[Wikimedia-l] The one-employee secretariat model

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2013/5/1 Florence Devouard <anthere9 at yahoo.com>:

>
> True. Not all associations are looking for such support and indeed, the
> association needs to show a decent amount of activity to make it worth it.
>
> Note that in many cases, the secretary hired for such positions is NOT a
> student, but rather an experienced person willing and able to do
> multitasking stuff in an autonomous manner and rather looking for a
> long-term position. This balances the fact the volunteers come and go and
> that the board term is often for a limited time (2 or 3 terms maximum). This
> secretary provides an unvaluable element of stability.

In our case (Wikimedia Polska) we were very careful with hiring. The
idea appeared around 2009, but there was no money for both having an
office and paid secretary at that time and it was decided that it
hardly make sense to have empty office or paid secretary working at
home. Next year we had enough money for both. Before hiring we had
made of list of duties and a list of skills needed for doing this
duties. Our first secretary was hired only for a year contract and for
part time (3 days a week  4 hours of work in the office + some duties
outside the office). Our first secretary was mainly working as a
attorney's assistant and work for us was just her extra job. She left
us after a year, as demanded by her attorney boss. Then we hired the
next person - with some modified list of duties and skills needed -
for 4  days of week, still 4 hours of work in an office). Finally -
just in the middle of last year we decided to employ the secretary for
full time. It was decided due to gradual increase of our activity
which need more paper work.



-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz