[Foundation-l] Update of Foundation organization

[George Herbert]

On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/03/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > There may be many people volunteering their time. There is a great lack of
> > people for specific functions.
> >
> > Yes, volunteers are given tasks/responsibilities. It is however up to them
> > to decide what they want to do and when they do them. They are volunteers,
> > they cannot be told. The notion of relying on a specific task to be done in
> > a certain time frame is something you CAN demand of an employee not from a
> > volunteer.
> >
> > PS I have some sort of official capacity; I am a member of the language
> > committee. Some people say that we take our time. I would argue that this is
> > not necessarily a bad thing.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
>
> I understand what you're saying about volunteers not being obligated
> to the foundation and that even trusted volunteers may have a tough
> time justifying getting out of bed in the morning for the Foundation,
> but I think the level of obligation many of our users feel to the
> project is comparable to the the obligation felt by an employee and
> could be put to use.
>
> If a volunteer strongly believes in the work of the foundation, has
> shown commitment to the project through positions of trust, has shown
> that they will do at least X hours a day, and has assumed much
> responsibility then I think they could be trusted with a position.
>
> I agree, there are some critical jobs with time-sensitivity that
> cannot be left to volunteers, but volunteers should be used as
> extensively as possible.

In my opinion, there's no question but that volunteers who are able to
consistently deliver can accomplish many things.

There are also things that they can't reliably accomplish, because
family, work, and other aspects of "having a life" will prevent them
from focusing 20-30 hours on a particularly hard problem.  There are a
few exceptions - retired people, independently rich people, and
unemployed spouses come to mind - but in general, we cannot expect
people to dedicate work-like effort to the project on a volunteer
basis.

Adding internal employees is not taking work away from volunteers,
it's enabling the community as a whole to get some things done that
require more time and focus than volunteers can bring to the role.

Charitable nonprofits, even those with large volunteer pools, use full
time paid employees.  They do so for very good reasons...


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com