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Congratulations and some worried thoughts

Published by on 25 November 2007 at 17:01 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Corpganization, Donations and Finances. 6 Comments

If you are a member of CS, undoubtedly you have received an email from Casey Fenton himself  announcing the new 501(c)3 status. The email seemed a bit confusing, because the envelope he’s holding is obviously the application to the new status, but then it seems implied CS is already a 501(c)3? I have no idea how fast the US bureaucracy works, but it seems awfully fast from application to acknowledgment. Is CS applying for it or is it already a charity? Is the outcome guaranteed?

However, congratulations are in order. After 3 years of talking about it and no less than 100 hours of work by Casey himself (a full two and a half weeks!), they were finally able to get the right papers in order. Phew. Good news is that CS is now eligible  for grants and your donations will be tax deductible (if you live in the US). There is money to be made!

Since we can take at least a bit of credit for speeding the process up, basically by shaming Casey into action, here are some of the things I would like to see CS take up:

  1. Reduce the operational cost and significantly reduce the cost of “verification”, far beyond the sliding scale idea. There is absolutely no obvious need to be collecting and spending such a large amount of money. It is almost the anti-thesis of an organization that is based on free and voluntary lodging and low-cost traveling.
  2.  Finally make the organization reflect the community. Get rid of the heavy US centric distribution in the leadership team. Organize elections.
  3. Set up localized non-profit organizations, to allow the same financial and legal “benefits” for European CS-ers (the largest community in any case) and to allow a better local functioning.
  4. Open up, become at least a bit more transparent. Get rid of the multitude of private groups. Publish meeting agenda’s, publish regular and non-PR reports.
  5. Give back to the world. Share the code that so many people have worked on voluntarily or payed for by the community back to that community and to the world at large.
  6. Cooperate. Finally get over your pride and cooperate with HC and BeWelcome. Not a single one of the users benefits from the fragmentation and competition between the different hospitality organizations.
  7. Learn to be humble. Learn how to admit mistakes when you make them instead of lying about it or covering it up. Talk to people like the OCS-ers, even if every fiber in your body seems to struggle against that. You fears are unfounded.

My 7 wishes for CS in 2008.

Thomas

The trouble with the ambassadors

Published by on 22 November 2007 at 16:31 in ambassadors, Campaigns, Corpganization, Elections and Transparency. 112 Comments

We’re doing a little experiment in Antwerp, called elections. Once in a while, somebody makes the simple observation that it might better to base any kind of hierarchy in a community on representation instead of appointment. This is one of the core problems as well in CS and something we’ve been tackling in our “Open Organisation” campaign for a long time now. I think it would be very much worth it to see if the Antwerp CS community would support this or not. So, the best way to find out is to actually call for community elections. We could have gone straight after the city ambassador positions, but since that’s practically uninforcable, we made up our own title: “community elected CS city ambassador”. Sounds cool huh?

What’s the major difference between the CS ambassadors and what we propose?

  1. CS ambassadors are appointed from “above”. Depending on the level you wish to attain, the group that decided changes to higher levels, so it might be other ambassadors, up to LT. Community ambassadors would be elected from the local community.
  2. CS ambassadors have to follow a “code of ethics”, which ironically includes accepting the legally dubious terms of use. Not only is protesting any of that de-facto not allowed (you can only accept or you don’t get to be ambassador), it may require you to agree to semi-legal and ethically dubious rules and systems. Community ambassadors do not have such a code, but would be judged for their behaviour, which obviously includes real ethics.
  3. CS ambassadors get a “job” description, like organizing meetings, etc. Community ambassadors would be required to outline a program before their elections.

In general, I would say the official CS ambassadorship looks much more like a corporate job than anything else. There is a job description, an appointment process (including fairly subjective selections) and even a contract (“code of ethics” – cough). Or, in other words, a CS ambassador is representative of the Couchsurfing corpganization. By contrast, a community ambassador would be much more about being a representative of the local community instead.

The resulting proverbial shitstorm that resulted from the announcement was both predictable and suprising. Predictable because it obviously threatens some people’s positions (even indirectly). Suprising because so many of the LT cliché’s popped up in the discussion. Arguments and techniques that seemed to come straight from the LT playbook. Let me give you some examples:

  1. “It is really easy to participate, just apply! Why are you complaining?”
    It’s easy to participate as long as you agree to everyting yes. Groupthink example nr 1.
  2. ” We are just doing the best we can here! Why are you complaining?”
    The sympathy card. Avoidance tactic nr 1.
  3. “We’re not a closed group (the ambs), we just didn’t make an agenda because it was a private meeting/we didn’t have time/…”
    This wouldn’t be accepted in any other non-profit. Meetings behind closed doors? Please. Groupthink nr 2.
  4. “Democracy is a wonderful thing but it is not applicable to all organisational structures.”
    The poster did apologize for this, but still one of the major points seems to be that democracy for some weird reason can’t work in CS, the evidence of countless democratic non-profits being discarded in one swift stroke. Avoidance tactic nr 2.
  5. “Please give us feedback instead of complaining.”
    This basically is the brainstorming red herring: allow people to “provide input” to be able to ignore what you don’t like while still looking like you “care”. Whatever. I disagree with the way ambs are choosen, period. That means I don’t want to provide legitimacy to what you’re doing by giving you suggestions. Although, I do have one suggestion: resign and participate in the election instead of clinging to your current position. Avoidance tactic nr 3.
  6. “I don’t support the whole election but I will not block it in any way.”
    This is basically claiming ownership over something you don’t have. Elections don’t need amb support, it needs people support. Groupthink nr 3.
  7. ” You will always get a quick and honest reply for us, as we are the CS freaks.”
    How this can be claimed in any serious way is beyond me. You’re probably not even allowed to talk about certain things.
  8. “You’re just being paranoid.”
    Thanks buddy, but I don’t think you’ve met a real paranoid person in your life – I have. Personal attack, yay!
  9. And then came the stuff that really reminded me of the LT:
    “Would you please stop this discussion? It damages the CS project a lot. [...] for us, CS-members, it seems a lot of bullshit! and a lot of spam too !!!!!”
    immediatly followed by:
    “I’ll create a group within the antwerp group about the election so we can have our discussions over there without bothering the people too much…”
    This made me so angry, to see that same argument “you’re all a bunch of haters, go away!” followed up by the same kind of censorship “please step over here sir, so the good people can’t hear your complaints”.

The only tactics that haven’t been tried (yet):

  1. Permanent silencing. (Deleting posts and or manually moving threads.)
  2. Discredit the people/movement behind this. (Although point 9 is pretty close to that.)
  3. Direct threats (remember the “your account will be closed if you make vague legal threats thing?”)

Shameful. Shameful and painful.

Thomas

Reasons for not using CouchSurfing.com

Published by on 07 November 2007 at 17:47 in Casey Fenton, couchsurfing, Donations, employees, Finances, Leadership Circle, legal, Participation and Uncategorized. 91 Comments

To preserve this information in case of a decision by the CS ‘leadership’ to suspend my profile for having the wrong hairdo or something, and because OCS attracts more readers than my CS profile, what follows is my current list of 10 reasons for not using CouchSurfing.com. It is personal, not exhaustive, and contains little explanation. Still, I hope it will give first-time visitors to this website some kind of overview of all that is wrong with CouchSurfing.com. Comments and additions (and corrections if factually incorrect!) are much appreciated.

  1. The company that owns CouchSurfing.com, CouchSurfing International inc., is privately owned and has Casey Fenton as is its sole owner and director. He holds all power over the company and, consequently, the website. This means that, when push comes to shove,
    1. He cannot be held accountable for how donations are spent
    2. He can sell CouchSurfing.com to whomever and walk away with the dough whenever he gets tired of it
    3. CS users have no of influence whatsoever on anything CS-related
  2. Although incorporated as a not-for-profit, CouchSurfing International inc. is not a charitable organisation. Not-for-profit status only means that the company cannot pay dividend to its owners (i.e. Casey); the company and its assets still are his, and his alone. Casey can do with it whatever he wants, whenever he wants it
    1. In addition, not-for-profit status does give not any kind of guarantee that company assets are not utilised for personal enrichment. For instance, as its sole owner/director, Casey can give out loans to himself or others at zero-interest rates, and use that money privately to make a profit
    2. Such potential abuse of company assets is even easier because CouchSurfing International inc. does not appear genuinely interested in obtaining a “501c3″ tax exemption. Non-profit organisations can easily apply for this designation with the IRS, but it requires compliance with strict disclosure and reporting duties, plus having a board of directors, and Casey doesn’t like that much openness. Therefore, part of user donations is waisted on avoidable tax-paying
    3. Most importantly, CouchSurfing International inc. does not have a clause in its bylaws that irrevocably dedicates company assets to a charitable cause. This means that Casey can always revoke the company’s not-for-profit designation and cash in, by volition but also by necessity (for instance, when he or the company ever get sued for damages)
  3. In clause 5.1 of the Terms of Use, CouchSurfing International inc. claims a virtually unbounded and irrevocable right to use whatever material you decide to upload to its servers for its own purposes, without limiting these in any way. This opens up the road to selling user data, including your contact and site usage details, to third parties. At the same time, CouchSurfing International inc. does not have a published policy detailing how they keep your personal information safe
  4. There are no published protocols how the company deals with users committing crimes (violence, abuse, theft…) that involve other users; instead, these appear to be dealt with in an ad hoc fashion. In addition, it is extremely difficult to find who’s responsible for what when it comes to safety. By being so negligent, CouchSurfing International inc. puts the users of CS at risk
  5. On the whole, CouchSurfing.com scores very poorly on transparency. There are hardly any protocols about anything; there is no full list of people on the payroll of CouchSurfing International inc., information is scattered across countless forums and scores of mailgroups, etc. The current management seems to take no interest whatsoever in even starting to improve this situation
  6. Apart from being fraudfully sollicited (i.e., under the pretext that CS is a charity / non-profit), aspiring volunteers are asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement in which they cede all rights on the material they develop to CouchSurfing International inc.
  7. All known employees of CouchSurfing International inc. (i.e., Casey Fenton, Matthew Brauer, Jim Stone and Weston Hankins, all of whom are members of the Leadership Team) are male caucasian US citizens.
  8. The verification procedure is a blatant scheme for increasing donations. It does not offer any kind of added security, and could be carried out at a fraction of the current fee
  9. What little financial information is available gives cause for suspicion. There are interesting discrepancies between assets and interest gained, and attempts to get this clarified are met with deafening silence
  10. Casey and the other employees of CouchSurfing International inc., as well as the influential volunteers in CouchSurfing.com simply do not respond to any kind of question or criticism at all, while still hammering on CS being a community-thing

Cease and desist à la CouchSurfing

Published by on 05 November 2007 at 19:44 in legal and Member Rights. 15 Comments Tags: .

I’m still reading Brainstorm group at times (too much in fact, should just wait and see what happens). I’ve managed to restrain from replying (well, somewhat) as I feel I really don’t feel like getting angry yet again. But sometimes there’s just no helping a reaction.

This post quotes the complete gag order (I don’t feel comfortable quoting the rest right now, maybe they’ll throw a infringement of copyrights on me ;) :

“CouchSurfing’s new policy is to end all correspondence and immediately suspend the account of any member who notifies CouchSurfing of an intent to pursue a legal action. This policy is for the protection of CouchSurfing members.”

My reply:
“So the options are
a) just take it and shut up about standing up for your legal rights (can CS *really* ditch the laws of every other country except for the US for all eternity?)

b) NOT tell CS if you are going to take legal action – isn’t it more protective of the members to at least give a fair warning before said action takes place?

IF I didn’t know how crooked some of the stuff is and has been at times (not saying all of it, and everyone of the leadership team / whoever in charge all the time), this just tops it.

So let’s get this straight: I’ve in fact donated time and money (multiple times) to an organization that will NOT give half a thought about protecting its members’ legal rights internationally, in the form of not being in any way responsive to any kinds of inquiries (considered threats in here in any way you state them I assume) of getting them enforced? Am I getting it right?”

Shouldn’t Donna think of cooking the books?

Published by on 05 November 2007 at 17:22 in 501c3 and Finances. 6 Comments Tags: .

*corrected version* 

How I just love retired accountants! It seems that Pickwick is on to another scandal…

According to the (minimal, and legally insufficient) financial reports over the 3rd quarter 2007, CouchSurfing International inc. is well in the dough, and has a neat $101,900.69 in the bank… but wait a second, over that sum, why has the company made only $281.26 interest??!!

I know banks in the US are in a difficult position these days, but an interest rate of less than 0,27% seems pretty strange… Or could it be that someone is turning a private profit on these funds? Nah, that would be ridiculous, CS being a ‘non-profit’ and all…

More CouchSurfing BS

Published by Callum on 03 November 2007 at 13:14 in Casey Fenton, Donations, employees, Participation and Transparency. 24 Comments Tags: , , , .

The latest email from comrade Casey uses the word volunteer no less than 4 times, the only mention of the word employ is referring to Weston Hankins leaving his previous hot-shot employers. Would it be fair to say that Casey is misleading CouchSurfing members by not mentioning that staff now receive salaries from their donations? The email also asks for more volunteers, should those people be told some of their “colleagues” will be “more equal” than others?

The full email follows…

Dear Sucker,

This message is to give you an update about the technology behind the CouchSurfing website. We’re making exciting improvements to our website hardware, software, and volunteer Tech Team that we want to make you aware of.

On Thursday, November 9th, at 1:00am in New York, 6:00am in Paris, 10:30am in Delhi, and 4:00pm in Sydney, the CS website will be unavailable for a brief period of up to 4 hours while we install new hardware that runs the website software. This necessary downtime will replace some outdated hardware and improve the site’s speed and reliability in order to keep pace with our growing membership. To prepare for this down time, please make sure you write down or print out any important information you may need during the outage.

Thanks to your support and enthusiasm, CouchSurfing is now the largest website of its kind, with over 60,000 people using the site each week and over 10,000 members meeting each other face-to-face each week! We’re taking action in advance to prepare for the needs of our growing community. As we make these upgrades during November, you may experience other unannounced website outages, but we expect these to be few and brief.

CouchSurfing’s volunteer Tech Team has been acting literally around the clock from several time zones to fix the issues effecting our email delivery system. For several days scattered over the past few weeks, emails were delivered up to a day late, and we understand the frustration that can cause. We’re happy to report that the Tech Team now has the issue under control, and we thank them for their determined efforts.

Thanks also goes to our new Tech Team Coordinator, Weston Hankins. Bringing Weston on board has been a huge score for CS. Weston has previously worked for automaker, Daimler Chrysler, and he co-developed core aspects of the Microsoft Windows operating system. He was willing to leave his high-profile employers and volunteer for CS because he shares our mission and love of travel.

Providing CouchSurfing’s free service depends on the amazing output of our dedicated volunteers including Weston, the Tech Team, and many others. We’re always seeking more help to continue to provide members with excellent service.

If you are a professional Linux system administrator with several years experience and knowledge of distributed file systems, load balancing, or database replication, please contact us.

We look forward to providing all members with improved website performance and reliable email delivery in the next month and into the future.

Happy CouchSurfing,

–Casey Fenton

Pickwick: Difference between non-profit and charity

Published by on 26 October 2007 at 13:18 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Finances and Transparency. 16 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Pickwick about the difference between a non-profit organization and a charity:

A charity needs to be non-profit, but not every non-profit organisation is automatically a charity.

A Non-Profit Corporation can’t pay the owner a dividend. He has to pay himself (or others) a salary instead, which he does ($88,150.22 since 2005, for salaries, payroll taxes, and temporary help). The rest of the money needs to be piled up on the company’s books: there’s an ‘emergency fund’ of $30,000 and accumulated ‘net income’ of $40,135.89 from 2004 to date. Other than that, a Non-Profit Corporation, which is NOT a charity, can do whatever it wants with its money like any other privately owned company. This includes the possibility of one day dissolving the company, or changing its status to For-Profit, and cashing in.

A CHARITABLE non-profit corporation will have a clause in its corporate bye-laws where corporate assets are dedicated to charitable purposes. It receives tax privileges, and in exchange comes under public supervision and is subject to reporting and disclosure duties. It will be much more difficult for individuals to profit, and if done right, even impossible.

The confusion is understandable because colloquially the terms ‘charity’ and ‘non-profit’ are sometimes used as if synonym. The problem here is that this misunderstanding might be intentionally exploited. Ultimately the proof whether an organisation is or isn’t a charity lies in the public register of charities, both on State and Federal level, neither of which contains an entry for this company.

So the logical conclusion is that either it is NOT a charity and claims that it is are false, or it IS a charity, in which case it has not complied with registration, reporting and disclosure duties. In either case, as a NON-charity, or as a NON-REGISTERED (unrecognised) charity, any charitable solicitations, for money or volunteers’ time, might be illegal.

The common good

Published by on 18 October 2007 at 14:11 in 501c3, Leadership Circle, Transparency and Uncategorized. 66 Comments Tags: , , , , .

One thing that doesn’t cease to amaze me is the way in which many CS users react to Pickwick’s recent announcement to report the fraudulent actions of CouchSurfing International inc. to the New Hampshire District Attorney. Besides the deafening silence by He Whose Opinion Matters, two kinds of responses are noticeably frequent:

  1. What that you ever did for CouchSurfing.com entitles you to take this kind of action?
  2. What is your interest in harming CouchSurfing.com?

To me these reactions indicate that the community at large does not recognise a crucial difference between civil litigation and criminal prosecution. The former is a legal procedure between two parties, each with their private interests; the latter is between ‘the people’ and whoever harms the public interest.

That’s right, the public interest, and CS users would do good to realise that they are the public here. Just some points for consideration:

  • If you decide to donate a (substantial) amount of money to CouchSurfing because you think it is a charity, only to find out it isn’t because the IRS fines you for illicit tax deductions, your interest is being harmed.
  • If you decide to donate valuable time as a volunteer to CouchSurfing because you think it is a charity, only to find out you’ve made a fool of yourself because you put free slaving on your resume, your interest is being harmed.
  • If Casey decides to sell your user data to a third party for a neat sum, and this party turns out to be a spammer, your interest is being harmed.
  • If you decide to donate code and programming effort to CouchSurfing because you’re an idealist and you believe in its cause, only to find out that Casey sells CouchSurfing International inc. to a large commercial player that turns CS into a paid service, your interest is being harmed.

To return to the responses I started with, it will be clear that the potential harm to the public interest is all the moral entitlement Pickwick needs for his actions. Second, they aren’t even his actions to begin with, let alone they could serve a private interest; if the New Hampshire DA sees sufficient reason to prosecute, they are the public’s actions.

Modes of Governance

Published by on 18 October 2007 at 11:44 in BeWelcome, couchsurfing, history, networks and Participation. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

For me, the failure of CS to sustain any democratic principles, freedom of speech, or abiding to the law or ethics, equality was the breaking point. So realizing they were not, nor ever would become that kind of an organization I had to go before further hurting myself being involved with people who could never understand what I stood for, what made me tick, and originally made me want to volunteer for CS. I tried as long as I could and was in no way “politically active” as the new race of outcasts on CS now is called (I was present in a situation where new person for some site tasks was needed, and the ones in charge went through their groups posting history to see there was nothing whatsoever that could indicate this was a person with critical thinking of any kind, especially towards CS). It’s only after seeing quite a bit of behavior and attitudes that I could not align with, as well as quite a bit of undermining, bullying and ignoring those who had, despite their differences with the LT worked very hard for CS that finally destroyed my faith in the leaders.

As an interlude, there was a strong push (in earlier times also officially sanctioned by the CS elite) to act in a more ad-hoc way (term coined by Dani I believe as “do-ocracy”). For me, this provided a way to get things ahead when no leadership was around to deal with many real issues rising up from the “bottom”, the community, through various means: groups, contact us section on the site, personal connections, real-life meetings. But at some point it became clear that in absence of leadership of any kind, it was those only interested in their own goals and visions for which Couchsurfing was merely a supporting platform, who were going to be the ultimate winners of the do-ocracy model. So naturally the LT might have been scared, I know I was. The critical error the Admins aka Leadership Team did in regaining their power was however to not take the good coming out of do-ocracy model so far, and not learn ways to actively listen to and engage with their community, which could have made all the difference in creating a network truly in line with its (current or future) vision statement and the values of its members.

On BeVolunteer/BeWelcome on the other hand the statutes clearly state what the values are, so that anyone wanting to volunteer clearly knows where they stand since the start. I’ve seen & heard “democracy doesn’t work” quoted by some along with rather condescending wishes of good luck. Well, this might be true – it’s certainly not easy to handle multi-national organization just starting out where many of the active people haven’t even met (yet). But still I’d say there’s a far bigger chance of survival thanks to the explicitly stated democratic principles (so neither dictators nor lone gunmen with their own motives can thrive for very long) to produce a sustainable organization and gradually grow into a viable alternative for those seeking hospitality.

How many employees?

Published by on 12 October 2007 at 12:26 in employees and Matthew Brauer. 12 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’m getting more and more confused. From the Policy FAQ:

Who is currently on the CouchSurfing payroll? (updated)
Casey Fenton, starting midway through 2005.  Jim Stone and Mattthew Brauer starting in the summer of 2007.  Their roles are Volunteer Coordinator and General Manger, respectively.  Casey has now taken on the role of CIO and Tech Team Coordinator.  No one else is on the payroll.  A new developer may be contracted full-time in November or December of 2007.

From the general manager,  10/04/07 5:51 am, in the private Ambassador group:

I’m the General Manager and one of CouchSurfing’s four paid employees.  I’ve started maintaining a blog, and I invite you to read it if you’re interested in learning more about what I do and what the Leadership Team does.  I hope this will allow you to be more informed and better connected.

I’ll spare you the link to the blog…