I'm going through this now. Plenty for discussion!

One elementary question that I haven't found documented anywhere... who *are* all the current board members?

I think some explication of our strategic goals would also be really helpful. We've talked in person about where we're hoping to take this organization within a few years, but implicit strategy ideas don't necessarily shine through the line item goals. (Why, for example, do we want Facebook and Twitter followers? And why do we want to run edit-a-thons? Those reasons matter a lot in terms of *how* we would conduct those activities.)

-Sage

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 8:51 AM, Lane Rasberry <lane@bluerasberry.com> wrote:
Hello,

This is an excellent budget. It has the right level of detail and its expenses are at a scale which I think fits the history of activity of this group. Here are my initial criticisms of the budget - on the face of it, everything else looks good to me:
  • I think for the first year it is premature to have awards. I know that the "awards" are really to promote participation, but I fear that since other groups do not commonly offer awards and the concept is untested, requesting funding in this space may distract from good community response for the rest of the proposal. I would endorse the award items for year two now.
  • The travel scholarships should be for community-decided persons, not necessarily for people in certain board positions.
  • The camera project is I think best removed from this budget. I like it and would support it immediately but all costs related to buying equipment might be better considered in the context of an independent funding request which could be made in parallel to this request. If this project were funded once then in the future I would support the chapter budget maintaining it, and from the beginning, I would support the chapter managing this as if it were like any other routine business.

Pine says "I really think that we need a paid manager; this person may be the president, the treasurer, or someone that we decide to hire as an employee under the president." I agree that a paid manager, especially at the modest cost of $5000 for the year and considering the history of barely-documented events this group has done, would be a great value and excellent step toward maintaining activity while increasing metrics reporting. It is obvious that volunteers cannot do this. However, I hesitate to say that board members should be eligible for pay. I think it would be controversial and distracting to have any board member hired by the rest of the board. If others acknowledge the problems this could cause and no one objects to the proposal, then I think a practice to adopt for now might be to say outright that board members have no special access to funding or compensation that any other member has, and that board members cannot also be paid staff of the chapter. Pine in my opinion would be an ideal manager if a board would manage him.

Pine, thanks for this solid, modest, and well-considered proposal. I especially appreciate your emphasis on reporting metrics, which is something that volunteers find tedious and which you have incorporated into the design of all processes here.

yours,


On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 7:29 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
* The draft bylaws are posted. Please comment and sign your comments!
* Draft goals, budget tables, and a calendar are posted as a Google spreadsheet with three tabs.  Please comment and sign your comments!
* A draft awards policy is posted. Please comment and sign your comments!
* WMF has yet to respond to a request to let us post the draft Trademark Agreement. I will show it to attendees at the meeting if we do not hear anything from WMF.

Notes:

* There are some one-time startup expenses in the budget that should happen this year only, such as the 501(c)(3) registration and preparation costs. Other costs may be annual, such as insurance.

* I have included several items that a variety of members had on our personal wish lists or that people mentioned seemed like good ideas. The full set of projects and goals is fairly expansive, and the budget is proportionate to that. I would encourage you to read the budget spreadsheet by starting with the goals tab, then the calendar tab, and finally the budget tab. Items in the budget that I feel should get particular attention for discussion are typed in purple text.
* I have included funding in the draft budget for two "Wikimedian-in-residence" positions at 100 hours each for the year, largely anticipated for the summer months although with some flexibility from April through October. In addition to tasking them for outreach to potential GLAM, education, and research partners, these individuals may be asked to lead edit-a-thons, workshops, and perhaps assist with aspects of WikiConference USA planning that are beneficial to Cascadia (if there is an agreement between Cascadia and the conference organizers that some staff assistance from us would be mutually beneficial).

* I included funding for the Cameras for Commons photographers pilot program in our grant request. Although the scope of this program is global, no organization has agreed to take it on, and I believe we can do so with minimal additional labor. I believe that his pilot is a worthwhile experiment.

* I hope that everyone will understand that many hours have been volunteered in preparing this budget. The time is after 4 AM, and this is not the first long night that I have spent trying to help with Cascadia's launch. I have sacrificed many paid hours and some sleep to work on Cascadia over the past several months. I love this project and I love the people who are involved with Cascadia, but I need my sleep and I need to be paid if I'm going to spend so many hours on Cascadia. I have proposed that starting in February, the person who becomes responsible for the day-to-day management and startup of Cascadia as described in this plan, be compensated for their time. That person might be me or it might not; that is the Board's decision to make. I am estimating that there will be about 40 hours of paid work in February and about 15 hours per month thereafter for the manager. If additional hours are necessary, a supplemental budget request can be made. (Also, as mentioned above, I budgeted paid time for the Wikimedians-in-Residence.) There may be variations in hours from month to month for the manager; this is something that we will need to discuss since the variability has been found to be a challenge by at least one other Wikimedia organization employee who ended up quitting because he/she found it to be so problematic. I have tried to calendar projects in such a way as to smooth the month-to-month hours variation for the manager, and I personally would be willing to accept the risk of a variable-hours position like this after my internship is done at the end of January, but the Board would need to agree to this. I would appreciate it if Board members would think about how they would like the organization to be managed starting in February, because I've passed any reasonable boundary for volunteer time by a large margin. I've heard from another Cascadian that he also feels worn out. I really think that we need a paid manager; this person may be the president, the treasurer, or someone that we decide to hire as an employee under the president. Please think about this issue before Tuesday. I hope that WMF would agree to a modest labor funding request for a (very) part-time manager, and I hope that the Cascadia Board will too.

* Thank you in advance for your questions and comments about the proposal. Please participate using Google's comment feature.

It's nice to collaborate with all of you, and I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday at 6 PM at the University of Washington's Communications Building in room 321. Thanks to Mako and Monika for getting us a meeting room. (:

Have a nice weekend,

Pine

This is an Encyclopedia
One gateway to the wide garden of knowledge, where lies
The deep rock of our past, in which we must delve
The well of our future,
The clear water we must leave untainted for those who come after us,
The fertile earth, in which truth may grow in bright places, tended by many hands,
And the broad fall of sunshine, warming our first steps toward knowing how much we do not know.
—Catherine Munro

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--
Lane Rasberry
user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia

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