Staff Vision
At present, non-professional staff in the form of Consuls are obliged to perform all work that must or should be done at Headquarters, and entirely too much that doesn't depend on that location.
There are two approaches to long-term staffing:
The first is to hire an Executive Director with substantial skills (especially at fundraising and membership development), who would take over much of the responsibilities now assigned to the Board. While a common approach for larger organizations, this would not be affordable for our Society until and unless we increase our membership by several orders of magnitude.
The second is to hire an Office Manager who would focus on the clerical and mechanical aspects of the work, leaving the Board and their appointees to carry the balance of the work. This too is beyond our present ability to fund, but is something we might achieve with only a doubling of the membership.
In both cases, they will be expected to oversee the work of volunteers, both on- and off-site. Finding a candidate who can do so constructively will be essential, and close monitoring during their first years will be needed to ensure we have chosen well.
Proposal: The Society should move to document all of the tasks and procedures employed to the degree that a reasonably competent person might be able to follow such procedures to good effect, notwithstanding that some tasks may require specialized knowledge or skills.
Proposal: The Society should move to assign tasks that do not have to be performed at Headquarters to volunteers other than Consuls to the extent practicable.
Consuls are concerned that their cloistered existence may blind them to the wants and needs of the membership. Given that the Directors have chosen not to participate in discussions of Society issues outside of Board meetings, and that Consuls have no proper voice there, an alternative means of staying in touch with the membership would be valuable.
Proposal: The Society should remove the ban on the Consuls' organization of an Advisory Council to permit interested Officers and Members to debate matters of Society business with the end of developing improved processes and proposals for the Board.
