Administration of Weird Gloop
   1. How much of an executive role does the board play? We need an executive director who will operate payroll, recruit tax and legal professionals, operate board meetings, maintain the budget, manage our employees, create the other reports mentioned, etc
   2. Periodic financial reports
      1. Publish monthly expense reports
      2. Hire an accounting firm to prepare quartely/annual statements
      3. Clarify tax situation if we incorporate in the US
4. Finances
   1. We need to build up an operating reserve
      1. Good rule of thumb is to build up roughly 6 months of cash outflows
      2. Do we temporarily increase ad rates? How long should we do so vs tradeoff for healthy finances?
   2. Look into something like Open Collective for full transparency
   3. Clarify situation regarding Jagex payment amounts
   4. Currently projected expenses:
      1. Infrastructure: ~40k
      2. Payroll: ~150-200k
      3. Attorneys: ~2-10k depending on complexity, one-time only
      4. CPA: ~2-5k depending on level of assurance and complexity
      5. Professional services might cause much more than I’m used to due to international borders complicating things
   5. Audit, review, or compilation: audits don’t make sense for a barely 200k organisation, a compliation/review is sufficient as long as we prepare our own spending reports. Prepared together with taxes