Category: 2014 Margaret MacRae

16) How would you respond if you saw a fellow director speaking harshly to a volunteer in a public chat?

My first reaction is to step in and tell the director to tone it down in the public chat and to apologize for their unprofessional behavior. What I would probably do is send the director a private chat message that amounts to “your behavior is unprofessional right now. Take a few deep breaths and ask for a moment to ‘step out’ of the room so you can calm down, and then apologize to the staffer as well as everyone else present.” I try to praise in public and reprimand in private. I don’t know if the director would listen to me, and if she did not, then I probably would step into the public room and suggest that everyone “slow down” and take a few minutes to calm down.

17) It’s been shared by past Directors that Board work is both incredibly time-consuming and stressful and this can sometimes bring out “the worst” in people and can lead to negative interactions within the organization that have a lasting impact. From your outside observations so far, what difficulties have you noticed? Do you have any ideas for how to combat this issue that you will try to implement either for yourself or others during your Board service and how might you encourage self-care for yourself, your fellow Directors, and OTW personnel at-large?

It’s hard to be positive and professional when people are calling you names, talking behind your back, and being rude; this doesn’t matter if you are on the board or a volunteer. I think that it can be a pretty vicious cycle when someone intends to be rude, and most of the time I think that these conflicts start for no reason. Communicating exclusively via the written word means that people will fill-in tone and intention. We don’t have the benefit of non-verbal cues, which can make it easier for miscommunications to happen and harder to realize when someone is bothered or hurt by something that you say. I try really hard to check everything with the speaker, both so that I make sure that I understand the speaker’s point and their intention. I also try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume that they didn’t mean for something to be rude or insulting. Obviously, sometimes people do make it clear that they are very intentionally calling you names or being rude. In those cases all I can do is remain professional.

18) How do you plan to avoid burnout as a director?

The same way that I avoid burnout as a lawyer: I will set boundaries and priorities. I turn off all technology at 9 PM. Experience has taught me that I will have a more meaningful face-to-face life when I make time that is technology or job free. I get into the back-country where there is no internet or electricity pretty regularly. I also put my cell phone in my purse and I don’t check it when I am out with another person or even just eating dinner at home. It’s really important to me to be present when I am with someone or doing something. The people that I love deserve that, and I am much happier and healthier person when I am not instagramming every moment of my life. The same is true when I am in a chatroom for org, I won’t talk on the phone, or watch a movie, or do anything that takes me away from being present. This is different for everyone, and I know some people need something to add distance or to stay engaged. I am much happier with the OTW when I take the time to really be present in the org and make the time to truly give myself space from it too.

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12) There has been a lot of discussion and confusion both within and outside the OTW related to the concept of ‘transparency’ and what that means in relation to the work of the Board and the work of the organization as a whole. How would you define transparency in these contexts and what steps would you take both to ensure everyone is clear on what transparency means and to hold the Board and the organization accountable to that definition?

A previous question was all about maintaining confidentiality and now this one is all about transparency. I don’t think that they are mutually exclusive at all. Transparency, to me, means being able to explain each decision that I make. So if I were to vote for one funding proposal but veto another, transparency is being able to say, “Funding proposal A clearly explained why the external training course will develop staff skills that committee X needs to realize specific goals. Proposal B did not explain why it’s necessary to hire a contractor on an indefinite basis.” Those are just examples. Transparency also means telling someone, “Hey, I can’t get into that because it’s confidential.” Lots of my suit-job is confidential, and that’s the same for my friends, and there are times where I have to say that to a friend, and they respect that I have to maintain confidentiality. They don’t think that I am doing it to be petty, or because its something bad for them, or anything like that. To me, part of being a Board member is answering questions, but there will be times that I can’t, and I will be transparent about that, too.

13) The OTW has had issues with regards to clashing perceptions of authority and hierarchy between the Board and committees. Staffers and volunteers vocally resist both steps that are perceived as attempts to verticalize the org’s structure and any Board decisions that are understood as top-down orders. What is your perspective on this issue?

I think that the org has taken a lot of missteps with internal management. Some of those steps intentionally alienated people and others were well-intentioned but ended badly. The result is that Board is not trusted. I actually think that staffers and volunteers don’t have a problem with leadership, since many admire and respect the chairs of their committees and other chairs generally. Their problem is with Board. Sometimes it’s just with the idea of a governing committee, which I can respect why people like the idea of leaderless organizations, but we don’t have that at any level, and I don’t think it’s realistic for an org of our size to function without leadership. Other times, it’s the individuals who have held the office, and I can understand why that is, too. I think a lot of the org’s issues with authority stem from the fact that it’s really easy to destroy trust and really hard to rebuild it.

Personally, I hate that the org talks about things in terms of “can’t, won’t, no!” We started seven years ago as a kind of crazy but cool idea, and we have grown into something incredible. We are proof that that you can realize audacious ideas, set huge goals, and crush expectations. I think that a lot of this “can’t, won’t, no!” comes from the org’s distrust in leadership. It’s scary to take risks and and try new things under the best circumstances, and when you don’t think that the Board has your back, it’s a thousand times worse. But it’s hard for the Board too. I want to help the org move forward and conquer new challenges, and that’s incredibly hard when staff and volunteers are going “can’t, won’t, no!”

14) How do you see your role on the Board in relation to OTW staffers and volunteers and OTW members? How do you plan to reconcile different staffers’ visions for the org? How do you think a Board member should act when staffers disagree with decisions that are under Board purview?

Fundamentally, I think that my role as a Board member is to listen to the entire OTW community. There is no way that I can make an informed decision on Board or represent the org if I do not know what the people who make up the org want. That said, my duties as Board member are to the OTW, not to it’s staffers, volunteers, members, archive users, or the general public. While each of those groups is part of the OTW, I strongly hope that in a hundred years the OTW will still exist and still be defending and promoting fanworks. I know that there are internal disagreements about the direction of the org and the org’s allocation of resources, and that will always be true. In my opinion, it’s the Board’s job to make decisions that ensure the org’s continued growth and stability, which may very well not always be what staffers, committees, members, and the end user want. I think that the Board should act professionally when staffers disagree with a decision, and the Board must explain why it made those decisions and why they support the org’s long-term goals.

15) What do you think are the unique challenges in interacting with a staff comprised entirely of volunteers as opposed to paid staff? How do you plan to navigate this?

We talk a lot in the org about professionalism, and generally I don’t think that our problems with it stem from being an organization made up entirely of volunteers. As an org, we are committed, enthusiastic, and successful, and that is totally because of our volunteers’ commitment, enthusiasm, and determination to create this community. Yes, people drop off the face of the planet, and yes, they can be bad about returning email, and there are miscommunications because of the nature of chats, but all of those issues to me are more problems because we are entirely internet based. Moreover, we as an org can be incredibly harsh to each other, and I, for one, have witnessed things that I would describe as bullying. I don’t think that we do this because we are volunteers, I think we do it because we are separated by screens and pseudonyms. In my suit job, to my face, I have had opposing counsel comment on my physical appearance, make insinuations about my sexuality, in court refer to me by a nickname I don’t even use, and more than once tell a judge I don’t know how to do my job. Yet, the single worst thing another attorney said to me was in an email. I honestly don’t believe that he would have said the things that he did if we had been face-to-face. My point is “professionals” can be jackasses online too.

As for navigating, first, I am going to model better behavior. Honestly, if I find that my first reaction to something in the org is to belittle someone, call them a name, or do anything else that I wouldn’t do if we were sitting in the same room, something is wrong and I need to get to a healthier place. Losing my temper, yelling at someone, or refusing to cooperate doesn’t make me right or superior, it makes me weak and small. Second, I will call people out for doing any of the above or in anyway making the org unsafe for someone. It’s unacceptable under any circumstances, and we should be better than that. Hell, we are better than that.

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9) All candidates’ manifestos mention the rapid growth of the OTW, and therefore the need to grow a better internal infrastructure. What kind of infrastructure are you aiming for? In addition to that, what do you think should be the future role of the OTW Board? Advisory? Executive? Something else?

Right now we need to have an executive committee and what we have is the Board. There are too many projects and committees to not have an executive committee. In three years, I would like to have an advisory board that focuses on external outreach as well as an executive committee that is made up of each committee chair and executive staff or executive board. I don’t really care what we call them, but a group that would oversee setting internal priorities and the allocation of org resources. I should clarify that when I say we need more infrastructure, I don’t just mean an advisory and executive board. We need to increase infrastructure throughout the org. This means building in redundancies at each level, documenting processes, and developing procedures where we have just been muddling through.

10) If it were up to you alone, what steps and structural changes would you suggest to transition the Board out of doing day-to-day work?

First, I would clarify the purview of each of committees that we have and then look at filling the gaps (e.g. a committee to handle support tickets for Fanlore). Then I would clarify the requirements for each position within the org. Some of this would be pretty basic, like if you are on Board you have to be willing to reply to your email in a certain timeframe, or if you are a Chair you need to be willing to stop doing some staff level work, while some of it might be more complicated, like to be a member of Legal you need to be a member of a bar association. (Some committees have this already, but it’s not universal.) Finally, I would look at how to organize the committees into teams.This might be project based, skills based, or an amalgam of both and would give each team its own “executive” or “executive team” (I don’t like these terms, but I am not really sure what to use. Super chairs?) who would be responsible for dealing with providing day-to-day management and facilitating the team’s work. Ideally, this would free up Board to deal with org wide management.

11) If you could make one concrete change in the OTW tomorrow, what would you do?

So I am definitely assuming that anything is possible. If I was given a magic wand and told that I got to make one thing happen, this is what I would do: the OTW would be fully staffed, the staff would have the skills we need, and each position would have a back-up person. By that I mean that there is someone who can step in and fill in at a moment’s notice. I am not saying get promoted, but fill in. (We as an org need to stop promoting people who don’t want the promotions.) My step-dad died unexpectedly at the beginning of this year, and I didn’t hesitate to go on hiatus because every other member of SP could step up and do my tasks. This was possible because we document what we do, and we make sure that we have more than one person trained to do all of our regular tasks. In some committees, it might mean that when one person takes time off, several people have to move up. During law school, I worked for a retailer that insisted on this policy. When our store manager was offered a special role for six months, the assistant store manager became the acting manager, one of the key-leaders became acting assistant store manager, and so on. This worked because everyone had the training to step up, and everyone trusted that the person who would be taking their role had the training and knew how to do it. Life happens, and people should know that they can take the time they need to deal with that. Creating these redundancies may mean needing to cross-train via committee too, and it will certainly mean that people will need to trust their co-workers and document their work.

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4) What do you believe the Board’s role should be in the area of fundraising in particular? What kinds of concrete acts should or shouldn’t Board members do with regards to fundraising planning and execution?

On this I would defer to DevMem. For the other non-profits I have dealt with, professionally and as a volunteer, the Board’s role was much more advisory than our Board. We don’t have a board buy-in, aside from the $10 membership fee, and I would be extremely upset if we moved in a direction where we recruited board members exclusively, or mostly, because of their ability to write large checks or get their friends to write large checks. To me that is anthesis of our mission and values.

That said, I can think of several ways that Board can help DevMem, not the least of which is clear up DevMem’s purview. I personally am very committed to building membership and outreach to fans, but in many ways that important goal takes DevMem away from focusing on development, which is vital to the org. Both are great missions, but I am not sure that they are missions that should be accomplished by the same committee in concert. Also, we need to diversify our fundraising. I know that DevMem wants to do this, but they already have a ton on their plates.

Clearly, one of the ways to do that is to work on getting grants. The fact that the Grants Committee was never able to get off the ground makes me really sad, but there are clear lessons that we as an org, and especially Board, can learn from it. I have written grants before, and I know how much work it is to develop a grant program, so I am hesitant to add grantwriting, or managing a team of grant-writers, to DevMem’s load. I know that it will relieve a lot of DevMem’s pressure if Board steps up and develops a functioning Grants team. As for more practical things, if DevMem tells me to write a letter to a supporter, call a donor, or make a face-to-face request for a donation, I am happy to do that and in fact have done all of that before. (I don’t really know how many potential donors there are in north Idaho…so face-to-face might be unlikely.)

5) What kind of challenges, in your opinion, does the OTW face in the financial area? What do you think are our most pressing needs and flaws in that realm?

We are an incredibly lucky org and in a great position because we are supported by numerous donors. I realize that might not be readily apparent, but one of the non-profits I worked for had to seriously cut back its programing, fire staff, and take on debt because it lost one major donors. Major donors are great, but they come with their own problems. The fact that we have such a large donor base is phenomenal. It is also really appealing to large donors and grant funders.

That said, we have to start developing our donors more. We also need to move away from relying exclusively on the drives and word of mouth to find our donors. It’s a long-term goal of mine that we develop an advisory board who can work at getting the word out about the org. There are numerous development tools that we don’t make use of because we don’t have the staff to do it. That has to change.

Overall, our current internal financial management lack necessary redundancy. What I mean is that we have created a system that creates a lynchpin. If Sanders were to get hit by a bus, I would be super sad, and the org would be super screwed. When I was the general manager of a non-profit my boss, who telecommuted, and I had the bus rule. Both of us had to maintain our files, physical and electronic, in a way that we agreed to so that if one of us got hit by a bus the other could sit down at the desk or access the work computers and immediately know what was going on.

6) Would you be able to lay out your vision for OTW’s financial future? How do you intend to balance the committees’ different needs?

I hope that when I complete my term the OTW has at least six months of cash reserves; drives regularly raise $100,000; and the org has been awarded five grants, one specifically to train technical staff to support the archive.

As for balancing the committees’ needs, I am more concerned with ensuring the OTW’s continued growth and stability. As a board member, my duty is to the OTW as a whole. Each committee’s needs are important, but those needs must support the OTW’ overall health and continued existence. Of course, it’s impossible to please everybody anytime, or anybody all the time, and I assume that there will be times that the org’s needs will upset individual committees.

7) We’re currently projected to be operating at a financial loss this year. Do you have any concrete plans for how you’ll address issues of financial sustainability going forward?

The org’s rapid growth makes it hard to really address what our operating costs are. I know many people in the org would argue that our operating costs include the cost of expanding our servers to match the growth of the archive. I really respect that position, but if we continue to operate at a loss that may very well be an untenable position. If it comes down to it, until we can develop new funding sources, the org would need to deliberately slow its growth. This idea makes me queasy, but we need to grow at a sustainable pace. Obviously, economy would need to be practiced in other areas as well, but the bulk of our expenses have to do with the archive’s rapid and awesome growth.

Ideally, it would be great if the org were in a position to project its growth so that we could fundraise to meet that projection, instead of reacting to outgrowing our current capacity. It would also be great if we were running capital campaigns to buy new hardware, getting grants to fund expert contractors, and developing major donors to support specific projects.

When I reversed an operating deficit at a meatspace non-profit I had to cut services, staff, and raised the cost to our users. Was it fun? No. Did people like me for it? Not really. Was it the fiscally responsible thing to do? Yes. This is one of the reasons you need a strong board or functioning executive; there are times that no one wants to do the unpopular, but necessary thing. We aren’t anywhere near this point yet, but if you are asking if I will do the unpopular thing to right the org’s financial ship: Yeah, I’ll do that.

8) AO3’s continued survival currently depends on a small handful of volunteers doing massive amounts of unpaid work. If those people became unavailable, what would your plan be to keep the archive from going under? Do you have a sense of how much it would cost to hire external contractors to do that work?

First, yes the archive survives because of the work of a handful of volunteers, but our entire organization survives because of the work of volunteers who put in insane hours for little reward. I do not want to ignore the hard work and commitment of anyone in this org. It should not matter if you bring specialized skills, or incredible enthusiasm for our mission–each volunteer is priceless.

The next thing is that we have to stop creating lynchpins. If the org can’t find volunteers with the skills we need, then we should start recruiting volunteers that we can train. If our staff doesn’t have time to teach someone so they have the skills that we need, we should find an external training that will develop our staff’s skills. If we can’t find an external training that works for us, then we should hire a contractor to teach us. I would much rather teach a person to fish then give them a fish. (Come to Idaho we can go fly fishing. Its fun!)

I have no idea how much it would cost to hire contractors. I don’t understand the point of this question. If you are asking would I just blindly hire a contractor and pay them what they ask, well no; because that isn’t the responsible way to hire services. I would expect that the various committees that need contractors would identify the specific skills the contractor needs, then get multiple bids for specific jobs, and then present this information to the Board and explain why, even though Contractor A costs more than Contractor B, A is the better choice to accomplish the needs of the committee.

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