Members vs Volunteers: What's the Diff & How Do You Structure It
Pals, I'm trying to create clear pathways to leadership/collective membership for interested volunteers, and trying to have membership be awesome and not "just like being a volunteer but with more guilt and obligation and UGH."
How do you approach this stuff in your shop? Do you structure a division between responsible members and interested volunteers? How do you bring people across that transition? Also, what's rad about being a member that makes people want to do it?
Background and concerns: We've got a budding group of charismatic new volunteers (yay!) and a tired old group of "members" (oy!) i.e. organizers with decision-making power and some sense of adopted or begrudgingly accepted responsibility. (In your group, these might be "board members" maybe?) In the past, we've had either (1) a lackadaisical/non-systematic approach to elevating members, or (2) an overly structured but not really effective way of sharing responsibilities. What happens in the first case is that after someone becomes a member and attends a meeting, (a) they're like "y'all are boring and this makes my brain hurt" and then decide not to do "member-y" stuff anymore, or (b) they participate pretty minimally, leaving the organizational burdens distributed about the same way they were before. What happens in the second case is that everyone gets exhausted by trying to administratively caretake an organizational structure instead of doing the fun work.
PLZ HALP K THNKS LV U
Josh
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
BUMP :)
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 2:17 PM Josh Bisker jbisker@gmail.com wrote:
Pals, I'm trying to create clear pathways to leadership/collective membership for interested volunteers, and trying to have membership be awesome and not "just like being a volunteer but with more guilt and obligation and UGH."
How do you approach this stuff in your shop? Do you structure a division between responsible members and interested volunteers? How do you bring people across that transition? Also, what's rad about being a member that makes people want to do it?
Background and concerns: We've got a budding group of charismatic new volunteers (yay!) and a tired old group of "members" (oy!) i.e. organizers with decision-making power and some sense of adopted or begrudgingly accepted responsibility. (In your group, these might be "board members" maybe?) In the past, we've had either (1) a lackadaisical/non-systematic approach to elevating members, or (2) an overly structured but not really effective way of sharing responsibilities. What happens in the first case is that after someone becomes a member and attends a meeting, (a) they're like "y'all are boring and this makes my brain hurt" and then decide not to do "member-y" stuff anymore, or (b) they participate pretty minimally, leaving the organizational burdens distributed about the same way they were before. What happens in the second case is that everyone gets exhausted by trying to administratively caretake an organizational structure instead of doing the fun work.
PLZ HALP K THNKS LV U
Josh
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
I've gotten a few interesting responses off-thread to this but want to keep hammering at it here and see if folks have good ideas.
I'm trying to create clearer pathways to leadership for interested volunteers, and trying to have "collective membership" be awesome and not just "kinda like being a volunteer but with more guilt and obligation and UGH."
How do you approach this stuff in your shop? Do you structure a division between responsible members and interested volunteers? How do you bring people across that transition? Also, what's rad about being a member that makes people want to do it?
Background and concerns: We've got a budding group of charismatic new volunteers (yay!) and a tired old group of "members" (oy!) aka organizers with decision-making power and some sense of adopted / begrudgingly accepted responsibility. (In your group, these might be "board members" maybe?) In the past, we've had either (1) a lackadaisical/non-systematic approach to elevating members, or (2) an overly structured but not really effective way of sharing responsibilities. What happens in the first case is that after someone becomes a member and attends a meeting, (a) they're like "y'all are boring and this makes my brain hurt" and then decide not to do "member-y" stuff anymore, or (b) they participate pretty minimally, leaving the organizational burdens distributed about the same way they were before. What happens in the second case is that everyone gets exhausted by trying to administratively caretake an organizational structure instead of doing the fun work.
PLZ HALP K THNKS LV U
Josh
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 2:11 PM Josh Bisker jbisker@gmail.com wrote:
BUMP :)
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 2:17 PM Josh Bisker jbisker@gmail.com wrote:
Pals, I'm trying to create clear pathways to leadership/collective membership for interested volunteers, and trying to have membership be awesome and not "just like being a volunteer but with more guilt and obligation and UGH."
How do you approach this stuff in your shop? Do you structure a division between responsible members and interested volunteers? How do you bring people across that transition? Also, what's rad about being a member that makes people want to do it?
Background and concerns: We've got a budding group of charismatic new volunteers (yay!) and a tired old group of "members" (oy!) i.e. organizers with decision-making power and some sense of adopted or begrudgingly accepted responsibility. (In your group, these might be "board members" maybe?) In the past, we've had either (1) a lackadaisical/non-systematic approach to elevating members, or (2) an overly structured but not really effective way of sharing responsibilities. What happens in the first case is that after someone becomes a member and attends a meeting, (a) they're like "y'all are boring and this makes my brain hurt" and then decide not to do "member-y" stuff anymore, or (b) they participate pretty minimally, leaving the organizational burdens distributed about the same way they were before. What happens in the second case is that everyone gets exhausted by trying to administratively caretake an organizational structure instead of doing the fun work.
PLZ HALP K THNKS LV U
Josh
Josh Bisker 914-500-9890 New York Mechanical Gardens Bike Co-op http://bikecoop.nyc/ 596 Acres http://596acres.org/ Bindlestiff Family Cirkus http://bindlestiff.org/
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Josh Bisker