Continuing the discussion from What skill sets are short?:
I started drafting notes about what the complete set of roles looks like for a really successful team and community. We have a semi-functioning structure already but it’s not adequate and has lots of issues.
I’m making this post a wiki to allow for collaborative updating (along with potential discussion) to get closer to the full organization we need.
I hope the notes below can get updated until we’re happy with a good foundational restarting point. We can then iterate from there. We can also mark what roles are unfilled and underfilled once the overall structure is settled (and note: we should identify all the roles we know we’d like even if we can manage without them — that way we have the most clarity about ways to fit in new volunteers).
Please edit or reply in a new comment with any thoughts about what should be adjusted or added…
(Potential) Roles / circles (updated and/or new)
General Manager
Board of Directors
primary initial goal: seeing through the drafting and acceptance of initial Bylaws in conjunction with legal team; after that, Board will be elected per the Bylaws.
Traits desired:
- FLO knowledge/sensitivity
- co-op, democracy, equity political values, insights
- experience in advising, serving on Boards
- software/web development
- sensitivity, experience regarding distributed global team and volunteers
- fundraising experience
- diversity among Board members
- accountabilities:
- monthly meetings
- reading relevant email and forum updates
- availability for some between-meeting advising
Treasurer
including accounting, tax filing, and finance in general
Secretary
Co-op developer
Lead our specific co-op implementation and the running of the co-op democratically etc., engagement with general membership, newsletter?
Human Resources / assistant to General Manager etc.
Helping support the other team members, listen to concerns, provide coaching and support, facilitate good communication, regular 1-on-1check-ins, whatever can be done to encourage others and help everyone succeed. Know who’s who in the team etc. Onboarding of newcomers.
Facilitator / mods
Neutral support for the community in the forum and elsewhere, someone actively willing to flag, to contact people with grace about concerns, help run meetings
Project manager
prioritizing tasks, backlog grooming, tracking milestones, coordinating related tasks
Development (building our product)
- CTO / technical lead — architecture, tech stack, managing code contributors etc.
- Programmers
- Frontend protyping, implementation (html/sass/js)
- Backend (Haskell — and/or potentially others if discussed and agreed)
- Testers / Reviewers
Organizational management / Operations
Maintaining working systems and business etc.
- sysadmin (including compliance, security etc)
Outreach
covers acquisition/marketing and support/recruiting/community…
- Blog editor / publicist (solicit posts from others, guide and edit etc)
- CiviCRM manager
- press liaison, managing questions, customer service etc
Lawyers and legal help:
- web platform knowledge (terms, liabilities, etc)
- co-op issues
- financial, tax, donation issues, esp. international