It appears to me that LOPSA as an organization, and the board of directors, are performing substantially better without the management company. The management company created significant and unnecessary debts. It was a hard lesson in what not to do. The sentiment that we should “just hire" a project manager or an executive director shares the same inexperienced logic that led to the hiring of the management company. I understand where the thinking comes from. It seems pragmatic. Hire someone else to do the mundane stuff (accounting, updating the website, making phone calls, etc) so that the board can be freed to focus on strategic thinking and volunteers can do mission/program work. But, that’s not how it works for small nonprofits. To get staff to do the mundane work they have to believe in your mission and have an opportunity to help advance that work, too. Management companies prey on nonprofits who are struggling with questions like these. Successful nonprofits don’t use management companies. Instead, if they hire staff, they hire one of two types of people:
1. Independently wealthy people who believe in the mission and need something to do to fill their spare time or bolster their resume. Their salary is token compensation to them. These people tend to stay for a long time. 2. Young people who need a foot in the door to whatever industry the nonprofit is tangentially related to so they can advance their career. They’re okay with the terrible salary because they’re college educated and can get family help if they need it. These people tend to stick around for a year or two before moving on to a better job with better pay. Now that the management company is no longer involved with LOPSA I think that immediately moving back in the direction of paid help would be a huge mistake. Paid help is an unnecessary liability that we can’t afford until we have a very specific full-time project for them to work on and their background and motivations align with the organization. I’m in favor of giving the board more time to deliberate over next steps beyond “just hire someone to do the work!” I also strongly disagree that any staff that’s hired can be someone who doesn’t have sysadmin or IT related experience. Every single effective nonprofit that has hired staff hires people who are somehow invested in the nonprofit’s mission. For LOPSA I think that means any hire — just like anyone elected to the board — has to have a self-interest in promoting the values of system administration and moving the profession forward. Otherwise, it’s another management company-like lesson, but now someone’s livelihood is at stake. I think it’s important that this kind of discussion has to go back to some of the founding principles of LOPSA’s structure. We have a working board. That is to say that the board makes all the strategic decisions but also substantially does all of the day-to-day work, too. This is normal for nonprofits that have very small budgets. Is this the structure we want to maintain as the organization grows? There are certainly other structures. It can be structured however we want. Small nonprofits (organizations with fewer than 20 staff) generally look something like this: The board of directors are well known academics in their field, businessmen, scientists, doctors, lawyers, or politicians. Some board members still work at the top of their field. Some are retired. The nonprofit is one of their many hobby horses. They donate and/or raise significant sums of money for the organization’s operations. They meet on a quarterly basis with the executive leadership of the nonprofit to set strategic direction, answer questions, and review progress from the previous quarter. Sometimes the board has a slightly more complex structure with secondary advisory boards that are less involved. The executive staff are nonprofit lifers. They have either been at that organization “forever” or they have bounced around nonprofits within the same area of interest over their lifetime. Because of their experience they may sit on the board, too. Their careers are invested in the mission of the nonprofit in some way. Occasionally, fellowships may be utilized to “hire" executive-level leadership with a very specific purpose. That purpose may be to simply associate that person’s name with the organization or it may be to work on a specific program of mutual interest. Non-executive staff are usually much younger, in their early or mid 20s, and looking for a way to get their foot in the door. This means they only ever stick around for about 2 years before moving on to a better paying job. They do the most mundane work so that the executive leadership can execute the goals as set out by the board. If they show promise they get to work on more substantial work with the executive leadership. All staff are paid pretty terribly compared to what they would make for doing the same work in the private sector, but it’s worth it because either the mission is that important (save starving children) or the future opportunities provided by the work experience help them move on to a better job. The organization goes through times of boom and bust based on fundraising and grants. Layoffs and staff restructuring are more common than anyone would like to admit. Providing reasonable medical benefits is heart burn inducing. Retirement benefits are nonexistent. This is the kind of direction — the promises and the risks — that we really start getting into when we talk about “just hiring” a project manager. Gil > On Feb 27, 2015, at 6:33 PM, Matt Simmons <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes. The ED was from AH. I don't know if the ED payments were financially > distinct from the rest of the payments. > > According to the 2005 990, the management fee was $45,000: > https://governance.lopsa.org/images/d/d7/IRS_Form_990_2005.pdf > > In 2007, it was $68,000: > https://governance.lopsa.org/images/e/e4/2007_-_990-EZ_-_Completed_Form.pdf > > You can look at the others on the Governance site: > https://governance.lopsa.org/Financials > > Also, LOPSA finally paid off the accumulated debt from the management company > last year. > > --Matt > > > > On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 8:53 PM, David Lang <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, 27 Feb 2015, Adam Moskowitz wrote: > > David wrote: > Assuming you want a full-time executive director . . . you're looking at > more like $50k-$60k. > > No opinion, just data: Taken from their 990 filings, here's what USENIX > paid their Executive Director(s): > > 2011: > $243,535 ("Director A") > > 2012: > $102,804 ("Director B") > $103,276 ("Director C") > > 2013: > $99,180 ("Director B") > $98,619 ("Director C") > > Didn't LOPSA pay an ED (as part of the mangement company) in the early years? > > David Lang > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
