On 3/2/07, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote: [snip]
The savings in travel expenses combined with increasing the opportunities to establish strategic relationships (and funding opportunities) should more than offset the increased cost in rent and in cost in living increases for staff. Those costs can and should be mitigated for by avoiding actually having the office in a world city, but just outside it.
The difference in expected payscale for a single employee between St. Pete and the DC area will pay for something between 50-100 roundtrip flights between Tampa and DC, depending on the exact scheduling. The flight takes only two hours, and the Tampa airports as well as all three of the DC area airports are easy to deal with.
The difference in expected pay for someone in the bay area would be much greater, yet the bay area lacks much of the governmental and non-profit base that DC has.
We also already have a board member who lives in the DC area.
I think this thread is sort of silly.
As far as attractive places to live go, St. Petersburg Florida is pretty good. As far as connectivity to other organizations go, we're better off with single good representatives near important cities. We need to keep in mind that no location is close to everything.