Disarray at the Hacker Dojo

http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2016/03/31/disarray-at-the-dojo

by dustball • 10 years ago

142 51 10 years ago

whbk2• 10 years ago

Wow. Marie Knox, the woman that has already admitted to stealing the money, has her hands in a lot of different organizations in the Bay Area. She was the cashier, website manager, and person responsible for ordering inventory at her last position. Sure hope her past employers/nonprofits are all checking their books closely now..

Good on Sudarshana Banerjee, who took her board responsibilities seriously and uncovered this shortly after starting.

bickfordb• 10 years ago

Or maybe this is a failure of the non-profit system: these charities are not required to make their finances transparent by the government or their funders

nongaap3• 10 years ago

Transparency is very much part of the non-profit system. Non-Profits have to annually file an IRS Form 990 (it's like an annual report) which discloses finances and are required to have them available for public inspection during business hours.

Sounds like Hacker Dojo was not following the rules already in place to prevent this sort of abuse.

diskcat2• 10 years ago

Well the non-profit system isn't designed to allow people who embezzle money to be caught within a day or whatever. I don't think any accounting system is.

The fact that the thief is eventually caught shows that the system does work, and the amount of damage that has been done isn't fatal to the organisation.

There is going to have to be some amount of trust between the staff of an organisation and this trust can be abused to steal money, this is true in any organisation, it has nothing to do with being non-profit.

Finances are transparent to the public.

throwawaytenmil• 10 years ago

for-profit entities are also not required to make their finances transparent to anyone until they reach certain milestones (for large private companies, shareholder count. Alternatively, going public).

The financial filing rules for 501(c)(3)'s (I have no idea if that's what HJ is) are substantially more rigorous than for C or sub-S corps w/ small number of shareholders.

VonGuard2• 10 years ago

All non-profits have to make their books available, especially if they want to be on a big site like Starnavigator.com or Causes.com

calcsam• 10 years ago

It's pretty clear that Hacker Dojo isn't the strictest about accounting. Just look at their membership fee -- $100 / month, pay if you want.

That said, Hacker Dojo doesn't work because recurring revenue > expenses. They work because of the tremendous goodwill they've built up in the community and a devoted base of supporters who are willing to help.

Organizational controls should be aimed to strengthen that support -- too much formalization around process risks killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

dahdum2• 10 years ago

The goodwill was a huge part of why I continue to pay the membership despite hardly ever going. Finding out my dues were embezzled have certainly soured my opinion. I think transparency is more important than formalization.

striking2• 10 years ago

Keeping it informal and keeping it transparent aren't even related in my opinion. You can keep goodwill payments while being transparent about how the payments are being used.

erikpukinskis• 10 years ago

Finding out my dues were embezzled have certainly soured my opinion. I think transparency is more important than formalization.

Doesn't the fact that you know your dues were embezzled mean that they have in fact succeeded at being transparent? Seems like this is the best outcome. The alternative is that your money was embezzled and you never found out.

diskcat2• 10 years ago

It is exactly the tremendous goodwill that attracts the thieves and scammers.

deepnet• 10 years ago

I withdraw any opinion I have on this matter, it was uninformed and those on the ground obviously know more - I misinterpreted the article.

dahdum2• 10 years ago

I believe that's incorrect, my understanding (from the board meeting notes) is that she was a full time salaried employee.

sokoloff• 10 years ago

N.B. The article states that she 'fessed up before accused and promised to pay it back.

The article says, "The board agreed to perform an audit and on March 1, one day after the board gained full access to the nonprofit's bank accounts, Marie Knox, Hacker Dojo's longtime office coordinator, came forward and admitted to misusing the credit card for personal use, Banerjee told the Voice."

While perhaps technically true that she "fessed up before accused", it was at a moment of inevitability, IMO.

whbk2• 10 years ago

Come on, let's be serious. "No one really cared about finances" means maybe it's not the end of the world if you bought a new Chromebook for yourself to use at the office without asking if it's cool. There is no world in which regularly flying yourself to Vegas and partying on the organization's dime is kosher or anything other than theft.

Note also no-charges were pressed

"It noted the board is still working on a plan for Knox to provide restitution for the stolen funds and that, so far, the board has held off on filing criminal charges against Knox."

No charges yet. They'd first like to see if they can find a way for her to repay them before she's rendered permanently unemployable.

dang• 10 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11401801 and marked it off-topic.

educar2• 10 years ago

Are there any other places similar to Hacker Dojo in the bay area?

ZanyProgrammer5• 10 years ago

Not off the top of my head in Santa Clara County.

simoncion3• 10 years ago

I know of a few. There are likely several that I don't know about:

Noisebridge in SF https://noisebridge.net

TechShop in SF, SJ, and several other non-Bay Area locations http://www.techshop.ws/

Ace Monster Toys in Oakland http://acemonstertoys.org/

Sudo Room in Oakland https://sudoroom.org/

varelse• 10 years ago

TechShop is amazingly cool. Noisebridge scared me. Unless it's moved since 2014, it's in a dilapidated building in the mission pointlessly cluttered with ornamental mid 20th-century scientific equipment and it seemed to me that all it needed was a match to go up in flames.

educar2• 10 years ago

I have been to some of these.

noisebridge - it's a very good place but the last two times I was there it was quite dirty. it also had homeless people (nothing against the homeless but it's not the right place for them) which made it hard to work there.

TechShop - is not a computer hacking place. mostly for mechanical/engineering.

I will try the other two, thanks for your suggestions!

GFK_of_xmaspast• 10 years ago

That's a real shame. I only went to talks there a couple of times before moving away, but it seemed like a really special kind of place.

nongaap3• 10 years ago

Having seen first hand a similar situation unfold, the most heartbreaking feeling is finding out a friend broke your trust. That said, you really can't fix the issues and protect friends at the same time. Things have to be cleaned up and trust restored.

The Board needs to be highly vigilant about pushing for transparency and getting outside independent help to get to the bottom of things.

I repeat. Financial mismanagement and abuse is not something you try to fix in-house. The reason being you really don't know who has had their hand in the cookie jar (on purpose or accidentally) and there is going to be incentive by some to not expose the skeletons and the laws broken.

People want to protect friends but the Board really needs to retain professionals to run a forensic audit, get a full picture of what happened, and put in the proper financial controls. Cost isn't an excuse. Many law and accounting firms offer pro-bono services to non-profits, and I'm sure there would be plenty of firms who would be happy to help Hacker Dojo clean things up.

Animats• 10 years ago

What a mess. I knew Hacker Dojo was having problems, but didn't know the details. I was a member for a while a few years ago, at the previous location, but just to take classes.

It's mostly a co-working space now. As of a year ago, people sat silently at laptops under harsh industrial lighting, coding apps into the night. Now that the get-rich-quick app boom is over, not sure what's going on there.

$199 per month is way too much. TechShop is only $125 a month, and they have a full machine shop, wood shop, electronics benches, paid staff, etc. Hacker Dojo is a bare space into which members bring stuff. I wondered where the money was going. Now we're finding out.

According to their web site, they're in the midst of a move, with the old location closed. It's not clear if the new location is open yet. Marie Knox (yes, the accused thief) is in charge of the move logistics.

ZanyProgrammer5• 10 years ago

Its too bad, the current location (I keep wanting to say new) has lots and lots of room for all that stuff if they wanted to have it.

jmspring• 10 years ago

Depending on where you are and mode of transportation, the current location near Moffatt is... non-ideal.

I only remember the prior location as a member for a couple of years (while working near by).

mtviewdave2• 10 years ago

The Dojo is still at 599 Fairchild (it's second location, where it's been since 2012). The lease will run out end of May. The Dojo has a potential new space in Santa Clara, though they have not signed a lease yet.

Marie Knox has been suspended, so I suspect the web description of her being in charge is merely out of date.

FYI, membership is $195/month. And yes, with TechShop at $125, and Founders Floor in downtown San Jose at $200/month, $195 seems far too high for what you get at Hacker Dojo.

swimfar• 10 years ago

They have different membership levels: http://www.hackerdojo.com/Membership

The $195/month is for people who use it as their office all day. If you're only there on evenings and weekends it's only $100/month.

veemjeem2• 10 years ago

Well, there are more details to the story that the author omitted. Here's a few from a comment on the article:

The article appears to somehow have missed some key pieces of information. I leave it to you to decide whether Mr Klug and Ms Sudarshana Bannerjee's motives are:

1) Brian Klug, a disgruntled previous member who was banned from the premises failed to submit tax returns on time when he was executive director of the organization

2) Sudarshana and Mr Klug were romantically involved in the past

3) Sudarshana applied for the Executive director position at the organization in late 2015, with a salary of around $55,000, but another candidate was selected.

4) During the time of her election and investigation, she was unemployed.

5) She has previously admitted being friends with Marie Knox (who in turn, was hired by her former boyfriend, Brian Klug)

6) Sudarshana resigned just before a board meeting where a conflict of interest vote was on the agenda, stating that no current or former board member would be eligible for a paid staff position (all board members are unpaid volunteers)

7) Sudarshana resigned as soon as she received confirmation of a new paid position, apparently working with the Kamala Harris Senate campaign.

Sudarshana was not forced out of the board, she resigned herself. She posted her resignation on the HD slack channel.

Mr Klug is also the person who created this submission (dustball)

ZanyProgrammer5• 10 years ago

I remember back in 2012 there was indeed a lot of good will in the Valley towards Hacker Dojo when they needed to move. From everything I've read, I fear the HD name is too tarnished. Its a shame, their new location is quite nice.

godzillabrennus• 10 years ago

The folks behind Hacker Dojo existing have stellar reputations. I'm sure they will sort this out.

Hacker Dojo also has incubated the Hackers/Founders COOP which is also a solid organization.

mathattack• 10 years ago

Fraud is fraud. Happens in non- prof is too. Sometimes more because people assume honorable intentions and the pay is less. Shame to lose the space.

brbsix• 10 years ago

There's a brief bio here: http://behindthedojodesk.blogspot.com/p/about.html

One interesting quote: "My role and what I do has grown beyond what it was originally envisioned to be at Hacker Dojo, and frankly I'm not sure if there are too many terribly hard lines around what I do and don't do."

I get the feeling that she didn't have much in the way of supervision.

inDigiNeous• 10 years ago

As a Finnish person visiting Mountain View last year, I spent 2 weeks at Hacker Dojo coding on my project.

Very creative atmosphere there, and something that really doesn't exist here in Finland at that scale. Kinda sad to hear their name is being dragged down.

I felt it's a bunch of good people there, got to meet some of the people running the place too.

The next big thing could rise from places like Hacker Dojo, I wish them all the good and hopefully finding a new place.

alricb• 10 years ago

"At a hacker space, when you walk in, you've got to assume people are trying to crack (your computer). They can't help it," he said.

Poor little hackers, they have no self-control.

Also, isn't it standard practice in the US to present audited financials to an annual general assembly? With $300k in the bank, you should be able to afford to hire a CPA, no?

emarkz• 10 years ago

From the trenches of those Dojo Members seeking to regain control of our nonprofit... In my opinion:

The last executive director was brought in to fund raise via grants and sponsorships, and failed miserably, instead raising that $400K ($300K + $100K stolen), off the backs of it's members by doubling membership fees, and converting a quarter of the Dojo into a private VC incubator.

He also wasn't an entrepreneur or a hacker, but more the slick politician type, and killed the Dojo culture, driving away most of the best volunteers and people, by ending member voting, spying on members, and banning anyone he didn't like (at the slightest of excuses at times). This and the previous board ignored members complaints, until he let the corporate status lapse, and there was no corporate veil for the board to hide themselves behind.

And now we are at war with this board, trying to gain back control that existed as a gentleman's agreement between the founders and the members, but wasn't written in the bylaws because clueless lawyers were consulted.

Also - the $30K number is a made up number by the most recent board member, who bought his board position, and is the most responsible for harassing the recently resigned whistleblower member. There are few to no records kept of the purposes of expenditures. If all unaccountable expenditures were added up - it'd be double or triple that $30K number...

Lesson: Bake your culture into your DNA, or when the good King era ends, the bad king era will begin...

Kind of blows my mind that in Silicon Valley - the Valley of the Disruptors, Hackers build an organization utilizing 100 year old feudal corporate antique autocratic bylaws.

Don't tell me we can't smart phone app, wisdom of the crowd, self govern our own hacker asses.

ZanyProgrammer5• 10 years ago

Looks more like a failure of the people running HD to get their shit together, not a failure of laws.

ghufran_syed• 10 years ago

I'm guessing I'm the target of this anonymous attack "the $30K number is a made up number by the most recent board member, who bought his board position, and is the most responsible for harassing the recently resigned whistleblower member." Since that makes me pretty easily identifiable, I therefore feel I should respond.

"bought his board position" - First of all, isn't donating money to a non-profit a good thing? Are you saying that you're proud of the fact that you don't donate any time or money to the organization? I'm a full-time emergency physician, and have lot's of my own tech projects I want to spend time on, what possible reason would there be take on what is currently almost a full-time job fixing the mess?

In fact, Sudarshana ('Sophie') Bannerjee is the reason I got involved, she asked me to to get involved as an 'independent observer', and she is the one who nominated me to be treasurer in her email of March 2nd 2016: "Appoint a new treasurer immediately. I would recommend Ghufran, who along with his wife just donated $10K to the Dojo. He is passionate about the Dojo, and volunteered over 20 hours in the last two days. "

https://gist.github.com/ghufransyed/db9c923b49efe57ef1edf0f0...

"made up number" - This is the message I posted on slack, while trying to provide members as much information as we reasonably could. HN readers can decide whether this is an accurate characterization: https://gist.github.com/ghufransyed/393de8dc0a06782cdebb0099...

If you look at the comments at the bottom of the original mv voice article, it looks like quite a few people have posted further information that was mysteriously missed by the author and many of the sources, who IMO quite clearly have an axe to grind. The fact that Sophie was unemployed during this entire time, wanted the $55k / year executive director fired so she could take his job, and left the board as soon as she found other employment is pretty well documented...and still doesn't take away from the fact that she did the Dojo a huge service by uncovering the financial issues.

I think there was a shocking lack of financial controls by the previous treasurer and board members, but those people are no longer on the board. The question is whether the way to fix it is by shouting a lot like the poster of this message, or actually do the work.

If we're talking about culture, Hacker Dojo never claimed to be a 'democracy', but a 'do-ocracy' - you want something done, you go do it. The current board are all people who are putting lots of their own time to try and fix the Dojo, along with full-time work elsewhere. We are not 'at war' with anyone, but you claim to be 'at war' with us: well, we don't plan to show up for your war, we'll just focus on actually putting in place the financial controls and other issues that will make the Dojo stronger. We'd love it if you would do the same. [typo edited]

mtviewdave2• 10 years ago

Having been a member the Dojo until recently, and a fan since they opened, I disagree with a lot of your characterization, and am going to give Ghufran the benefit of the doubt. However, this is important:

Lesson: Bake your culture into your DNA, or when the good King era ends, the bad king era will begin...

What I see at the fundamental problem with the Dojo is that, baked into its DNA, is the belief that legal compliance and good management are not really important. The Dojo had to leave its old space because they were so in violation of Mountain View building codes that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring them into compliance. A problem that could have been easily avoided if they had bothered to talk to the City about code compliance before moving into that space.

And now they've demonstrated a lack of interest in basic financial governance.

I wish Ghufran, and the new board, the best in terms of turning the Dojo around. But I worry that the disinterest in compliance and management is so integral to Dojo culture that it will have another (completely avoidable) crisis in 3-4 years.

OliverJones• 10 years ago

I've been part of other not-for-profit orgs with countercultural missions. It's always been possible to get a few members -- not on the board -- to step forward and do a yearly audit of the books. These audits aren't high-end finance work products: you'd have to pay big bucks to somebody like PWC for that. But they do spot stuff like misuse of payment cards.

It's interesting how members who have finance experience, and members who want to learn something about finance, both step forward. A good volunteer audit can be part of the educational mission of the org.

drdeadringer• 10 years ago

I am amazed in reading this.

Granted that the last time I was involved at HD was their 2012 move and shortly after, but at the moment I feel like I have rediscovered something in the middle of an implosion or hyper-political tempest.

Disarray at the Hacker Dojo

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