[Cadre-politics] Fearless Leader wages (board action)

[Dan MacNeil]

When I met with Phill Hall of the Parker Foundation. He asked for 
  additional information.  One of the things he asked for was a 
few paragraphs explaining the rationale behind my salary and the 
organization's plans to increase it.

He was clear that to his board, (the people who award the money) 
my salary was both a feature and a bug. A feature in a startup, a 
bug in a sustainable organization.

Strictly speaking, the last paragraph, the revenue growth plan 
requires the board be aware of it.

Because of the email server crash and my sleep recovery 
yesterday. This now a couple days late. So ruthless feedback by 
midnight tonight (12/05) would be helpful.

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The directors of the Community Software Lab and I very much want 
my position as leader to have a reasonable salary and we are 
planning for this goal. While we could not have started without 
sacrifice, we know our effectiveness and longevity will be 
limited unless we can pay our leader at least non-profit market 
rate wages.

When we started in 2004, our strengths were some goodwill, free 
office space, free utilities, very solid technical skills and my 
willingness to work for free. Our weaknesses were a lack of cash, 
and little experience in fund raising or running a business. 
Given this mix, the only way we could start was with volunteer 
leadership.

We are not the only non profit to start with an unpaid leader. 
Millard Fuller, founder of Habiat for Humanity, wasn't paid for 
the organization's first 5 years and made less than $25,000 per 
year for the organization's next 10 years

I was at Habitat International for 5 years during the end of the 
transition from an organization powered mostly by full time, 
live-in volunteers to an organization run by paid staff. I was on 
the Board of greater Lowell Habitat for Humanity for 3 years 
before they made the transition to a paid executive director. It 
was a difficult but necessary transition in both cases.

The Community Software Lab is not a club, a place for hobbyists 
to putter around doing vague good.  We serve other non-profits, 
not ourselves. The board needs to be able to fire our leader. We 
need funders like the Parker Foundation to take us seriously. We 
need to know that the work we are doing is valuable enough for 
people to pay us.

As strange as it sounds, I want the board to be able to fire me. 
Organizations are usually more effective than individuals. I want 
the CSL to be an organization. We can't be an organization if we 
are dependent on a single individual, even me. Right now, the 
board can't fire me without destroying the organization because 
they can't find somebody willing to work for my low wage. This 
situation needs to change.

I want to be lead this work in Lowell for the next 20 years. 
However, I want to be leader because I am the best choice, not 
the only choice.

I believe non-profits are generally rational and motivated to use 
their resources to accomplish their mission. There is a lot of 
need for desktop support. Commercial offerings are expensive and 
of uneven quality. Money is not the only measure of worth, but if 
our services are of higher quality and lower cost that the 
alternatives, then we will make enough money to pay a substancial 
part of an ED's salary.

In 2007, I was paid $14,000 directly for my work at the CSL. This 
was a considerable improvement from $0 in 2006.  Our current goal 
is to make the money to increase my salary by $3,000 per year 
until it is $40,000. We propose to do this by increasing our 
overall revenues to $200,000 per year by 2015. A growth rate of 
20% per year is conservative. Our 2006/07 revenues were $40,000, 
approximately 4 times our 2005/06 revenues. We project our 
2007/2008 revenues to be approximately _ times our 2006/07 revenues.