OK, so i went and took the Coordinator positions and tasks from the working words document and populated this. This is the loose structure of how we currently function, so i wanted to get this list together as a starting point.

Any additions to this list, i'd appreciate it if you italicized it to make my job a bit easier in the future.

Also, this isn't the "set in stone" position distribution, just a general way to organize thoughts at this point.

Please don't change any of the categories at this point.

 

Shop Coordinator

*Organize and maintain bike repair station and toolboxes.

*Keep track and inventory of tools and supplies

*Order parts, tools, and necessary supplies and maintain communication with Treasurer

*Maintain a “special order” system

 

 

Program Coordinator

*Organize the programs of Free Ride

• What does this mean?

*Make sure all necessary copies and forms are made and accessible

*Maintain records of programs, recycled bikes, volunteers, and volunteer hours

*Obtain necessary volunteers to aid in the projects.

 

Outreach Coordinator

*Correspond with people who want Free Ride! to table at events- Summer Festivals, School Fairs, Earth Days etc.

*Keep abreast of community events and involve Free Ride! if deemed worthy

*Find volunteers to staff these events

*Correspond with students/artists etc who want to visit Free Ride to photograph, videotape, write a paper or article or get bike parts for a art/robotic/architecture project

*Correspond with schools, camps, after school programs etc. who want a Free Ride! person to teach bike mechanics

 

 

Inreach Coordinator-this is being brainstormed

 

*Making sure that meetings are emailed a week in advance and they have a time and a place.

*Finding resolution to things ex. This meeting wasn’t explicitly decided

*Between meeting logistical decision

*Coordinating meetings and work days

*Nag

*Making an agenda for meetings

*Volunteer concept development

*Coordinators keeping track of hours/ volunteer binders

*Interpersonal mediation

*Follow up on things we say we’re going to do.

*Reminder of policy change

 

Email, Phone, and Media Coordinator

*Record and deliver messages to Coordinators

*Update voicemail message according to current activities

*Maintain and answer email to the Free Ride general info address

*Compose and disseminate media releases.

*Maintain necessary contacts with media outlets.

*Work in concert with the Outreach/Inreach Coordinator to ensure accuracy of outgoing information, i.e. review press releases, flyers, pamphlets, etc.

 

 

Scribe

*Maintain and disseminate a historical record of meetings, etc.

*Organize meeting time, location, and agenda

*Take minutes (or delegate responsibility for such) at each meeting.

*Post minutes monthly and as quickly as is reasonably possible.

*Organize a file containing old minutes, election results Words amendments etc. for easy access to volunteers.

 

 

Finance/Treasurer

*Maintain a system of recording Free Ride funds, including current electronic book-keeping schemes and keeping/logging receipts.

*Disburse funds judicially, which may include analysis of payment terms for contracted services and keeping an ear to all grant-funded situations.

*Report regularly on expenditures and income. Use family friendly language where appropriate.

*Maintain files which are available to the community. (What files and how? What community?)

*Take care of monthly or yearly bills, forms, and rent.

*Stay in communication with the accountant.

*Maintain cooperative and happy-go-lucky relationship with the BikePGH Finance Committee, should one ever be created.

*Maintain and oversee cash register and all related functions.

 

Volunteer Coordinator

 

*Maintain a system of keeping track of bikes and bicycle inventory

*Keep bikes in shop organized and neat in a way that all users can understand.

*Keep track of project and Earn-a-Bikes and call people when they have not returned for two weeks.

*Maintain the staffing calendar, both online and in the shop, making sure that all shifts are sufficiently covered

*Take responsibility for organizing “Special Work Days and/or Projects”

*Maintain communication and understanding of organizational techniques with other Coordinators

 

 

 

General Coordinator

(is this a multiple person gig? How to state that?)

*Open and close workshops.

*Turn on and off the lights and air compressor.

*Maintain orderly workshops, keep workbenches and tables clear of debris, sweep floor, and encourage volunteers to clean up.

*Put out trash.

*Keep lists of items in short supply for Repair Coordinator.

*Attend Coordinators meetings/workshops.

*Sort recent donations.

*Know and be able to run the shop and answer customer questions.

*Sell bikes

*Understand cash register and front-end transaction details

 

 

Other Tasks that don't fit in neatly

 

*CJ Liaisonry

*Copy forms

 

Things that aren't getting done, but should

*Diagnose and label incoming repairs for the ease of Workshop Coordinators.

 

General Suggestions on the creation of this list

 

Jobs that aren't strongly coupled to others

• Special order system
• Picking up supplies from home depot
• Placing orders with QBP
• Make sure we have enough forms on hand
• Correspondence with specific organizations?
  • i.e. should we have a JCC liaison and a girl scouts liaison, etc, etc?
• Maintaining the staffing calendar
• Organizing work days
• All general coordinator jobs

 

Some additional thoughts on coordinator roles:

 

Q: Why do we have coordinator roles?

 

(Stuart's Answer) - Coordinator roles allow for efficiency gains and accountability in essential shop functions.  Having one person keep track of several functions at once eliminates the need for several people with individual responsibilities to share information and coordinate with each other about how to get things done.  For example, having a media coordinator lets us just have one person who check the voicemail, and serve as a contact for other organizations.  We all know that Andalusia is responsible for doing this, so we know who to ask if there are questions, other organizations don't get confused talking to 3 different people who don't know what the others have already said, and Andalusia can keep track of who we've promised what to without having to check with other volunteers before making commitments.  (ex - the bike blender, if we had a bike blender coordinator we could eliminate the bike blender calendar and all the runaround phonecalls that go on when someone tries to reserve a date for it).  Coordinators save Free Ride's volunteers a lot of extra work, without them Free Ride might not even be able to operate on an exclusively volunteer basis.

 

Q: What concerns does the collective have about the coordinator roles?

 

(Stuart's Answer) - We've heard several concerns beginning before the retreat and continuing into the present.  A major concern was that the roles and responsibilities were unclear - this made it hard for us to transfer roles between volunteers - like when Elijah and I tried to take over the volunteer coordinator role from Scott and kept learning about other stuff Scott had been doing that was part of the role, like clearing outdated forms from the EAB binder, that wasn't documented anywhere.

 

Another concern has been a lack of transparency or reporting from coordinators - I'd like to know more about how people are doing their jobs, the problems they're dealing with, and the solutions they are implementing.  We do have a monthly reportback from coordinators, but it's usually something we try to blow through quickly at the meetings so we can get to more important things.  I think Shaun's financial corner has been a good idea, in that it gives us updates at length outside of meetings, and I'd like to see other coordinators adopt something similar.  I also think we need better documentation of procedures used by coordinators to improve transitions, continuity, and transparency.  For example, I'd like there to be a page on the wiki explaining how we decide when to make a deposit, where the deposit gets made, how we figure out if the register recipts match the deposit and what we do when they don't, etc, etc, etc.

 

We've also talked about the difference between delegating work and doing it yourself as it related to transparency and centralization of decision making powers.  I'm not sure the delegation -> DIY axis is the right one to discuss this point though.  I don't really think delegation per-se is a way to increase tranparency or decentralize decisionmaking.  Rather, I'd like to contrast the idea of a coordinator as the person who is responsible for getting things done,  gets them done if no one else will, makes sure that everyone else knows what's happening, and has some sort of process in place to make sure they don't overstep the commission given them by the collective, with the alternate idea of the coordinator as the person whose primary responsibility is to get as many people as possible (hopefully everyone in the collective) involved in the entire process of making decisions about and doing whatever it is they're responsible for coordinating.  In this second version of the coordinator role, the goal, in the end, is not just to see to it that the work gets done well and on time, but to create the organization and culture we'd need to make the coordinator superfluous.  I don't think these two versions are mutually exclusive, and our current coordinators, for the most part, already seem to be trying to do their jobs in a way that mixes both, but I'd like to know if other folks agree with me that the second version is a desireable and clear goal?

 

The final concern I have is that coordinator roles can only be filled by folks who have a lot of free time to dedicate to Free Ride.  Because we don't pay people for their time, this precludes anyone who doesn't have the luxury of that time from becoming a coordinator.  When we assign most of the essential functions of the shop to the coordinators we make it more difficult for some folks to become involved with Free Ride on an equal footing with the rest of us.  I think that this is a serious impediment to the diversity of our collective that needs to be addressed in the long term.  The solutions I see are either paying staff and coordinators or trying to break the coordinator roles up into smaller chunks so that more people are able to do them.

 

Q: What should the collective do about coordinatorships?

 

(Stuart's Answer) - We know that Free Ride can operate with the coordinator roles designed as they are now, and for the time being I think it should.  We need well documented roles that allow transition and transparency so that we can choose new coordinators and respect term limits on positions.  Because meeting time is one of Free Ride's scarcist and most valuable resources, I don't think we should dive into the long term restructuring of how we allocate responsibility before we've wrapped up more pressing issues like the CJ lease, BP fiscal agreement, FR Words, etc, etc.  The long term changes I'm thinking about are really huge ones, and it would be a big mistake to try and make them in one fell swoop.  I'd rather that we try to evolve a better system over time by making small changes to individual roles as potential improvements come up.