Dear Wim, dear members of the IC,
As the surplus policy was developed during my time as secretary and came into action during my time as vice president, I would like to give some feedback based on my understanding of your proposal.
A few annotations on the surplus policy first: As a charity organization, we should not accumulate surpluses. As you mentioned, the surplus policy was installed as a tool that should allow the IG PME to spend any surplus (from conferences but also eventually other sources of income) responsibly and in a regulated manner. You find it here http://members.igpme.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Proposal-Surplus-Policy-201606.pdf
The surplus policy regulates the following procedure:
* The members should be informed at each AGM about a “spending plan” that should project the amount of
money expected to be parcelled out in the following years (for example, the following 3 years)
* The IC should then issue a call for special projects open for proposals from (groups of) IG PME members
* In addition, the IC is allowed to initiate proposals as well.
* The IC evaluates all proposals against the criteria specified
* Positively evaluated proposals with <500 Euros can be decided on by the officers, <5000 Euros by the IC, and proposals >5000 Euros need approval by the AGM
I understand your proposal to be one that falls under this policy, to be precise, as a proposal initiated by the IC >5000 Euros. From my perspective, the proposal to donate a share of the IG PME surplus of 15.000 Euros to the Skemp fund fits well into the specified lines of action of the surplus policy and is also suited to foster the aims of IG PME. I personally like the idea.
However, I tried to find information on the active spending plan in line with the surplus policy. My research in the AGM minutes in 2017 was successful as I found a spending plan there, reaching up to 2019, the Minutes from 2018 were not accessible on the webpage. All the following minutes are not informative regarding a spending plan, yet they show some indications of money spent according to the surplus policy. I apologize if I missed something, but I fear the spending plan regulating the upper boundary of what might be spent under the surplus policy per year may have been lost out of sight.
However, when developing the policy, it was a major topic of debate that the spending plans should be openly communicated and also – as part of the financial report – subjected to AGM approval each year so that a) members are informed about how we responsibly try to reduce the surplus, and b) members have a chance of planning for future proposals, as it might take some time to plan and prepare for a proposal by the IG PME members.
I would appreciate it if you could briefly summarize how surpluses were reduced by the tool of the surplus policy in the last years. It would be necessary, from my understanding of the policy, to suggest a spending plan for the current year and upcoming years based on the given financial state. Your proposal would then be treated as an IC-initiated proposal within the spending plan that needs AGM approval in order to come into effect because of its size of > 5.000 Euro.
I hope this comment helps to further your proposal according to the IG PME policies – thank you very much for your valuable work as members of the IC
Anke (Lindmeier)
