wiki:projects/leadership-committee/labor

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Voluntary and Contracted work Subcommittee

Introduction

For MF/PL, voluntary work is an expression of the commitment to our organization and the morale of its members and it has always been an essential aspect of our daily work. At the same time, there are concrete needs that our volunteer workers cannot meet. Thanks to the enormous contribution of our members, volunteers and staff, MF/PL has the resources to pay for work in some important areas of our daily operations. We consider the decisions on who is hired and for what work to be a Co-Directors' responsibility since they oversee our operations but we also need to develop a general strategic vision and policy about what work is needed and what type of person we hire and/or recruit to do that work.

Considerations

In the subcommittee we considered that:

  • activist volunteer work is the basis of the political and technical development of our organization, which is why it is strategic to be able to incorporate new members in the different areas of work, especially those that we want to improve.
  • neither our organization nor our members have sufficiently acknowledged/celebrated our volunteer labor.

Proposals

Thus, in terms of voluntary and subcontracted work, we propose that the Leadership Committee contemplate:

1) Creating more opportunities for our volunteers to participate in political campaigns and events, in order to highlight the political relevance of their contributions.

2) Survey our volunteers, with the following objectives:

  • learn about their motivations to understand the reasons for their participation, the level of interest in more collective work, and to gather suggestions. This is the proposed survey to the LC:
    Survey
    
    Goal: to learn about the motivations of our volunteer colleagues in order to understand the reasons for their participation, what they value most of the work they do for MF/PL and also to let them make suggestions to the political leadership of our association.
    
    1. Name
    
    2. Do you have an individual membership or is it through a member organization (in that case, provide the name)
    
    3. Describe the work you do in MF/PL
    
    4. Why is MF/PL important to you and what motivates you to be a volunteer?
    
    5. How much time do you regularly dedicate to this work?
    
    6. If there is a relationship, how does your paid work relate to your volunteer work in MF/PL?
    
    7. The Leadership Committee has created four subcommittees: Democracy, Promotion and Communication, Voluntary and Contracted work, and finally, Membership and Agenda. In accordance with the objectives described here https://support.mayfirst.org/wiki/projects/leadership-committee
    What suggestions do you want to make for the subcommittees to consider?
    
  • get them to participate in developing the job descriptions for work we will be compensating people for

3) Shine a light on the work of the volunteers and its activist nature in conjunction with a political development strategy

  • Offering a biannual publication - in digital or print format - that chronicles how the volunteer labor is creating solutions to common needs of our membership, being explicit about the relationships, political content and activism
  • Highlighting individuals in order to bring out the traits that are shared by all our team

4) Offer an acknowledgement to our volunteers for their contributions:

  • through our publications
  • thru an annual fiesta that celebrates the activism and volunteer labor within our organization

Relationship between the labor subcommittee and the promotion and communication subcommittee

This subcommittee has done a review of the various functions that the organization has and feels that one area that is very important and needs to be strengthened is Promotion and Communication - due to its direct relationship with the promotion of voluntary labor.

Assessments regarding the role of promotion:

  • Our organization does not have a systematic process for promotion
  • What we are currently producing should be helping us grow our membership and our teams of volunteers even more
  • Offering Internet services as the primary membership benefit is both a strength, because it creates a path for joining for those who need those services, and a hindrance when we try to develop political collaborations and alliances within our membership

We discussed how to implement said strengthening and wanted to share two options:

  • the hiring of a person who is dedicated to doing systematic outreach or
  • the initiation of an outreach project that allows Leadership Committee members who wish to participate, to be able to access funds to cover per diems, travel expenses and printed materials <y desarrollen la sistematización de sus experiencias de promoción de trabajo voluntario y nuevas membresías como tareas relacionadas aunque diferentes>

Comments about the Voluntary and Contracted work Subcommittee

Comentarios: La estrategia de promoción puede contemplar la identificación previa de actores a los que se desea hacer miembros/voluntarios, o regiones específicas en algunos estados de nuestros países, o sectores o grupos (por su perfil técnico, por sector económico, por perfil político, etc.) La promoción no sólo es hacia afuera de nuestra organización para la atracción de nuev@s miembros y el reclutamiento de voluntari@s, también lo es como parte de un proceso de comunicación organizacional que fortalezca los lazos existentes y permita, por ejemplo, asistir en la migración de recursos de comunicación (sitios web, correo-e, listas, entre otros) desde proveedores comerciales hacia nuestra infraestructura, promover el establecimeinto de nuevas alianzas de colaboración al interior de nuestra membresía.

MF/PL Functions covered with Voluntary and Contracted work

I see four areas of work that MF/PL has that requires labor (both paid and unpaid):

Infrastructure

  • Top level tech work - Ross
  • Ongoing management of support - Dana
  • Support queue
  • Adding and improving technology options

Outreach/Recruitment

  • Finances - including membership dues - Hilary
  • Getting new members
  • Getting current members involved
  • Getting more techies involved

Political Campaigns and Education

  • USSF
  • Palestine work
  • MagNET
  • Technology oriented campaigns (i.e. Skype)

Translation and Interpretation

  • Emails that get sent out to the Leadership Committee and the Monthly newsletter that goes to the Membership
  • Web pages
  • Leadership committee meetings
  • Membership meeting

Estructura básica de la organización

  • Equipo base
  • Comité de Dirección / Comité de Liderazgo
  • Equipo de soporte
  • Equipo de internacionalización
Last modified 11 years ago Last modified on Apr 25, 2013, 6:26:53 PM