Delegate admin tasks
There's an increasing admin workload in enkel. Now I'm doing it, but I will not continue. Therefore we need to decide how to delegate this. I can see 2 options:
- Share the workload among enkel members.
- Hire an external admin person.
The tasks are among others:
- General emails response
- Bookings for VPML (shared task w/ Co-Laboratories)
- New members admin + onboarding
- Outgoing and incoming invoicing
- Events, comms and marketing scheduling (content produced by project groups)
- Point of contact for various external organisations (bank, insurance, Town of VicPark, accountant etc)
- Work with finance person
- Small website updates (fix self or outsource)
- Schedule meetings, take minutes
- Community manage Yammer (new task)
If we outsource it to a paid person, the challenge is how to fund it. Some suggestions:
We increase the members fees. Now we have 50 members, i.e. get $500 per month. I guess we spend half of that in costs (marketing, web hosting, insurance, bank etc), so $250 is left for an admin person. I.e. not enough.
A select number of members lends money to enkel, say 10 people put in $1000 each. This can be reimbursed once we start making money (or later). I don't want to continue to be the only member who lends money to enkel, and think this is a good way to get people more involved and have "skin in the game".
Thoughts on this?
I am for upping the fees. Personally not keen to buy in $1000. More than happy to pay monthly, contribute my time and energy. Buy in might come at a later date once I see something I can REALLY sink my teeth into. So far, as much as I love our projects, none have really 100% resonated with me in terms of hitting a passion or making me want to spend more and more of my not-so-spare time apart from contributing to the things I already do on an ongoing basis (if that makes sense?).
You have to start your own project, Levi :) Follow your passion!
I do Adam... just have yet to distill that 100%.
I like both of the above options
1 - I agree member fees well overdue for an increase. It would be great to have somebody in a part-time (paid/voluntary) position that can oversee the admin in a structured way.
2 - I quite like this idea. It is a conversation I have had with other business and organisations. Instead of paying interested in, the interest is paid in services/added value.
I realize that this conversation is connected to the Loomio thread on a new membership model (damn - everything is interconnected...). Perhaps that's the challenge we should focus on.
@jamesquezheng , Mitch and I created a detailed list of tasks, which we have started to populate. Let's see if we can fill all tasks among members before we discuss if to outsource.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K65Z4VSLPgYAZT7KrLDTokumnOWPJR7uUKP-H48tLJM/edit#gid=0
I think Steph had good comments which I think this is following. Not sure what platform that conversation was on.
If you put together a group of ideas people who are energised by ideas and change and new projects, you are not going to find someone in that goup who does administration well.
$250 a month could be 2 hours per week @$30 per hour. Our strength would be in attracting more members so that we can increase the hourly rate rather than trying to do the work ourselves... as that isn't what we are good at. In order to get the right person we would need to give them some power and do what they recommend wherever possible as they would be the administration expert.
The other alternative I have put on Yammer is for us to get someone like Brandan's company to do pro bono work for us @ 2 hours per week. Rather than putting $1000 into enkel we all consciously try to get Brandan's company to do work for us and we promote them to members and friends.
Steps for finding someone who can do admin work
proposal by Adam Jorlen Closed Mon 1 Aug 2016 2:03AM
We will take the following steps to deal with our admin work:
Members will fill out this sheet with admin tasks that they agree to do until xmas:
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K65Z4VSLPgYAZT7KrLDTokumnOWPJR7uUKP-H48tLJM/edit#gid=0)Tasks in the list that are not populated on August 10 will be outsourced. First we try volunteers.
3.If we haven't found volunteers on August 20 we contract it out to paid person. $30/h.
I suggest the following steps:
I have put up a Google Doc (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K65Z4VSLPgYAZT7KrLDTokumnOWPJR7uUKP-H48tLJM/edit#gid=0) with admin tasks that need to be done. Here, people will fill in their name to take responsibility of a task (or several) until xmas. After that we'll see if it works.
Tasks in the list that are not populated on August 10 will be outsourced. First we try volunteers.
3.If we haven't found volunteers on August 20 we contract it out to paid person. $30/h.
Results
| Results | Option | Votes | % of votes cast | % of eligible voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agree | 11 | 100 | 55 |    | |
| Abstain | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Not voted | 9 | 45 |     |
Happy to help with website updates and managing the Yammer group
new members seemed to be very keen to get involved. However as we have all found it takes a while for newbies to find their feet and up to speed with all these tools. Therefore i suggest we follow up personally next Thursday during the weekly catch-up to get more volunteers. then follow the plan outlined
I know I've been very part time with Enkel - I must admit though I signed up as a member on faith that I really believed in the necessity for positive change. That said I didn't know until really recently about the Thurdsay night catchups. I also wasn't in the right yammer groups and didn't have access to google docs etc. so as silly as it seems what looked like lack of commitment was at the time a lack of information. Now that I have a new baby things are a bit different but keen to use this to see how new parents might be involved with something like Enkel. There are a lot of good brains sitting feeding their babies who could be tapped into.
Stemming from the discussion on Saturday about how we don't have a structure and processes in place, the lack of communications is a key part of why we aren't effective. As with all new things, the forming and shaping of an organisation is a creative process and very exciting. We will need to find a balance where we don't lose the innovative edge in the quest to become more structured.
After a recent event that spoke about young people having trouble getting into the workforce (catch 22, no experience = no job, no job = no experience) I am keen to see how we can better help them, and mums or dads, get involved not just in enkel but also more generally.
I think that Comms is a huge issue. One of the things i was going to feedback from the Survey (when we got a moment) was what people used to get info about enkel. Some we use, that no one got info from, so we barely use, but feedback suggests people would a lot more... few other things might jump out in terms of Comms.
Are you able to access this link? I am putting together a map of places that offer work experience, that take volunteers and other places students can get broader experiences. If you can't get it on coggle I will write it out on a blog.
hi Bev, it says:
Diagram not found!
You are not currently logged in. If this diagram exists, you may have access to this diagram if you log in to your account.
If someone gave you a link to this diagram they might also need to give you permission to view it.
Thanks Jacqui
I will transpose it into a blog. After trying Kumu I went back to Coggle to try to sort out all of the data I have got... all over the place. It is a great place to sort information but I realize now that Coggle isn't interoperable so I can't use it. Bugger
Thanks again.
Bev
Thanks Bev. Can you email a link or something later when you get a chance?
https://infocus-careers.com.au/get-experience-volunteer/
If you know of others can you let me know? I have another one that I am putting together on work experience.
Hi Adam, suggest you post the link on Yammer too and reiterate your message.
Yay! We managed to fill out almost the whole list of admin tasks!
The only empty cell is the promotion of events, which is really a marketing task, rather than admin. For now, we'll leave it, with people who organise events being responsible for promoting themselves.
The nice people who have taken on responsibilities (until xmas) and need to proceed according to the 'Next Steps' section in the list are:
@glenhead @bencurrekk @karoline @chrissheilds @mitch @jacqui4 @jordanivatts @stephanieyoong @mannaverheij @andrewthomson @jamesquezheng @marcgriffiths @samlintern @michellephung
Thanks all for releasing me from the shackles of administration!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K65Z4VSLPgYAZT7KrLDTokumnOWPJR7uUKP-H48tLJM/edit#gid=0
Yesterday morning it was proposed that we have 2 full-time employees by the end of 2016. This needs to be rethought.
To get a ball-park figure, I calculate full-time employees to cost $100,000 per year (include sick leave, holiday pay, superannuation, insurance.... any others??).
If we were to be making 10% over costs to pay for one employee we would need to pull in over $1m per year to pay the costs of employing one person.
That isn't realistic.
I'm pretty keen to get more involved with Enkel but It will need to wait until after August when I finish my last big event.
I'd be happy to take on the new members admin + on boarding, or the website stuff, or the bookings.
I think its a good idea to have certain people "buy" into Enkel, I think once people have more of a stake in Enkel, and a vested interest in wanting it to succeed and grow, things will start to move more quickly.