The AMS Bike Co-op & The Bike Kitchen at UBC in Vancouver went through two such transitions.
One was a transition on the Bike Kitchen (DIY social enterprise bike shop) from worker-run to having a formal manager. The transition was forced by the volunteer board of directors of the AMS Bike Co-op (student club under the university's student union) who officially have authority over the Bike Kitchen. It was not a friendly transition, but it was deemed necessary since the business was basically failing. There was not enough coordination between stocking supplies, parts, scheduling shifts, and pricing policy. We (I was one of the directors) made the seniormost existing mechanic into a manager, and some mechanics left as a result. IIRC they left explicitly because they only wanted to work in a worker collective context. Since then, a new manager has been hired as a joint effort between the outgoing Bike Kitchen manager, employees, and the AMS Bike Co-op.
The other transition was on the AMS Bike Co-op side. We're still technically a student club under the university student union, but in addition to the volunteer board of directors, we have now had permanent paid staff for many years. We initially only had temporary student labour paid out of grants, but at some point we passed a student levy that greatly increased our funding. Our initial move was to hire an "Executive Director" permanent employee. The title was just chosen because that's what we saw other non-profits using, but it turned out to be a problem because it implies global scope and it gave directors the wrong idea about what their job was, and the contract was too vague so everything became their job. We renegotiated a contract with the title changed to "Programs Manager" along with other terms to make it more clear what was the scope of the job, and things went pretty well from there. The Programs Manager managed the various outreach, volunteer, and collaboration programs, and also hired other permanent staff as needed.
My little summary probably grossly oversimplifies things. If anyone adds further details that contradicts some of what I said, I assume responsibility for misremembering.
Jean-François
On 2020-06-19 8:39 p.m., Carlyn Arteaga wrote:
We are paid-staff-run but still consensus-based and mostly still sales-via-donations sustained. I wasn't around during the transition, though, so I can't help much on that front. But happy to answer any specific questions about how we make it work. ~Carlyn
On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 1:29 AM Dennis Wollersheim <dewoller@gmail.com mailto:dewoller@gmail.com> wrote:
I would also like to hear about this. Our organisation is trying to hire a manager for the first time, and I can see it will be difficult for the board / senior volunteers to let go of control. I get exasperated when the board spends an hour discussing the wording of a social media post. In my view, these should be procedural issues, dealt with by the manager. It will be a painful transition, I reckon. Cheers Dennis On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:13 AM Thomas Butler <thomas.unavailable@gmail.com <mailto:thomas.unavailable@gmail.com>> wrote: I’m interested to hear from people whose organizations made transitions from: volunteer-centric to staff-centric all-donation to grant-(or retail-)funded consensus-run to exclusive/majoritarian board (or something else) In particular what were peoples’ objections to the transition? What problems or pitfalls were there? Did the shop lose its independence? What net-negatives were there (even if overwhelmingly outweighed by all the positives?) Please feel free to reply to my personal email here if there’s something you don’t want to put on blast: thomas.unavailable@gmail.com <mailto:thomas.unavailable@gmail.com> My interest is not regarding articles of incorporation or how to fill out 501c3 paperwork. (there are threads on those topics in TheThinkTank archives <http://lists.bikecollectives.org/pipermail/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org/> if anyone is curious). Your testimonial is likely more relevant if your organization's incorporation is far in the past relative to its transition(s). Thank you all so much for the work you do in your own communities and for the work you do in this community of ours. Thomas Butler he | they Austin’s Yellow Bike Project ____________________________________ The ThinkTank mailing List Unsubscribe from this list here: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/options.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org -- -- ------------------------------------------- Dennis Wollersheim ------------------------------------------- ____________________________________ The ThinkTank mailing List Unsubscribe from this list here: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/options.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org--
*Carlyn Arteaga*
/pronouns: they/them/theirs/
Youth Program Coordinator____
*BICAS____*
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/Through advocacy and bicycle salvage, our mission is to participate in affordable bicycle transportation, education, and creative recycling with our greater Tucson community./
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