Matrix.org Foundation accounts filing overdue by three months
github.com
github.com
Sorry for the drama, but this is not reason for panic.
(Separately we need to publish a summary of the accounts for https://matrix.org/foundation, which we are indeed running late on: it's been hard to prioritise it when we're on fire trying to improve Matrix's mass-market usability, given stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25812536).
It'd be nice if you could commit to this. If your accountants are lagging by almost 3 months without filing an extension, you owe it to your donors. Blaming the accountants is fine, but in the end, you picked them, and you chose to stay with them.
(The value in the overcharge is really just that you've got a big bullseye you can throw darts at when accountability is required. This doesn't resonate with most entrepreneurs e.g. here on HN - as the greyed out comment alludes :) - but it does with more established firms largely for this reason.)
Unless there's a specific reason why these accounts should be done on paper, the more reasonable and cost-effective solution would be to switch to an accountancy practice that isn't stuck in the past and there are plenty of those beyond the "big 4".
> It is due to the fact the organisation is a community interest company. CIC’s have to complete a CIC34 form, these forms have to be filed alongside the accounts which has to be done via postal methods with a cheque for payment. There is no online method at the moment to file CIC34 forms.
> Companies house, are from what I’ve heard, very particular about the CIC34 forms.
As I put (edited, really) in my top comment, it's mostly just to have an entity you can reasonably go after if they goof.
A related question: Considering how far back this goes, what's stopping you from naming them? Is resolution in progress, or have they just been dead silent?
And why do you care so much who they are? They didn't harm you and in reality they didn't harm anyone. In the real world people don't deal with minor contractual grievances by naming and shaming.
Knowing who's reliable is everything.
The extended thread above yours adds extra light:
I chose Matrix/Riot years ago over the other options for two reasons: 1) I could host my own if I wanted, and 2) It didn't require any identifying information like telephones.
Element's already great.
I'm not surprised that Companies House is lagging behind right now. Basically everything is broken because of Covid, I can't imagine non-profit paperwork is at the top of the priority list. I will also say, as someone who has worked most of my professional life in non-profits, government paperwork is the bane of everyone's existence and having some sort of screw up (whether it is your fault or not) is practically a rite of passage.
As Arathorn mentioned in a sibling, we're chasing down our accountants to see if we can get this sorted out, but this isn't a sign of any larger trouble than a paperwork mixup.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/companies-to-receive-3-mo...
One has to apply for deadline extension before the deadline. Between 25 March 2020 and 25 June 2020, every application that mentions COVID-19 as a reason was accepted. Additionally, all companies with accounts due date between 26 March 2020 and 29 September 2020 automatically got an extension under the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill.
There are also all kinds of temporary changes to deadlines, the one that applies here is 1.4 from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-companies-etc... under which is exactly the 29 October 2020 listed on Companies House website.
The bigger issue is that Matrix is not world leading.
Let Matthew decide priority on how to achieve that. Dealing with this post would be a distraction.
Originally donations to matrix.org foundation were supposed to be used to fund matrix protocol work and to hire a developer. This is still listed as a goal (that was reached) on Patreon. Only due to asking I found out that this never happened and donations are used to pay matrix.org homeserver instead, which of course is also a good cause, but should be communicated transparently.
I don't mind the accounts specifically, I just think that making them public is the easiest way to fulfill the needs of transparency. Of course a summary on the website, a blog post with explanations, etc, would also be nice, but I understand those mean extra work and there might be more important things the prioritize.
Let's not blow this out of proportion.
If you want a vibrant charitable ecosystem, letting people be imperfect about how they run their charities is a good thing.
I disagree - charities receive special protections and privileges from the public and in return they agree to make themselves accountable.
If they aren't making themselves be accountable then they aren't keeping their side of the agreement with the public and their protections and privileges should be revoke.
I don't read it as GP arguing that never filing is OK because charity.
They will almost certainly have to pay someone eventually to do their accounts so this is genuine waste of scarce resources.
Plus if a charity can't do things that it is legally required to do then that's not a great sign.
But more generally - my claim is that if the public wants a deal with charities where they must be flawless, that's a bad deal for the public. Effective people will make mistakes sometimes, ranging from missing a filing deadline to hiring people who end up not good at their job to trying some charitable activity that ends up not working. If we hold them to a standard of perfection, the rational activity of the people behind the charity is to just do something else. Is that good for us?
Of course we want them to be accountable - I'm not arguing that they should be able to do whatever, and they should try to meet all these requirements, that's why we the public encoded the requirements in the first place. I'm arguing that there's a big difference between accountability and expecting perfection.