Finance Sub Committee Remit

The Finance Sub-Committee (FSC) is a sub-committee of the Freegle Board.

The Board delegates authority for approving certain expenditure to this sub-committee, within clearly defined areas and up to certain limits. This allows routine expenditure to be approved more quickly, without a full poll of the Board, while ensuring that unusual financial activity is referred to the full Board, with whom ultimate financial responsibility rests.

Role

To approve expenditure within the levels of authority delegated by the Freegle Board.

Membership

• The FSC will comprise the Treasurer and 2 members of the Board who are not budget holders.
• The Board will at their first meeting following the AGM each year, determine members of the Sub-Committee until the next following AGM.
• The Board from amongst their members will fill casual membership vacancies that might occur. A casual vacancy would be created by a member resigning mid term or being unavailable for an extended time, meaning the sub-committee can’t function appropriately.

Working space/decision making process

• Meetings: A confidential group will be used to discuss and make decisions via messages and polls on that group as and when required. This was previously https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FreegleFSC/info and is now https://groups.io/g/FreegleFSC; email address finance@ilovefreegle.org
• One member of FSC will be agreed by the members to be responsible for manning the mailbox and setting up/closing polls.
• Level 2 Expenditure requests will be polled on by all four members of FSC - a simple majority and a 48 hour time limit will apply.
• Members will tell FSC if they are going to be unable to access the group for a period of time.
• The messages and poll results on the group will not be deleted and will be kept as a record of decisions. *Rejections of requested payments and any Finance Policy or procedural discussions will be reported to the Board.
• The Treasurer will normally be required to take part in all decisions.
• If there is deemed to be a conflict of interest for any member, that member must not be part of the meeting/decision relating to them.

Delegated Authority (DA) Levels on Freegle Budgets

• Level 1: DA direct to the Treasurer for known expenditure within the agreed budget - e.g. regular payments to individuals, insurance, expenditure against restricted donations etc. The FSC won't be involved with this DA level.
• Level 2: DA to FSC within agreed budgets and/or time periods with the approval for the spend coming from the budget holder - e.g. Media Director could request spend against their media budget, but not against the IT budget, and Platform Developer vice versa.
• Board to agree DA Levels as part of approving each annual budget, as prepared by the Finance Director or the Board if that role isn't filled.

Links

• This document was adopted by the Board at their meeting in July 2017.
• Document Approval Policy.
• Finance Policy
• Conflicts of Interest Procedure
• Glossary
• Finance Procedures