Talk:Compensation

Rob: I understand the motivation for this. I have never seen anything like this and suspect it is not needed. Our labour pool is our membership. Some of our labour pool will work for us. At this time, all our labour is voluntary. Volunteers work not for compensation - whether real or fictional. They work because they a) have the time available, and b) believe in the cause / objective. As the party grows, if may increase its ability to raise funds and it would then be in a position to pay for labour. This would both allow us to compete for labour from outside our membership and also to compete for time from within our membership. I strongly recommend that this be avoided except for very surgical / high profile exceptions - for as long as possible. As soon as people begin getting paid - three things begin to happen a) resentment (some people get paid, some don't) and b) demoralization of volunteers (unpaid), and c) turf protection by paid staff. The turf protection is the worst of these. What happens is staff controls access to getting stuff done and effectively block volunteers from helping - in order to keep the work for themselves - and make it appear that they are needed and indispensable. Having the Leader receive compensation would not cause any problems. Having an Executive Director paid would not cause any problems. Paying these two key roles does widen the candidate pool. Paying for certain things very selectively on an ad hoc basis would not cause any problems. While it may seem hard to operate a 100% volunteer organization, I suggest that it is even harder to run a mixed paid / volunteer organization - and introducing pay for work will likely reduce the total labour output from our membership.