On November 30, Repa Trinlay and I sat down to talk more about how Bhumisparsha should begin to implement some of the new paid staff positions which were discussed earlier in our restructuring conversation. Recognizing that at present we have limited funds to work with, we set out to create a list, prioritizing which roles we believe should be developed first as we work towards an updated structure.

With that in mind, here’s a summary of the last conversation.

You can watch the full Zoom recording in 2 parts at these links: Part 1 with Passcode: yeDz7jF# and Part 2 with Passcode: 14=R*AQ^

Also referencing page 2 of the work-in-progress Jamboard document will be helpful for a visual.

Current paid positions include

General coordinator
Teacher-Student liaison
(Lama compensation is as requested)

Positions that one or more people have proposed that we should pay for as soon as we can include: Grant writing/fundraising circle coordinator; Community Ethics coordinator; Paid admin; Program development; Resources circle coordinator; and Marketing/communications.

In our conversation, we recognized that all of these roles have strategic value. However we tried to think about what feels most urgent, and how paid positions might fit into and impact the development of structure and processes moving forward.

We are thinking to suggest a priority order as follows, with a few notes about our conversation.

Grant writing/fundraising circle coordinator. Our sangha has a deep aspiration for operating with integrity and doing the work of decolonizing, including through supporting contributions of time among those who could not do so without financial support. However without funds to back this work, this all becomes harder. We envisioned having a permanent part-time position to help us focus on developing innovative strategies for fundraising, and to handle grant writing.In the short term, we can also see smaller, project-based opportunities to write specific grants to help us move towards our goals.
Community Ethics coordinator. Ethics is essential to the work we do. A proposal has been drawn up for a second round of the Community Ethics Project, in particular working to operationalize programs and policies around conflict resolution. For this crucial work, money will be needed to fund a circle/ project coordinator role as well as potential stipends for participants. Would a grant make sense to fund this?
Paid admin. At present the combined efforts of a number of skilled volunteers have been helping us with our bookkeeping and other administrative duties. As Bhumisparsha continues to grow, it seems we may need more dedicated time and effort in these areas. We hope to reach out to Janel, Sam, Alex, and other members of the Resources circle who know these things a little better. This is a place where duties will need to be articulated better before we can speak to what potential roles will be developed.
Program development. We talked about two ways to approach this: First we could think about budgeting funds to cover volunteer support for new programs that might be proposed, to help support these programs when no one is able to volunteer without compensation. Longer term, we could see potentially having a part time position to handle continuity and complexity of programming and curriculum.
Resources circle coordinator. Whether resources remains a “circle” or a “committee”, we would not recommend a paid position for this right now, but we want to check with current members of this circle for additional input. We could, however, imagine a budget to cover time needed to research new technology on an as-needed, project-based basis.
Marketing/communications. Marketing and communications is currently handled by several volunteers working independently. They are doing a great job, but we thought that communications across the organization might benefit from bringing these volunteer efforts together in a more coordinated way. We do not think coordination of marketing/communications necessitates an entire staff position at this time, but felt this coordination could potentially become part of one of the other jobs.

At the end of the conversation, we briefly turned again to structure. Trinlay re-articulated the idea of anchoring our official circles with paid staff people who would form the general circle, plus volunteers from committees/groups without paid staff; and that committees and circles could meet individually with a second delegate outside of the general circle. I (Leigh) am still thinking about the design of decision-making structures.

Community input more than welcome!