Braincells (or Brainlets)

Let’s read it carefully and agree on the details.
Do we also want to list them carefully and let them have their own economy?
Can there be a Braincell without economy?
Morten

How do bottom-up initiatives get funded? How do you get money to do something without a budget process?

Answer: If you want something that needs funding, form a Braincell. That is, find others that want the same thing and are willing to pay for it with their own money. Bestbrains can foot the bill initially.

What is a Braincell?

A Braincell is a loosely coupled interest group of Bestbrainers who want to co-fund an initiative. Perfect for situations where we don’t really need everyone at Bestbrains involved.

We used to have a more traditional budget process and debate about things like how much Bestbrains should spend on what. Lots of spreadsheets, discussions, compromises, and not very effective. After a while we got fed up with the whole idea of a centralized budgeting process and abandoned it in favor of something more like beyond budgeting. We decided to just keep the fees as low as possible, give the office team and board full freedom to manage the bank account continuously without any up-front budgeting process. And as for additional projects and expenses: let people group up and spend their money on whatever they want, no need for consensus from all of Bestbrains. Saves a lot of time!

In some cases it does make sense for Bestbrains as a whole to fund an initiative, for example a redesign of our website. For smaller initiatives the office team or board can just go ahead and do it. For larger initiatives we may go for a consensus decision at our next unconference.

But when in doubt (or if in a hurry), go for opt-in and just form a Braincell. Because it’s just so much easier. We may of course decide later this cost should be Bestbrains-global, and in that case simply close the Braincell.

Sample Braincells

(Really Crisplets, since the examples are from Crisp)

• Supporting Doctors Without Borders. In late 2014 the world was suffering a major Ebola crisis, and some from Crisp wanted to support Doctors Without Borders in their heroic battle against the pandemic. Instead of trying to drive consensus for a decision on this, one person formed a Crisplet (one email was all it took: “Let’s support Doctors Without Borders, who’s in?”). 9 people joined and pooled together a donation of EUR 9,000. Crisp paid the donation, and then invoiced each participant individually. Pooling the donation into a single large payment made it easier to deal with admin overhead and tax issues.
• Missing People Crisplet: Similar to the above, this Crisplet provides continuous support to Missing People. People can join and leave as they like.
• Hack summit: Most of us love hack summit, but again we don’t want to force it upon everyone, so by creating a Crisplet we make sure the costs only affect those who are involved.

Benefits of forming a Braincell

The main benefit to forming a Braincell is that we reduce the need for centralized decision making, and maximize people’s economic freedom.

But why Braincells at all? Can’t people just “huddle up and do it”? True, but the Braincell model offer some advantages:

• Transparency – all Braincells are listed (at least the long-lived ones)
• Engagement – it is easier to get involved if you know what’s going on
• Established form of collaboration – the initiator and participants of a Braincell know what it means.
• Economies of scale – each Braincell has a Braincell Account that is administered by the office team.
• Liquidity – a Braincell can spend money that it doesn’t have (yet). For example, with our donation to Doctors Without Borders, Crisp paid the donation and then invoiced each participant. This works because Bestbrains has a cash buffer (although limited), and because we trust that each participant will pay their part when the time comes.
• Responsibility – Braincell Accounts only appear when there are actual individuals who are prepared to pay. This reduces the risk that Bestbrains as a whole spends money on stuff that isn’t important, or that very few people care about.

What is required of a Braincell

• A wiki page describing the purpose of the Braincell, how collaboration is done and who has joined
• A link from the list of Braincells to the wiki page describing the Braincell
• All Braincells are open for any Bestbrainer to join.
• Every new Braincell is announced via an OBS-email.

Sometimes Braincells don’t have to pay

Braincells are expected to run at a loss (they are basically cost centers), so each Braincell Account can be seen as a short-term loan from Bestbrains to a group of participants. Each participant should expect to receive an invoice from Bestbrains at some point, to cover their part of the cost.

However, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes Bestbrains will waive the debt. For example because:

• The Braincell ended up spending money that clearly was to the benefit of Bestbrains as a whole, so Bestbrains will foot the bill.
• The costs were so low that it’s not worth the administrative hassle of invoicing all participants.

The second case is very important, because it basically gives the office team permission to avoid a bunch of micromanagement and administrative overhead. If 6 people get together to form a Braincell and their costs end up being just SEK 4820 to buy a license for a tool, then we probably won’t bother invoicing everyone. Think of it as our “yeah whatever” budget.

By waiving the debt, Bestbrains can avoid unnecessary administration of costs that are clearly in the common interest, or clearly too small to bother with.

All in all we are really happy with the Braincell model, because it make it easy for people to collaborate on stuff without a bunch of upfront budgeting or permission-seeking.