[Foundation-l] WMF staff & hiring

[Brad Patrick]

Angela wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Anthony <wikilegal at 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.