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After talking with Ridayah a lot of my worries have been assuaged. As I said in the first post I know they have the best intentions, it just hadn’t been coming through.
It’s a bother that it took this long for the conversation to happen but that lack of communication is where most of this issue came from. It wasn’t them trying to take control but from thinking I had resigned two months ago. It’s a staggering miscommunication but life happens.
I’m leaving the first post up unaltered because the lesson at the core of it is still valid. The board needs to be more open and communicative.
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To address the things you said Mouring there are kernels of truth to those concerns listed but most of them are also from lack of communication. Any of those could have been explained in 20 seconds if I’d been asked.
I’ll be speaking about this tomorrow at the Community Forum meeting, but I’ll say a few words here as well.We had originally, as Twisted mentioned, set up a tiered system for events; 3 tiers to be exact – and these tiers represented how much work an event would take by organizers to set up, whether or not it needed funding, if it was a stand alone event, etc. In short, the scope of an event. Volunteers would get 1 hour for Stage 3 Events, 2 hours for Stage 2 Events, and 3 Hours for Stage 1 Events. A Stage 3 event for instance would be something like a movie night or Sushi Meet – something not taking too much work to set up, where-as a stage 1 event would be something like a MNFurs picnic or hotel meet which would obviously take more work and more resources.
In concern to volunteer hours, we were running into an issue where very few people were having enough hours to vote. Without going into too many specifics, I will say that the majority of people with 20+ hours were fursuiters. In many cases, people who were fursuiting for events such as ZooBoo or the PetCo Fundraiser, were getting 1:1 hours – meaning that for every hour they put into volunteering, that’s what they were credited. If we followed the tier system mentioned above, this should not have been occurring. This puts us in an interesting situation. We could go back retroactively and take hours from those people, but that does not seem very fair. On paper it is, but there’s something that just doesn’t sit right with me, ripping hours away from someone when they are hours that the person believed they earned. Not to mention that in doing so, we are only left with a few people who are able to vote, and that’s no way to hold an election, unless you are a country in northern region of the Korean Peninsula , in which case it seems PERFECTLY FAIR. </sarcasm>
The truth is, this is a learning experience for everyone involved. The tiered system originally sounded like a good idea. In theory, it made sense. But once put into practice, and looking back over the past year, we see the flaws in it. Effort is effort – why should the care given by one person be worth 3 hours while another person who cares about volunteering their time just as much as the first, only receives 1 hour when they are both putting in the same amount of time. The Board has decided that this is wrong – that we were wrong when we first decided on this.
To wrap this story up, because my boyfriend wants dinner and I’m getting pretty hungry myself, the decision was made at the last board meeting to get rid of the tier system for figuring out volunteer hours. We are getting in our time machine and fixing things. Lets say you gave two hours of your time every month, at the community forum meeting for instance. You got up and drove across town, possibly in below zero weather, and you came to this meeting. You risked life and limb to be there – to be a part of what is going on. The tiered volunteer system only gave you 1 volunteer hour for each one of these meetings you attended. Well, now you have 2 hours each time – you have exactly the time you have given. And we are doing this for all the events now, for everything that has been and everything that is to come.
If anyone has anything they want to add, whether in favor of this change or against it, please come to the community forum and if you are unable to make it and want to contact someone directly, feel free to email the board at [email protected]
Sike two points. First is at no point has it ever been said simply attending an event gets a member hours. That takes the volunteering part out of volunteering. I genuinely can’t imagine where people got that assumption but its simply wrong.
Actually I can tell you where this came from. In an VERY VERY VERY early public discussion when the concept of hours was rolled out there was push back that 20 hours was “too many and no one would be able to do it.” And someone floated (I believe I know whom, but will not stated as I’m not sure I have it 100% right as what he/she stated) the concept that the volunteer hour measurement can be anything the Board wishes. If they wished to credit people with an hour for coming to a picnic or major event then they could; as participating is just as important as volunteering.
Since no one clarified finalized volunteer hours; I suspect this became a “true” to some.
Like I stated this wasnt to point that anyone did anything wrong, simply that as a person who even made the hours, I had to no idea what was qualifying and what wasn’t. Theres never been a sheet that stated this is what x gets you y. A lot of it came down to assumption and rumors. As a person that spends pretty much 9 of 12 months out of the state, its not something I generally am around to hear about, unless its posted.I honestly don’t remember where I ‘heard’ the thing of the attendance was the hours. At the end of the day its what I personally assumed, and I was wrong. I’m not ashamed in that, but it proves that members don’t know what they’re getting in terms of hours. Like I said, it seems as though theres been Miscommunication, and also lack of communication down the vines.
However, Like I also said, its a learning curve right now. Now I know =b I’m a person thats not here, but was able to make hours, that means it is possible if people really wanted them. But theres going to be heavy favoritism for fursuiters since a lot of the ‘big’ hour’d events are those (Petco events, Zoo Boo, Parades, Detour) Its doable, but people have to do them.
Wut o.o
Im Sike AND Banana
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