I support a common fund for the whole community. We should the spend extra money generated from the Pujas for the Float and other operating expenses (audio equipment, web site etc) However, spending the surplus $ in the New Year party is a bad idea (free wine with the money from Ganesh Puja - how ridiculous!)

The common fund is a good idea.
But it needs to be fair:
It should be utilized to cover the deficit incurred by any Gosthi without any restrictions, just as it collects all surplus money without any restrictions.

A central fund can be effective with some simple guidelines. We may need to think about if we want to restrict the coverage of deficit to some limit (10 or 15% of the total expense of the event).

A central fund will be better and will bring community together ... we just have to set-up simple rules -- which was lacking today.

Unless we have semi formal organization with by laws or strict guidelines it will be very difficult to manage the funds.

I support the idea for a central fund:-
This fund should contribute to "Gosthi related" petty expanses and also towards the Community related expanses.

The common fund at the end of the year should be invested in some growth stock. When the investment grows to $1M, an Odia community center can be established in the bay area.

Generic solution.
This solution is not fair to everyone but could be fair to the mostly regulars. Balancing the sheet so that sum is zero is a non-trivial problem.
There will be some profit or loss. Which is natural.
Folks can select some symbolic festival for Orissa e.g. Ratha Yatra and sponsor it. Float also comes to mind since it generates lotta publicity for Oriya folks.

By doing this we could run out of the fund in few years and again back to square one taxing for all festival until we accumulate enough surplus to sponsor one or two events for free.

Assumed loophole: this solution is not fair to all the Ghosti's and all the folks. Could be fair to most of the regulars but may not be fair to most of the Goshtis. e.g. cyclically the sponsored Rath Yatra could be handled by the same group for all the time. As long as the stake golders of each Goshti understand the risk, this seems to be a go in my mind.

Sapan,

Good work putting this together. My view is that:
1) There should be no central fund.
2) Events should be managed to break even and cover couple of regular expenses like website hosting.
3) Tiny surpluses that we generate from each event are not worth spending all the energy in developing and enforcing guidelines on how to spend.
4) If surpluses are substantial (say more than 10 percent, consider returning them to the contributors/participants to the event, after the event
5) All major non-event expenses should be financed through their own independent fund raising, not from some central fund.

-Anup