A New Year, a New Budget

Over the past few years, PresenTense has worked hard to provide full information on its operations for two main reasons: first, we are a community organization that grew from the grassroots up. For the first three years of our operations, from the founding of the magazine through the first round of the Institute, we were all volunteers – and it is only thanks to the energy and passion of our volunteers that we’ve been able to grow to where we are now. These volunteers deserve our full transparency – and we hope they’ll trust us as custodians of their vision.

Second, because we think it is just good practice. PresenTense is a nonprofit organization, and as such it exists solely to further the public’s greater good. We believe that part of what we can provide the public is a model for operations, and a template for other nonprofit and for-profit social ventures. Because intellectual property dividends are just as important as financial or social capital gains – and we might as well return those dividends to our public.

Today, therefore, we are beginning a new policy of financial transparency with the publishing of our summary document of last year’s financial year actuals, and this year’s projected budget. The full budget will be published when we publish our workplans and Year-in-Preview later next month.

We look forward to your thoughts and comments, and hope other organizations follow suite so we can compare the return on our relative investments – and learn how to optimize our operations to further the destiny of the Jewish People.

Ariel Beery is the co-founder and director of the PresenTense Group.