Before Portside Books Collective (PBC) disbanded and decided to close the store, I would often come home from volunteering with scrap flyers that had notes on the back. Most of these notes were just reminders to myself to email people, pick up supplies, and so on, but occasionally they were ideas for extant and future radical projects.

Some of these notes deal with remuneration, i.e., paying people. One of the things that bothered me about Portside was that we didn't remunerate collective members for their work. I realize that this would have been impossible, of course, since we didn't make enough money for that kind of thing. But the very idea of remuneration was completely off the table; it wasn't even acknowledged. I think there might have been a way to codify some basic remuneration mechanism into PBC's bylaws, so that it just sort of "clicked on" if and when we got to a point where remuneration was feasible.  To some extent, this thought process dealt with another burning question, which was, How does a business maintain a non-profit status while paying workers? (I don't know much about non-profits. For all I know it could be either a pretty easy or a tricky fair.) Still another concern was, How does long-term planning occur?

In my head, it made sense to codify into the bylaws that money Portside took in through sales might go through some sort of process. A rough sketch, based on my notes:

1. Expenses to maintain the store would be taken care of first. Codify what amounts of money must first be set aside for rent, ordering more books, buying supplies, etc. This is just to keep the store going for that particular month. This is for the store's immediate needs.
2. Then ensure that money is set aside for taking care of next month's primary expenses - rent in particular. Perhaps codify that the upcoming two or three months must be taken care of before any other funds are allocated. This could help the store maintain financial footing.
3. Perhaps then set aside X number of dollars in a bank account for long-term planning and emergencies. Maybe the store will burn down (as in the case of Sedition Books), or maybe the collective decided that it would like to move to a renovate a new location before moving in.
4. After this, allocate money for remunerating workers. Make sure fair mechanisms for this are in place.
5. After that, put the remaining money in the bank. Maybe even donate it to social justice groups or other collectives persuing similar ventures.

This sort of thing would not have worked for Portside, obviously. Although I haven't put a lot of thought into it yet, it's pretty obvious that it would have been too detailed and assumes cash inflows we could only have dreamed of. But it might be worth debating and expanding if it were applied to a conceivably profitable business, such as a worker-run restaurant (something I've been thinking about lately).

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