Re: [Discuss] Fwd: What makes a team member?

[Aaron Wolf]

On 10/19/2015 11:05 AM, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> Aaron, what are your thoughts about that?
> 

From here on, try to remember reply in context at the *bottom* of an
email / below the thing in context. It's much easier to follow that way.

Anyway, I think that it's okay to say that employees don't *have* to be
co-op members, and to be they must be patrons just like everyone else.
Or we could require it, but still have them be patrons.

> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 11:04 AM, Jonathan Roberts
> > wrote:
> 
> Brian,
> 
> Your first comment makes a lot of sense. I think that option is
> definitely off the table.
> 
> Paying a member fee is an interesting thought. I guess I hadn't
> considered that. I have been mostly thinking that it makes sense to
> give full time staff, payed or not, special representation on the
> board. In other words, I'm not sure I want a possibility for someone
> to be able to just "buy in" to that class, whatever we call it.
> 
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Bryan Richter  > wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 10:09:22PM -0700, Aaron Wolf wrote:
> >
> > The question is: How do we determine who gets to count enough as a 
> team
> > member of Snowdrift and thus get to vote in that member class in the
> > co-op? The same question also must be answered for counting as a 
> member
> > of other project teams too.
> 
> I assume this idea has floated around before, but to be
> explicit, what
> of the notion of paying a nominal fee to become a member? That's the
> route taken by all the co-ops I've been a part of (Davis Food Coop,
> REI, etc.)
> 
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-- 
Aaron Wolf Snowdrift.coop 
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: What makes a team member?

[Stephen Michel]

While we're going meta...

One thing that stands out to me is that this whole discussion is 
predicated upon the assumption that these 3 classes must exist. I 
haven't spent enough time reading the bylaws, etc, to determine if this 
assumption is valid; I just wanted to make it explicit.


I will continue to ponder.
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Re: [Discuss] Fwd: What makes a team member?

[Aaron Wolf]

On 10/17/2015 09:54 PM, Jason Harrer wrote:
> Hi, Jon -
> 
> I'm assuming you're referring to the Team Member designation for users
> affiliated with projects on Snowdrift.coop.  If you're referring to
> something else, then this response may not be valid for your question,
> and my apologies in advance for the misunderstanding.
> 

Thanks for the thoughts, Jason. I think this perspective *will* help Jon
make sense of other things. But the topic is indeed different. This is
about who gets to count for which class of co-op member as
Snowdrift.coop proposes a *multistakeholder* co-op model. So, there are
three classes: Snowdrift, Projects, General. The first is for the
employees/team of Snowdrift specifically (like working on the site
itself), the second is those who work on other projects that we help
fund, and the third is people who are only patrons.

The question is: How do we determine who gets to count enough as a team
member of Snowdrift and thus get to vote in that member class in the
co-op? The same question also must be answered for counting as a member
of other project teams too.


> My first thought on your ask is that there seems to be an assumption
> that all projects that will be signing up for Snowdrift.coop will be
> coops themselves.

We do not assume that projects must themselves run as co-ops, we just
encourage them to.

> 
> Many of the Open Source software projects that are out there are a
> one-man or few-man show.  There's not enough folks there to justify a
> full on command hierarchy like there would be at a corporation. 
> Especially at the beginning, many of the folks will be purely
> volunteer.  Until these projects get up and running, there's a chance
> that not even the one-man contributors may be getting paid to work on
> the project (or, potentially, paid enough, as some only get paid a small
> amount each month, potentially less than minimum wage in whatever
> state/province/county/country/etc. they hail from, which would then lead
> to the question of...  at what threshold of payment would one be
> considered an employee vs. a volunteer?).  If you're talking about some
> of the other project types that Snowdrift.coop is available for (music,
> art, writing, etc.), it's even less likely that they'll fit a coop or
> command-hierarchy mold.

Regardless of internally working as a co-op, each of these projects gets
to have their participants be members of the Snowdrift co-op. So your
question remains: how do we determine someone counting as the project
class? In other words, does a musician who lists their music on the site
and fails to get much support get the same membership status and vote as
someone who gets their entire income funded through their project on
Snowdrift.coop?

It's not about their internal operations, it's about the position in
decision-making for Snowdrift.coop policies and decisions.

> 
> That being said, a team member to me is someone working on the project. 
> It makes no discernment about whether they're paid or volunteer, nor
> does "team member" on its own really provide any hierarchy, nor do I
> believe such a distinction is really necessary.  They are all working on
> the project, and from the public's perspective, that's really all they
> need to know about any individual person.  Yes, we can have a spot
> somewhere on a project page that identifies how many paid employees a
> project has, as I can see the benefit of that from a "Where is the money
> I'm donating going to?" perspective, but calling out individuals as
> employees or volunteers in the list is really unnecessary.

Right. But for the issue in question here, we need to determine
*legally* sound definitions of who gets to count as a project team
member given that they have legal rights as a co-op member (voting for
Board elections etc., with a distinct voting class being project teams
vs general patrons). So the challenge is that we *need* some way that
isn't totally unspecified as to who gets to decide or what criteria is
used for whether someone counts as part of project teams.

I definitely prefer the idea of not making it strictly about pay, but
this issue is challenging to nail down. And we have to nail it down in
some legal form.

> 
> Yes, there are admins and moderators outside of the team member moniker,
> but that's related to who controls what on Snowdrift.coop, not
> necessarily the project itself, and there won't always be a direct
> correlation between the two (e.g. Assuming a company structure here,
> neither a CEO nor even a CIO may necessarily be the administrator for
> their Snowdrift.coop project pages... it could potentially be just
> someone on staff in the IT department or even an admin assistant).
> 
> Again, my apologies if I'm misunderstanding, but if you're asking what I
> think you're asking, then my vote would be against changing the project
> user designations.

So, in the end, your points aren't entirely off-topic, they are very
relevant. We want to have