29 Jan How We Do It: 2025 In Numbers

Ben here, writing from my collective position affectionately known as Back End, where I help tackle all things technological, administrative, and financial involved in collective living.

It’s my first year in this position, and I’ve spent that time learning all the ins and outs of managing collective finances for a group of nine humans, two dogs, two cats, two snakes—yes, the snakes are here intentionally—and a decreasing yet still non-zero number of rodents. (No, the snakes can’t help with the rodents.)

Here is a picture of 2025 in numbers:

$74,640.62 paid toward our mortgage, insurance, property taxes, and electricity alone (!)
$61,698.00 collected from collective members’ personal hustles toward paying our mortgage and bills
$53,631.17 earned selling collective members’ original artwork in the online store and at art markets
$8,576.82 spent on repairs and upgrades to the buildings
(approximately) 4,500 hours donated by collective members toward the stewarding of this place
$4,470 donated to individuals in need
$3,211.00 raised to repair bedrooms for a father and son duo joining the collective
53 hours I spent researching how to do something very simple in QuickBooks
28 times outside groups used Lupinewood for their own events and celebrations
16 spreadsheets I enjoyed making; several others I… did not enjoy as much
14 new works released in the store from artists in the collective
12 art markets vended
2 new community art spaces opened to the public in our buildings
1 perma-dumpster acquired

And here are a few of the glamorous things I’ve done in my position this year:

Learned a whole lot about taxes, homeowner’s insurance, nonprofits, web hosting, and exorbitant banking fees 🤘

Revamped our scrappy DIY patchwork of systems for filing all of our paper and digital documents—while I revel in the inexorable decay into entropy as much as the next person, sometimes it’s important to be able to find a critical piece of mail from two years ago without someone tearing their hair out

Wrestled the leggy wi-fi system into working better with our dear friend/former collective member/tech witch Alyssa

Combed through all of the documents on our hard drive from the past near-decade to assemble an easy-to-use, living “constitution” of Lupinewood’s collective agreements, which we can use to orient new folks (and reorient ourselves) to our collective norms, values, and systems. Started making a similar one with information about my position, so that if someone needs to replace me someday, they can see exactly what this work looks like

Made Lupinewood a budget spreadsheet so we can track our yearly income, expenses, and how much our artists will be getting each month from their sales at a glance. This is first year we’ve been able to give artists contributing to the store a 50/50 split on everything they sell! (And this is one of the spreadsheets I enjoyed making 😉 )