Starting out
 it makes a lot of sense
 to do consensus
EveryOnes equal 
A founder, more or less
EveryOne has a say.
But over time
And increased amount of people,
Some coming in new
And a history develops
Previous decisions
Some get revised

And meetings lose their energy
And get bogged down
People get tired of hearing the same opinions
Many of which were voted down
Brought up again & again
By the same people
Like we don't think 
drinking during meetings is good...

And incorporated 
sounds better & better
We want legal status
501c3
NonProfit
Taking donations
Tax deductible
And buying wholesale requires a legal entity, an address for shipping, etc
And the traditional legal structure
Is a board, limited number of people, makes meetings quicker
We'll go from consensus to majority
We don't have to start over with each new person who shows up
Therefore
Hierarchy
ResponseAbility you said you would do that but ...
Authority
 Got a title, now what?
Financial reports instead of a kitty
And need insurance
What if?
This or that bad thing happens
The (new) space requires it
Slip & fall?
Someone gets hurt?
We've invested all this time, energy, money
Sweat equity
And want at least recognition for it,
Respect, been to
 almost all of these meetings, 
and now new people
Bright new ideas/their way/stamp on things
Slowing things down,
Start over from the beginning, 
Why do it this way, 
instead of that? etc

So Utopia gets clouded
And just another business
Not being a boss
But told what to do
 by others
Dream(s) lost
Had to grow up
Reality
Bummer man/woman/child/nonbinary, etc

Some consider it growing pains.

Seen it in many structures/orgs over the years
yeah I'm getting jaded
Some call it experience:
Knowing What Not To Do
Because we tried that 
and it didn't work out that well
Becoming the nay sayer
Instead of yes we can

My 0.02-inflation
DwC

From Mental Health Drop in Centers
To bike advocacy
To Hacker/MakerSpaces
To Bike Coops/Collectives

NoVAPeers.PBWorks.com
DancesWithCars.CrazyGuyOnABike.co
aka just another bozo
 on a bike




On Fri, May 27, 2022, 04:23 Thomas Butler <thomas.unavailable@gmail.com> wrote:
Austin's Yellow Bike Project is going through a governance transition. We used to be a fairly horizontally organized consensus-run collective of volunteers who did the day-to-day of what happens at the shop, and our size wasn't limited. We are becoming an exclusive board of probably 6-9 people. Some of us are still running shops, but about half are not.

We're currently trying to work out (among many other things) how board members are (s)elected and to whom the board is accountable. Or more concretely, how the board is held accountable. We don't have "members," so the questions of "who gets to vote" is among the ones we're trying to answer.

If you have thoughts or if your org went through something like this I'm interested to hear about it. In particular what best practices and pitfalls you encountered.

The board also has appetite for  working through this with a professional. Some of us are less psyched about people who don't have experience with groups that have our consensus- / volunteer-run d.i.y. culture, horizontal organizing history, etc. Many of them have experience only with the more traditional non-profit board model and struggle to wrap their heads around how we used to operate and why. Suggestions are welcome.

Feel free to email me privately if you like at thomas.unavailable@gmail.com
Or you can reply here.

Thanks
Thomas Butler
he | him | his
Austin's Yellow Bike Project
austinyellowbike.org
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