Compensation, Pay Rate & Equity Options Tutorial

Link to Video: coming soon . . .


General Introduction to Compensation with the Unity Network: (you can skip this)

With the Unity Network we have many different options for Compensation of people involved. All people who take on positions within the Network are called "Workers" regardless of being paid. This includes all Volunteers, as well as people with un-paid compensation including equity, credits, back-pay etc.., as well as people who are paid including small stipends, hourly rates or sallired workers. Because we are a global network, it would be MUCH to difficult to establish local and regional pay rate structues for every location on the planet, and it may not even be possible to do it in a fair way. Therefore each individual gets to choose their own compensation, and then we simply give everyone the opportunity to work for the lowest rate they are willing to take. For those who want a very high pay rate, because we have very small budgets, we simply do not have a lot of work for those people at this time. The lowest willing worker gets a chance to acomplish the work and tasks assigned to them, and then if they arn't able we assign it to someone else within our budgetary confinements. Its really that simple. At anytime, people can change their compensation or pay rate, although it takes between 1-2 months for the new pay rate to take effect. Additionally you can only change your compensation one level per month, this means that if you want to go from an hourly pay to become a Volunteer, it would take up to 6 months. Although there are situations where you can be working for upfront pay within one organization in the network, and volunteering for an other organization, but this all has to be agreed upon ahead of time. There are certain positions within our network that ONLY volunteers can take on, and volunteers are the highest level of oversight in our structure, including the HR Board which makes final decisions on compensation. For more information about the general structure and decision making regarding the Unity Network please click here:  coming soon . . .


From here we simply list all the different methods of compensation options so you can understand them and choose the corret one for you, or a combination of them that work with your situation.

• Options without Pay:  No-Upfront Pay
  • Participant
  • Volunteer
  • Unity Credits/Tokens
  • Educational Intern Credits
  • Community Service Hours
  • Community Equity
  • Equity
  • Backpay
• Options with Upfront Pay:  Paid daily/weekly/monthly
  • Small Stipend (less than minimum wage)
  • Hourly Wage
    • Minimum Wage (1x)
    • Living Wage (~2x)
    • Real Living Wage (~3x)
    • Real Wage (3x+)
  • Sallary (non-hourly over minimum wage)
    
    

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Non-Monetary / NO UPfront Pay - Options without Pay


Participants:

• Participants get NO direct compensation. There are many involvement levels within the Unity Network that do not involve responsiblity or positions. Participatns are the next level bellow a Volunteer. Participants within the Unity Network have FULL decision making power to be involved in all decisions, but do NOT have any offical position within the network, and have NO responsiblities, tasks, roles, or expectations on them. Anyone can participate in decisions making either durring live conference call sessions, or online through our direct democracy voting during Asynchronous Session. If you are not ready to take on a position within the Network and simply want to participate and learn more overtime before making a commitment, you are always welcome to simply be a Participant, and take on tasks when the time feels right. Participants do have the ability to indirectly and automatically get "Community Equity" if there involvement is doccumented correctly.
  
  
  
  

Volunteers:

• Volunteers activly choose NOT to get compensation within the Network. By default everyone who is involved within the organization automatically gets Community Equity. Because that could be a type of compensation, Volunteers further remove themsevles from any benifits or possible conflict of interest from their involvement. Therefore Volunteers are the ONLY type of involved party within the network with the ability to be involved in the highest level of decision making on budgets and compensation based decisions. This would include the highest levels of the HR Board as well as other budgetary decision making processes within the network.  Currently HR Board members can opt to get Unity Credits, as they currently have NO value, but that could change in the future. Volunteers do get what is called "Volunteer Equity", or "Volunteer Community Equity", which is limited to only having a vote on their existing equity contribution for collaborative community decision making for where potential future equity dividend distributions go. Volunteer Equity may also eventually be able to have application within the larger context of Societal Equity, but that would be many decades away and therefore have NO connection to any ability to cause a conflict of interest.
  
  
  
  

Unity Credits/Tokens

• Unity Credits (typcially physical cirtificates), or Unity Tokens (typically digital cirtificates) are a form of compensation that is directly issued by the Unity Network itself. Currently the Unity Credits/Tokens have NO value, and therefore are not directly looked at as their own form of digital or local currency. Because there is the potential that they could develop value in the future, they are considered a form of Compensation. As long as they do not have value they are still applicable to be issued to people people involved in Volunteer ONLY positions, although that can change at any time, and Volunteers do NOT have to take on Unity Credits if they don't want to.
  
  
  
  

Educational Intern Credits

• We will work with any eductational insitaution accross the world to find profeshors and administrators who can issue credits on behalf of your educational achivement. Our network has experience in giving a variety of credit based interns as certain education institutions, but because each university or school is different, we can not guarentee that we will be able to isse credits or weather they would be applicable to your goal of graduating. Typcially your interest in requesting credits would take a month to even a full year to attain the full recognition with a profesor and administors to finelize your intership, so please help us start the process early for you.
  
  
  
  

Community Service Hours

• Community Service Hours are typcially given in coordination with a Government Agency, usally assigned to people who otherwize would have recived a fine or more seveer punishment from a court of law, and for a reduced punishment, they have to complete Community Service Hours. As a non-profit network, we are able to be acredited to distribute Community Service Hours for your involvement and work within the network. Because it does take time to set up the acreditation process in each local district, it is important that you work with us to help set up the Community Service Hours application to ensure that your Hours directly count to your order, and also are completed within the timeframe that was assigned.
  
  
  
  

Community Equity

• Community Equity is alutomatically given within the Unity Network for-profit branch to all people and organizations involved in any way with the entire network. People can opt out at anytime, but we do our best to track people's contributions and make sure that they recive Community Equity. The actual equity is dependent on the number and amount of contributions from the Community and therefore is always changing overtime, but the more someone contributions with their support, time, and resources, the more Community Equity they are allocated. All a Community Equity allocation guarentees those who acept their equity is a vote to decide where the Community Dividends will go, although the Community certainly has the ability to vote to ditribute the equity dividents to themselves. Community Equity can also be turned into actual Equity overtime depending on the options available. In our network, what most organizations usually call a "Volunteer" would typically get Community Equity automatically instead, although people can opt out of Community Equity and only be a Volunteer. For more information about Community Equity and how to implement it into your own company visit: http://CommunityEquity.net
  
  
  
  

Equity

• Workers have the option to work directly for Equity, which is an actual % ownership in the for-profit branch of the Network. The difference between Community Equity and actual Equity is simple. Community Equity guarnetees you a vote to decide how Community dividends are spent, and actual Equity means the dividens would go directly to you, as you would be a partial owner in the company(s) that you contribute to. All Equity agreements for workers have to be made and agreed upon ahead of time as part of the applications as a paid-worker. The amount of equity in $, or the % ownership of the company need to all be established before the work is started and would be included as part of your agreement just as if you would be paid hourly. Additionally reciving atual equity is considered a trade and can have tax implications. Currently our equity is not worth any particular value, so therefore there is little to no tax implications at this point.
  
  
  
  

Backpay

• Backpay is hourly pay that is put at 100% risk. This means that instead of a normal weekly or monthly upfront pay, instead you acumulate backpay that is paid out when and if we raise money within the organization that is offering you Backpay.  There is no guarentee that you will recive your backpay, but we can guarentee that all unpaid backpay can become Equity if you choose to exchange it into Equity instead of keeping it as Backpay. Because Backpay will be paid once budgeted, and because there is a high priority to budget Backpay, we ONLY offer Backpy if and only if we are NOT able to budget the needed costs of paying workers, and therefore all Backpaid workers are calculated at the same rate as upfront workers in all budgetary decisions. In no way do we equate Backpay differently than upfront pay except that it is to be paid at a later date. Once we start paying Backpay we do NOT offer the option to allow people to work for Backpay. In other words we only start paying back IOUs for Backpay once we are able to pay all our current workers Upfront pay. Therefore if we are successful eventually we will NOT offer Backpay for our general organization, but it could be applicable to new startups within our network.
  
  
  
  
  
  

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Paid Work - Upfront Pay - Options with Upfront Pay:  Paid Daily / Weekly / Monthly


Small Stipend:

• We offer small Stipends for those who don't need minimum hourly paid rates, but would benifit in having a small amount of compensation, especially if otherwize they wouldn't be able to be involved. Stipends can be a single work day, or can cover a week, or monthly on-going work. Stipends are considered less than minimum wage, so typcially we start with an average of half minimum wage based on the number of hours you plan on being activly involved within the Network.  In countries that do NOT have minimum wages we do NOT offer Stipends, that would automatically be a Sallaried Position at less than full time. It does NOT matter how many hours you work, you always get paid the same Stipend every week. If you are on an active stipend and do not work one week, you still get paid, but unless there is a reason for you not working for two full weeks, your stipend would automatically end.
  
  
  
  

Hourly Wage

• The primary form of upfront payment we make within the Unity Network organizations is by hourly rate. Individuals can choose their own hourly rate and it can range from minimum wage to a real wage, or even as high as they want. If people set hourly wages that are above our ability to budget, that is perfectly fine, but we simply would have no work for them until we are able to fundraise more money and budget their involvement. No one can work for an hourly rate that is less than their local minimum wage. The minimum wage and pay laws accross the world are complicated and diffiult to apply, therefore we simply follow the standard contractor laws in the most strict of countries, and apply it globally knowing that there is little change of us breaking any local laws as they are typically less stricked. Hourly rates are tracked and compared globally based on your local minimum wage, but overall our structure simply compares people's rates directly regardless of your location on the planet.
  
  
  
  

Sallary:

• Sallaried Workers get paid a set amount either by the day, week, or on-going monthly work, regardless of the amount of hours they work, but a simple calculation would show that there average hours they put in is equal or above minimum wage. Typically Sallaried workers would be working for less than part time, but if we do hire Sallaried workers on full time compensation, they would be entitled to full benifits required in countries with stricked benifit laws. Currently we do NOT offer any Full time work. We have no ability to budget benifits, and the only thing we offer is our basic volunteer based LIFE Support systems that are part of our existing Network.