Re: Agenda item for February SPI board meeting

Jonathan, please add the item "Discussion of back office support" to the
February meeting agenda. I believe this should fall within general
business but don't mind if you put it in another category.

My intention here is for the board to discuss this topic, not to make any
firm decisions during this board meeting.

There is no need to post any of the material below in to the meeting
announcement.

CC:ed to spi-general so the community can discuss.

There have been informal discussions within SPI for a while about
acquiring assistance for the day to day operations of SPI to improve
service delivery to projects. This is especially important considering
that the number of associated projects has been increasing recently and
all indications are that this is going to continue.

Two possible approaches to obtaining back office support are discussed
here. This discussion does not exclude the possibility that other options
exist.

(1) Using a back office company

Numerous companies (in the US and elsewhere) provide back office support
services. A concern here would be obtaining a package that fitted with
SPI's needs and was within SPI's budget.

(2) Hiring a part-time employee

Another option is to hire an office assistant on a part-time basis. The
office assistant could work for however many hours per week that was
agreed with the SPI secretary (subject to upper limits set by the board).
We may find, for example, that we only need an office assistant to work
for 4 hours per week to achieve our aims. The hourly rate of someone
performing this task is likely to be quite modest.

I envision that this office assistant would report to the Secretary and
principally provide support for the Secretary and Treasurer.

An arrangement like this would ideally operate with limited commitment on
either SPI or the office assistant to minimise liability and costs.

I expect that the work could generally be done by someone working from
home but it may make sense for the office assistant to be based close to
the treasurer or secretary for practical reasons. The office assistant
would probably view this work as a suppliment to their normal income.

A similar arrangement has been maintained by SAGE-AU
(http://www.sage-au.org.au) in Australia for many years.

Any such arrangement would need to be consistent with relevant US federal
and state labor laws and would need to be discussed with SPI counsel.

Selection criteria could cover regular office assistant skills, as well as
knowledge of FOSS principles.

There are some of my thoughts on the topic. Comments encouraged.

Cheers,

Rob

--
Director, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
Email: robert(at)spi-inc(dot)org Linux counter ID #16440
IRC: Solver (OFTC & Freenode)
Web: http://www.spi-inc.org
Free and Open Source: The revolution that quietly changed the world

Hi Robert,

One thought first on discussing this in the meeting: we should probably have a
predetermined time limit for this item, since discussions are usually hard to
make deep progress on during the meeting, but it's reasonable to spend a bit of
time to get comments there.

As for my substantive thoughts:

On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 11:56:09AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
> (1) Using a back office company
>
> Numerous companies (in the US and elsewhere) provide back office
> support services. A concern here would be obtaining a package that
> fitted with SPI's needs and was within SPI's budget.

I was at one point involved with another nonprofit that used this kind of
service. That nonprofit ended up moving those man-hours to in-house volunteer
board members because it wasn't cost-effective for their needs. Although every
organization is different and it would be a bit less inappropriate for SPI than
for them, I still think it's a worse option for us than either your option #2
or the status quo.

> (2) Hiring a part-time employee
>
> Another option is to hire an office assistant on a part-time basis.
> The office assistant could work for however many hours per week that
> was agreed with the SPI secretary (subject to upper limits set by
> the board). We may find, for example, that we only need an office
> assistant to work for 4 hours per week to achieve our aims. The
> hourly rate of someone performing this task is likely to be quite
> modest.

This seems useful. We do seem to be rather bottlenecked on the man-hours of remarkably few individuals, principally Michael. To be clear, I'm very happy with what Michael is doing, and having been in his role some years ago I know how hard it is. Still, more man-hours would give him and the rest of SPI more flexibility.

It would probably be wise to list some example tasks that would comprise this person's work week (or the part of it when they're working for SPI), and how much time we guesstimate each task would take, etc. This is not for purposes of micromanagement, but more for planning the budget, the necessary employee skills, the required board member time involved in oversight, etc.

> I envision that this office assistant would report to the Secretary and
> principally provide support for the Secretary and Treasurer.

That's fine if the Secretary and Treasurer are willing to do the corresponding
oversight for that arrangement. :) Still, depending on what duties are
offloaded to this person it might make sense to have them report to (and be
geographically near) the Treasurer. Or Michael could shift things like
corporate records and annual filings to the Secretary and the part-time
employee. Up to them I guess.

> An arrangement like this would ideally operate with limited
> commitment on either SPI or the office assistant to minimise
> liability and costs.

Not sure what you mean by "limited commitment". Certainly it would require some
minimum level of ongoing oversight, as well as some sort of contractual
agreement to protect confidentiality where that makes sense (e.g. donor info or
sensitive early-stage discussions with potential associated projects), plus
more insurance and legal advice than with no employees.

On the plus side, due to the very nature of having an additional person
spending significant time on SPI, it wouldn't inherently mean more work for any
current individuals. And if we ever want to scale beyond one part-time
employee, the jump from 1 to 2 is a lot less onerous than from 0 to 1.

> I expect that the work could generally be done by someone working from
> home but it may make sense for the office assistant to be based close to
> the treasurer or secretary for practical reasons. The office
> assistant would probably view this work as a suppliment to their
> normal income.

Sure.

> Any such arrangement would need to be consistent with relevant US
> federal and state labor laws and would need to be discussed with SPI
> counsel.
>
> Selection criteria could cover regular office assistant skills, as
> well as knowledge of FOSS principles.
>
> There are some of my thoughts on the topic. Comments encouraged.

Agreed. All of that is reasonable. And, at least based on the labor laws for US
jurisdictions I've looked into, the rules that apply with only 1-3 employees
are relatively few and manageable with a bit of due care.

On Sat, 4 Feb 2012, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:

> One thought first on discussing this in the meeting: we should probably
> have a predetermined time limit for this item, since discussions are

Yes fair enough. I find that having a real time discussion with all or
most directors present is a useful way to move a discussion forward. A
short discussion should be sufficient to get us started.

> As for my substantive thoughts:
>
>> (1) Using a back office company
>>
> I was at one point involved with another nonprofit that used this kind
> of service. That nonprofit ended up moving those man-hours to in-house
> volunteer board members because it wasn't cost-effective for their
> needs. Although every organization is different and it would be a bit
> less inappropriate for SPI than for them, I still think it's a worse
> option for us than either your option #2 or the status quo.

Yes I personally suspect that option #2 would probably offer better value
for money but I'd like to take a closer look at option #1.

> This seems useful. We do seem to be rather bottlenecked on the man-hours
> of remarkably few individuals, principally Michael. To be clear, I'm
> very happy with what Michael is doing, and having been in his role some
> years ago I know how hard it is. Still, more man-hours would give him
> and the rest of SPI more flexibility.

Indeed, and it would allow SPI to continue to scale.

> That's fine if the Secretary and Treasurer are willing to do the
> corresponding oversight for that arrangement. :) Still, depending on

Yes this is the sort of thing that we would need to sort out.

I wrote:
>> An arrangement like this would ideally operate with limited
>> commitment on either SPI or the office assistant to minimise
>> liability and costs.
>
> Not sure what you mean by "limited commitment". Certainly it would

In many jurisdictions employment contracts (such as those used by
full-time or permanent employees) carry with them potentially wide ranging
responsibilities & liabilities in law for the organisation and even
officers and directors.

Fortunately labor laws normally allow for less formal arrangements, with
less responsibilities and liabilities on each side.

IANAL. I base my comments on research I've done in various jurisdictions.

> require some minimum level of ongoing oversight, as well as some sort of
> contractual agreement to protect confidentiality where that makes sense
> (e.g. donor info or sensitive early-stage discussions with potential
> associated projects), plus more insurance and legal advice than with no
> employees.

NDAs and confidentiality agreements can occur in all sorts of contexts
(I've signed many over the years as an employee, contractor, consultant,
etc) so I don't think we'd have any problems there.

> Agreed. All of that is reasonable. And, at least based on the labor laws
> for US jurisdictions I've looked into, the rules that apply with only
> 1-3 employees are relatively few and manageable with a bit of due care.

That's reassuring :)

Cheers,

Rob

--
Director, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
Email: robert(at)spi-inc(dot)org Linux counter ID #16440
IRC: Solver (OFTC & Freenode)
Web: http://www.spi-inc.org
Free and Open Source: The revolution that quietly changed the world

On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Robert Brockway <robert(at)spi-inc(dot)org> wrote:
>> I was at one point involved with another nonprofit that used this kind of
>> service. That nonprofit ended up moving those man-hours to in-house
>> volunteer board members because it wasn't cost-effective for their needs.
>> Although every organization is different and it would be a bit less
>> inappropriate for SPI than for them, I still think it's a worse option for
>> us than either your option #2 or the status quo.
>
>
> Yes I personally suspect that option #2 would probably offer better value
> for money but I'd like to take a closer look at option #1.

Just in case it wasn't obvious: If the envisioned amount of hours is
less than 10 per week, then #2 provides for the option that the part
time person would be someone already active in one of the SPI
projects.

For instance a US based university student with the needed skills
would probably be an ideal candidate. Choosing this kind of person
would then enable a "growth path" where either a) the person could
become full time employed later if SPI grows and the person graduates,
or b) he could later stay a volunteer (such as a director) in SPI,
when he is no longer able to have a part-time job due to graduating,
working full-time, family and other reasons.

henrik
--
henrik(dot)ingo(at)avoinelama(dot)fi
+358-40-8211286 skype: henrik.ingo irc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=9522559

On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 11:56:09AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
> Jonathan, please add the item "Discussion of back office support" to
> the February meeting agenda. I believe this should fall within
> general business but don't mind if you put it in another category.
>
> My intention here is for the board to discuss this topic, not to
> make any firm decisions during this board meeting.

I have added this, but the previous approach has been that such
discussion should take place on the lists beforehand, rather than a new,
free ranging discussion being begun at the meeting itself.

My main concern is that we lack definition of "back office support".
What tasks do we expect this new resource to carry out? You say:

> I envision that this office assistant would report to the Secretary and
> principally provide support for the Secretary and Treasurer.

but I haven't seen anything from Michael stating areas he would like
help with, nor have I encountered any areas myself that I think would be
greatly aided by another pair of hands.

I'm not saying this because I'm against the idea, I just think that we'd
need to have at least a rough set of defined tasks that we think are
pain points now (or will become so as we grow) that help would be useful
with.

J.

--
101 things you can't have too much of : 10 - CDs.

Hi

On 05/02/12 19:05, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 11:56:09AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> Jonathan, please add the item "Discussion of back office support" to
>> the February meeting agenda. I believe this should fall within
>> general business but don't mind if you put it in another category.
>>
>> My intention here is for the board to discuss this topic, not to
>> make any firm decisions during this board meeting.
>
> I have added this, but the previous approach has been that such
> discussion should take place on the lists beforehand, rather than a new,
> free ranging discussion being begun at the meeting itself.
>
> My main concern is that we lack definition of "back office support".
> What tasks do we expect this new resource to carry out? You say:
>
>> I envision that this office assistant would report to the Secretary and
>> principally provide support for the Secretary and Treasurer.
>
> but I haven't seen anything from Michael stating areas he would like
> help with, nor have I encountered any areas myself that I think would be
> greatly aided by another pair of hands.
>
> I'm not saying this because I'm against the idea, I just think that we'd
> need to have at least a rough set of defined tasks that we think are
> pain points now (or will become so as we grow) that help would be useful
> with.
>

Personally I have been thinking in a different direction - as an
approach towards handling the current quick growth of SPI. Like Noodles
I'm not against the idea of 'back office support', but I believe that
some slight organizational changes could fill some of the possible gaps.
One such change could be that each of the member project would get a
"contact-director". This would be a more pro-active approach in which
the individual SPI member project would be in an ongoing dialogue with
one identified director/member-of-board. This would hopefully make it
easier to maintain the connection between SPI and project, and on an
ongoing basis offer advice (and suggestions for development).
SPI member project a very different in terms of size, organizational
form and maturity - and I believe there is room for more direct
interaction between project liasons and SPI directors.

This does likewise relate to the more general question about; in what
directions SPI itself shall grow? SPI been a structure which partly came
alive due to Debian needs (and this is not placed in any negative
connotation), but I think it would be positive to look at the current
situation and see if things are in sync?

Chz

>
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> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general

--
Gregers Petersen
Relationship manager, layer 8 and anthropology
glp on irc

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-------------------------------------------------

On Sun, 5 Feb 2012, Jonathan McDowell wrote:

> I have added this, but the previous approach has been that such
> discussion should take place on the lists beforehand, rather than a new,
> free ranging discussion being begun at the meeting itself.

Hi Jonathan. I don't envision the discussion at the board meeting would
be terribly in depth. Id just like to gauge the general feeling of the
other board members.

> My main concern is that we lack definition of "back office support".

I deliberately left this a bit vague at this stage.

> What tasks do we expect this new resource to carry out? You say:

Well areas that I had in mind include:

* Fulfilling any state & federal annual filing requirements

* Processing reimbursement requests so that the treasurer just needs to
authorise them

* Data entry, such as entering reimbursement requests to the accounting
software

In my experience these are time consuming tasks that can be readily handed
off to an assistant.

The very nature of ad hoc reimbursement requests makes them difficult to
automate.

> but I haven't seen anything from Michael stating areas he would like
> help with, nor have I encountered any areas myself that I think would be
> greatly aided by another pair of hands.

Well the purpose of this was to raise the discussion. It may be that this
is not the right way to allow SPI to scale.

I plan to work on a DR/BCP plan for SPI which will involve me
understanding those processes but I haven't got there yet.

> I'm not saying this because I'm against the idea, I just think that we'd
> need to have at least a rough set of defined tasks that we think are
> pain points now (or will become so as we grow) that help would be useful
> with.

Yes fair enough. If there is general support for the idea we can hash it
out further.

I understand an alternative suggestion that has been raised is to retain
the services of a bookkeeper. We can discuss this briefly in the same
agenda item.

Cheers,

Rob

--
Director, Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
Email: robert(at)spi-inc(dot)org Linux counter ID #16440
IRC: Solver (OFTC & Freenode)
Web: http://www.spi-inc.org
Free and Open Source: The revolution that quietly changed the world

Robert,

I'm in favor of getting paid help. Currently we are entirely too
dependant on schultmc's time availability. And we have the money.

> (1) Using a back office company
>
> Numerous companies (in the US and elsewhere) provide back office support
> services. A concern here would be obtaining a package that fitted with
> SPI's needs and was within SPI's budget.

A second issue, when it comes to check processing, is protection from
errors and malfeasance.

A third issue is that no such company will use free software without us
paying them lots of extra money to do so.

This deserves a fair amount of research by one or more SPI members.
Volunteers?

> (2) Hiring a part-time employee
>
> Another option is to hire an office assistant on a part-time basis. The
> office assistant could work for however many hours per week that was
> agreed with the SPI secretary (subject to upper limits set by the
> board). We may find, for example, that we only need an office assistant
> to work for 4 hours per week to achieve our aims. The hourly rate of
> someone performing this task is likely to be quite modest.

The problem with extremely part-time employees is that they tend to be
no more reliable than volunteers, since they don't have a large
financial commitment in working for the organization.

I suggest that we could also investigate splitting a 100% full-time
assistant with some other OSS Foundations.

--Josh Berkus

Robert Brockway <robert(at)spi-inc(dot)org>
> I plan to work on a DR/BCP plan for SPI which will involve me
> understanding those processes but I haven't got there yet.

It took me some brainpower because bookkeeping is not the context I
usually see it in, and I think I've more often seen it called
emergency incident response plan, but for anyone else as thick as me:

Is DR/BCP a Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Plan?

Thanks,
--
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 07:56:45PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> It took me some brainpower because bookkeeping is not the context I
> usually see it in, and I think I've more often seen it called
> emergency incident response plan, but for anyone else as thick as me:
>
> Is DR/BCP a Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Plan?

Yes, DR and BCP are often conflated. The former is a plan for
recovery of infrastructure after a disastrous system failure
while the latter tends to focus more on personnel.

So DR might concern itself with what to do if our accounting
system blows up, and BCP might concern itself with what to do
if all the officers get kidnapped by aliens.

The greatest side effect is usually the authorship of
comprehensive and accurate process documentation that can
be used not just for unlikely emergency situations, but
in the case of normal humdrum personnel changes or for
outsiders trying to understand how an organization works.