The finance committee is made up of the Treasurer of the Board of Directors and the three finance coordinators: the Cash Flow and Personnel Finance Coordinator (Finance 1), the Accounting and General Ledger Coordinator (Finance 2), and the Business and Governance Coordinator. All other employees, worker-owners and associates alike, are welcome to be members of the committee as well.

Each year, we create a business plan that includes a time line of what our committee intends to accomplish each month during the year. So at committee meetings, we work on the goals that have been outlined for the month. Sometimes we work on proposals that need to be taken to membership to be voted upon. Sometimes we work on procedural issues that need to be dealt with during day to day operations. And sometimes we talk about the long term goals of the business and what we need to do to get there.

One example of a proposal that the committee has worked on was to change the amount of the member fee that each member pays into the business. The committee researched how other cooperatives decide the amount of their member fees. We looked at how different member fee amounts would affect the business and how they would affect the likelihood of associates becoming members. And we decided on a couple of scenarios to bring to membership to choose from.

One of the day to day operations we've talked about was reminding workers how to type in paid-ins and paid-outs so that they make sense to the Accounting and General Ledger Coordinator who has to compile them.

Long term goals that we discuss include expansions, capital expenditures, creating new product categories, etc. We also talk about the balance sheet and how analyzing that can help us decide what is financially possible to accomplish in certain time frames. And we talk about how to educate the rest of membership about the financial feasibility of different scenarios so that they can make more informed decisions when we are planning projects.