Expense Policy

How to get your expenses reimbursed? What expenses are eligibles? What's the decision making process?

This is a living document. As the movement grows, we need to regularly adapt our policies to make sure that we use the money that we have where it is most needed, while staying true to our values of transparency, inclusiveness and actively mitigating for power.

TLDR

If you have an expense for less than 50 euros for art supplies, printing (stickers, posters, flyers, …) or public transport from/to an XR meeting, you can simply submit it on https://finance.extinctionrebellion.be and you will be reimbursed. Make sure you add as a comment for which XR working group or action this expense is relating to. Make sure you also follow the guidelines (favor sustainable products, local economy, second hand, …).

• For expenses between 50 and 250 euros, please check with one of the finance monitors (see below)

• For expenses between 250 and 500 euros, please check with at least two of the finance monitors

• For expenses above 500 euros, please check with at least 3 of the finance monitors

Board of Finance Monitors

From January 2020 till June 2020. Their role is to approve expenses. Feel free to reach out to them if you have questions about an expense that you'd like to make for the movement. They are elected for 6 months. Please vote for next board here.

• Majo (She/Her, Ghent, [e-mail])

• Lino (He/His, Brussels, [e-mail])

• Nancy (She/Her, Tournai, [e-mail])

• Mees (They/Them, Leuven, [e-mail])

(2 more waiting for confirmation)

Special expenses

Training support

The movement will be stronger if dedicated rebels have the opportunity to follow various types of training related to NVDA (Non Violent Direct Action), Social Change, People Assemblies, Facilitation, etc.

We will be supporting every request from any rebels to cover 50% (or 75% for low income) of the cost up to 250 euros per year.

Conditions:

• Max 250 euros per year per rebel

• Rebel must have followed the XR onboarding training and been active in a working group for the past 3 months

• Rebel must report on their training by doing one of the following:

  • Do a meetup / presentation to share experience

  • Do a short video or blog post on social media that we can reshare

• One finance monitor to approve + one other person of the same working group (if different)

Legal support

We have created a dedicated collective for Legal Support: https://opencollective.com/XR-Belgium-Legal

Please submit your legal costs related expenses to that collective. We have seeded this collective with 500 euros. One of the first decisions of the elected finance monitors would be to agree on increasing our contribution to that circle.

FAQ

(please feel free to add questions here)

What is a finance monitor?

A finance monitor is a rebel that we collectively trust to approve expenses on behalf of the movement. They are elected through an election without candidates so that we can surface in a fair way the different rebels across the country that other rebels trust.

We are electing 10 of them and we will keep a good gender, age and regional balance so that you all have multiple ones you can reach out to. They can stay for a maximum of 6 months in that position to enforce a rotation (and actively mitigate for power). If you haven’t elected a trusted rebel yet, you can do so here https://forms.gle/tJySx2kPNamTMGgb7 — any time we need to elect a new rebel, we will look at all the votes of the past 6 months.

Can we rent a room?

As always, try first to get a room for free but if really needed, you can rent a place to meet for your XR local or working group if you are at least 20 people (share the link to the facebook event when you submit the expense).

Can we get compensation as a volunteer?

If you need to spend a full day for XR (e.g. as a trainer, facilitator or organizer), you can claim a volunteer compensation for maximum 34.71 euros per day and max 1.388,40 euros per year (across all the volunteer work that you do for any organization). Please use the template on https://opencollective.com/XR-Belgium/expenses/new to claim such compensation.

Make sure that the coordinator of your circle/working group and at least one finance monitor are signing off.

Philosophy

We need to regularly adapt our policies as more money come in and more rebels join the movement. But a few principles will remain.

We need to spend the money asap

We are not a bank. Money is like blood. It needs to circulate in the organism otherwise it creates blood clots and that can be fatal. We need to develop the muscle of raising money and spending it where needed as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

We need to decentralize as much as possible

Much easier to manage smaller amounts of money and to take decisions locally, closer to where the money is needed. That’s why we invite all local groups to create their own collective to start managing their own fundraising and expenses. We are here to offer support to help them get their own Finance Working Group up and running. In the meantime, they are free to use the national collective (https://finance.extinctionrebellion.be)

Trust by default

Unless proven otherwise, we trust you. Don’t break our trust.

Transparency

If everything we do is transparent, the movement will be able to self regulate itself. People won’t abuse the system and many eyes will help keep us accountable. That’s why all transactions in and out are publicly recorded on https://finance.extinctionrebellion.be

We are inclusive

We do our best to ensure that all rebels can participate and contribute to the movement and to the different activities that we organize. Money should never be a reason for someone not to join the rebellion.