Angela wrote:
On 8/13/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org>
wrote:
Looking at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_OTRS, there has
apparently been a board resolution (as of May 26, 2006) to hire
someone to take care of this. It's unclear to me whether or not
someone has yet been hired to do so.
Someone was hired for this but she quit already. I don't know the
exact details of why she left. I believe Brad was tasked with finding
a replacement.
Angela.
On the subject of office help, we advertised on Craig's list locally and
hired someone. She since received an offer to work at her daughter's
school, which included a 40% tuition break so....
We have someone who just started Friday for the first time; she is a
very professional person who is a great receptionist. Alas, it is her
son and not she who speaks German. If things work out with her I
anticipate she will be a receptionist and office person. As soon as we
go into a serious fundraising mode, the office will be overwhelmed.
As to OTRS, I was not able to attend the WM06 OTRS session, but
understand a large number of excellent suggestions came out of that and
there is a plan to help fix things. I have no doubt paid OTRS list
management would be a great thing; nearly all of the OTRS folks I think
of off the top of my head are gainfully employed elsewhere and not quite
the right fit. Surely we will come up with an appropriate solution.
Our traffic on OTRS will not be diminishing significantly anytime soon.
So far as the rest of WMF operations go, one of the major considerations
for the next year is what the correct size for WMF in terms of employees
ought to be. I can easily imagine expanding our roster by a handful in
short order; there is certainly a landslide of work and not enough hands
to guarantee things get done. Just thinking out loud:
Press - we will always have press issues. Should we have a paid staff
person to be the press liason?
Chapters - Surely the Foundation needs to understand the role of
chapters and what staff it will take to support them. Hint, we can't do
anything substantial with the 4 professional staff we have
Tech - Brion and Tim are all we have for paid staff. Do you trust the
whole shebang to just run? We need more dedicated to *guarantee*
performance.
Accounting - WMF needs professional bookkeeping. It is irresponsible to
run a million dollar organization without professional accounting
assistance.
Marketing and fundraising may also evolve to include professional
staff. Note: Danny is grants coordinator and will be doing a lot more
of that work in the near future.
The bottom line here is that we have an extraordinary organization. It
may have been appropriate to run things without paid staff two years ago
when raising $30,000 for servers seemed like a big task. We are now the
15.5th ranked website in the world. Our financial picture is about to
change dramatically, once we have our audit completed in the next few weeks.
The state of the Foundation is strong. We have phenomenal potential.
Because Jimmy has been on world tour for years, but has *not* been
pitching Big Rich Guys for money, he has accumulated great goodwill. We
are on the verge of finally pulling together a program of sustainable
activity with clearly defined goals and clean financials. Exactly the
kind of situation that serious fundraising calls for.
This is the big picture stuff the board will be thinking about for the
Retreat. I'm not worried about a million dollar donation. I'm worried
about how to think about an organization that has a *billion* dollars.
We have jumped several orders of magnitude. WMF isn't going to be
holding bake sales to buy servers.