I personally think our community events are better organized without a formal structure and the current system of fund management is good enough for the time being. If we need to build a formal organization, we must do so with a higher cause, NOT just to manage the surplus fund. Once we have the Jagannath temple, I would expect more formal and informal interaction, satsangs etc which may rekindle the spirit of selfless service and helping out community events always a grand success no matter which goshthi takes the lead.
This is high time to think big, work hard and build a strong Oriya community with less strings attached.

Its a good idea to have a community or a group based fund as it will provides better flexibility and makes sure we all work together as one community.

The only challenge is then disbursements.. I do not like the idea of individuals making decesion on it..but again this should be community based at the same time making sure we do not neglect events that do not have a mass appeal but gives us the required visibility to educate the locals.. This will help in the long run if at all we need their support or they need our support for larger causes..

The two Pujas , Ratha Jatra and New Year celebration should be managed through a central fund without forced allocation of surpluses from one event to the exactly similar event next time.

Since the existing surplus is sufficient to cover some minimal deficit created in some events, there should be no limitations or penalties levied on organizers of any event that runs into a deficit. I donot think anyone has any malicious intent to create a deficit.

The people that are holding on to the surpluses should deposit the funds into the common pool to make the pool even larger.
No one person or group should have control over that money-It goes to central fund.

Having a common fund will undoubtedly bring the Bay area Oriya community closer.

Having the Float as a community event, though sounds good, lacks broad based support and should be managed by people who want to run it.

The term GOSTHI should be eliminated from our vocabulary. It sounds "ghost-like" and is a scary word !!

No fund management will work since we're fighting over just $1900. My take is just give this money to Jagannath Sthapana group since we're still short of the target as per the last report and some of our kids are pitching in !!!

Sapan,

Thanks for organizing the poll. The idea of a central fund managed by some rules and definitions (of community events) may seem trivial task. But coming up with these rules and definitions which make everyone happy over long term is not easy. The current system has some kinks, but it mostly works. What we need is some minor tweaks, like Anup Nayak's suggestion.

Events like New Year's Party and Picnics should not be grouped with other Community Events like
Ganesh Puja, Saraswati Puja, Ratha Yatra, and the Float. They should be financed fully by the
participants and the deficit should not be
be covered from the central community fund.

I do not see any issue in the current way of managing the fund. The group(s) who generate the additional fund from an event should have the authority to guide how the surplus can be dissaminated.

Thanks
Shehs

I like the community fund idea. However the need for excess money for a given event neds small justication and be with in $300.00. There should be separate money allocated for FLOAT as well as CALNET.

Prasanna Samantaray.

Having an organisation with by-law is a great idea. But who will volunteer to execute the events. Process is good but freedom is better, as long as the members abide by the interest of the community. In an imperfect world like ours we need process, but does any body have any statistical data regarding what is the critical mass, population wise or fund wise so that a governing body is inevitable to manage it.

I am starting to think that our motivation behind this voting is, managing the central fund and who gets to spend it?

One solution is to just through away the problem itself. What that means is we are establishing a temple for lord Jagannath, reportedly they are running short of fund, just empty to those folks, with proper accountability of course. I am sure not many people will object to this. If there is objection do another electronic voting as to how much or if at all people think taht way. That will solve the problem for few years, can I say 10 years? How long did it take to accummulate so much fund