Delegate admin tasks

Adam Jorlen Public Seen by 470

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?

Stephanie Yoong Tue 26 Jul 2016 3:56AM

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.

Deleted User Tue 26 Jul 2016 5:18AM

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?).

Adam Jorlen Thu 28 Jul 2016 1:39AM

You have to start your own project, Levi :) Follow your passion!

Deleted User Thu 28 Jul 2016 3:42AM

I do Adam... just have yet to distill that 100%.

Deleted User Wed 27 Jul 2016 1:37AM

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.

Adam Jorlen Thu 28 Jul 2016 1:41AM

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.

Adam Jorlen Thu 28 Jul 2016 11:43AM

@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

Bev Johnson Fri 29 Jul 2016 12:35AM

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.

Poll Created Fri 29 Jul 2016 2:28AM

Steps for finding someone who can do admin work Closed Mon 1 Aug 2016 2:03AM

Outcome

by Adam Jorlen Tue 25 Apr 2017 5:23AM

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.