ABSTRACT
Some of the people who attended the planning conference were paid staffers at various organizations and were selected to attend as part of their job. In all-volunteer groups with small budgets, though, the members who could afford to pay the expenses up front and be reimbursed later were the ones to go. This system left many of us in the same circumstance, figuring out how to pay our expenses in order to participate in the meetings. There was nothing resembling a uniform method or expectation of when you might be reimbursed. We knew it was probable that some of the money we spent would be repaid, but also possible that we would receive little or none. How much you could afford to spend up front, or how much you could afford to payout with no definite expectation of reimbursement, determined your level of participation.
