I had the opportunity to think more on this, and I’m more and more convinced that supporting money in following the people and not the project is the way to go.
Reasoning
- Enables self-determination
- About sustained relationship
- Gives access to not just money but a network of people with the means to support folks financially
- Transformative for the entire ecosystem because now organizers can be generous with their time across organizations and efforts
- Allows for emergent decision making — people can end and start new projects based on new information without fear of not meeting externally imposed restrictions
Potential Agreements Needed
Receivers
- Commit to doing money work
- Healing
- Budgeting
- Redistribution (of money but of relationships, too!)
- Commit to enoughness (ballpark 2x living wage as upper limit)
- Commit to keeping money moving (for example, reducing any one person’s contribution and encouraging them to split or move their resources to the next person)
- Commit to relationship
Givers
- Commit to minimum term of giving
- Commit to not committing financial abuse (paired with giving no more than 2% of any one person’s living wage)
- Commit to being in relationship
Potential Next Steps
- Share this idea
- Do participatory budgeting around who to promote in this effort and set upper limit via this particular network (want people to be able to draw from multiple networks / communities)
Mindset Shift
What if our question was “How might we make organizing with YPC financially joyful?”
Minimum cost / sliding scale / true cost model
Cost : Choose what to pay, starting at $40. The true cost of this series is $100/person , which allows us to continue offering programs like this one and pay trainers a fair wage for their time and expertise. Like you, our trainers work hard for change in their communities and have often developed the knowledge, skill and gifts that they are offering through many unpaid hours — let’s support them to be sustainable in their work and craft!
https://peopleshub.org/product/we-wont-go-back-wtf-is-normal/
I just had an amazing conversation with Vallay (who I met via 4.0 Schools) about this!
Here’s Vally’s advice and brainstorm:
Present to team as
- This is the specific situation and opportunity that we have: The Rising Foundation grant
- These are our considerations: our values, our distributed leadership model, being legal
- How might we meet this challenge given our considerations?
Questions to explore
- What are people’s needs around steady revenue streams that you can count on versus being flexible because you may have other ways that you can realize that. For you to feel safe and secure and excited, how would that look for you? x number of dollars per month or flexible to charge x amount of dollars per hour and I have this many hours to allocate.
- Do you have one program that you care about that you want to spend time on or do you want to experience many different programs?
- When can you work? If you have things that go on in the evenings but there are people who only like working in the day that’s a mismatch.
- What motivates you to come to work? Physical office? Flexibility to control your own time? Leadership and development? Mentors and other opportunities? So every time you thought of a person for x role, you should hit a couple of people.
- What’s your contribution to doing these sort of things and how do we understand values, motivations, and its venn diagram with movement/organizational needs.
- What’s your opportunity to create pathways for each individual to contribute to program(s) in a way that meets staffing capacities needed to execute those programs?
Potential compensation options
- All volunteer: has a container of hours available and will apply it to projects they’re on in a volunteer basis
- Partner compensation
- Reimbursements: travel, groceries, etc.
- Donating/paying for leadership program experience
- Fixed income + flexible hours: needs a certain amount of fixed income every period + has flexible hours to use in addition to what’s fixed
- Per hour rate
Ultimately we’ll figure out
- Pool of people we’re working with
- Kinds of compensation policies + incentives to show up and do best work
- Different projects that we can have to distribute time into to make that work
@michael @saf This is the Hub topic I’ve been using to track ideas / resources on compensation. My highlights are the following:
I’m also thinking about compensation within a wider ethos of frameworks like
- Let’s talk mutual aid by Regal De Loggans
- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex edited by Incite!
- What is a solidarity economy? By Cooperation Humboldt, shared by Deborah Cooper
- Scale model for organizing (resident, not professional, organizers)
- Personal work of shifting to sustaining ourselves to the solidarity economy
I think this speaks to the overall question: How might we expand our idea of compensation from finances into collective care? In addition to the frameworks above, I also think about models like communities where financial care is decoupled from hours “working”. I’m wondering how we might move from role-based compensation to needs-based compensation. I’m wondering what it might mean to use multiple strategies for making sure everyone has housing, food, community, autonomy, etc. Money may be the “easiest” way of enabling this to happen in a capitalist economy, but are there ways to break out of this paradigm?
@deborahchang I think you are speaking to a critical question. What does non-monetary compensation look like? We’d have to chart out the models you mentioned. Any compensation requires resource generation - fundraising, revenue model, sourcing in-kind contributions, etc. Not a values-question, but I wonder what does it look like operationally to source, secure, and distribute non-momentary compensation like food and housing (for example)?
Another thought is that a fluid way of deciding compensation could be challenging. I mean like allowing people to name the type of compensation they receive for their work. It becomes another thing to manage, like the negotiation and information. And another decision for a circle to make (potentially). Numerous differentiation becomes a lot to cognitively hold, to communicate out to people, etc. As YPC grows, it all can become a lot to manage. Lastly, standardization is often see as bureaucracy, but a lot of processes and decision points are too. I think it’s worth us being mindful of that, as we build out.
So true! And, I think maybe there’s a way for us to do this with less formality. Like, what if once a quarter we all came together to share needs and do a resource pooling + sharing?
I got this from this article, which I’ve reread multiple times and realize now could be huge for us.
https://gatherfor.medium.com/maslow-got-it-wrong-ae45d6217a8c#6f9a
Some quotes that stood out to me:
“for the Blackfoot, wealth was not measured by money and property but by generosity. The wealthiest man in their eyes is one who has almost nothing because he has given it all away” (Coon, 2006). Maslow witnessed a Blackfoot “Giveaway” ceremony in his first week at Siksika . During the Giveaway, members of the tribe arranged their tipis in a circle and publicly piled up all they had collected over the last year. Those with the most possessions told stories of how they amassed them and then gave every last one away to those in greater need (Blood & Heavy Head, 2007, (video 7 out of 15, minutes 13:00–14:00).
As Maslow witnessed in the Blackfoot Giveaway, many First Nation cultures see the work of meeting basic needs, ensuring safety, and creating the conditions for the expression of purpose as a community responsibility, not an individual one. Blackstock refers to this as “Community Actualization.” Edgar Villanueva (2018) offers a beautiful example of how deeply ingrained this way of thinking is among First Nations in his book Decolonizing Wealth . He quotes Dana Arviso, Executive Director of the Potlatch Fund and member of the Navajo tribe, who recalls a time she asked Native communities in the Cheyenne River territory about poverty:
“They told me they don’t have a word for poverty,” she said. “The closest thing that they had as an explanation for poverty was ‘to be without family.’” Which is basically unheard of. “They were saying it was a foreign concept to them that someone could be just so isolated and so without any sort of a safety net or a family or a sense of kinship that they would be suffering from poverty.” (p. 151)
Ryan Heavy Head explains that such communal cooperation is especially important for the Blackfoot because of their relationship to place, something Maslow entirely omitted in his theories:
the one thing that [Maslow] really missed was the Indigenous relationship to place. Without that, what he’s looking at as self-actualization doesn’t actually happen. There’s a reason people aren’t critical of their tribe: you’ve got to live with them forever.
The skillfulness to nourish a community-wide family, keep each person fed, live in harmony with the land, and minimize internal and external conflicts is handed down from generation to generation in First Nations. Because knowledge can vanish as people pass on, each generation sees it as their responsibility to perpetuate their culture by adding to the tribe’s communal wisdom and passing on ancestral teachings to children and grandchildren.
Cross (2007) argues that human needs are not uniformly hierarchical but rather highly interdependent […] [P]hysical needs are not always primary in nature as Maslow argues, given the many examples of people who forgo physical safety and well-being in order to achieve love, belonging, and relationships or to achieve spiritual or pedagogical objectives. The idea of dying for country is an example of this as men and women fight in times of war.
Blackstock represents Cross’ ideas in the circular model below:
Image Description
Diagram illustrating different type of needs arranged within the quadrants of a circle. In the center, arrows arranged in a smaller circle connect all four quadrants together.
- Upper left quadrant, cognitive: sefl and community actualization, role, identity, service, esteem
- Upper right quadrant, physical: food, water, housing, safety and security
- Bottom left quadrant, spiritual: spirituality and life purpose
- Bottom right quadrant, emotional: belonging and relationship
This circular model reveals thinking in line with many First Nations: depending on the situation, the order in which our needs must be met is subject to change. A circular model captures the inter-relatedness of our needs and helps highlight that we can experience needs simultaneously and in changing order. This way of viewing needs makes more sense when seeing an individual as deeply rooted in a community, especially because a community is capable of meeting multiple needs in parallel.
I just had a thought - when we pool resources, I want us to think beyond what YPC as an organization holds. I also want us to think about the resources our community can contribute. What if a donor is inspired to give more or give directly to an organizer? What if a organization has space to contribute to someone who needs it? What if someone has baby clothes they no longer need? I experienced this myself growing up poor and in a church community. I always had clothes, we always had food, because people gave directly to my family. I think society tells us this is shameful, to not have independent wealth, but I now realize that community care is beautiful. The thing is, the more radical we are, the less we’ll likely have access to philanthropic funding because it is largely not set up to support what we do, but we still have an abundance of so much + our mission includes mobilizing resources and changing hearts and minds so that more funding will go to the movement in the future.
One example in practice is this Time Bank from Boston Ujima. I collaborate with them in my day job. It is not a solution to our question about compensation. I think there’s some things to learn though and helps push our thinking. I’ll keep us updated.
I came across an amazing resource about funding movements from the Anyi Institute.
Read the full guide here: Funding Social Movements
Key Ideas
- Movements need volunteers to scale
- Movements go through different phases and need different types of funding support in each phase
Recommendations Related to Compensation
Give small stipends to sustain "anchor" volunteers
Anchor volunteers either bring unique, hard-to-replace skills or ‘anchor’ a larger group of participants by managing group work and growing the skills of others
They simultaneously feel pressure to hold the needs of the new movement and to go back to supporting their families and resuming their normal lives. To avoid burnout, these leaders need a new injection of support, so that they can stay in the movement until the peak phase dies down and there is a transition into a more stable phase of the movement.
Fund infrastructure to support the basic needs of movement organizers
People who dedicate themselves to mass mobilization and receive no support when the peak energy dies out - or when responsibilities call them out of the movement - can feel burned out, prompting a sense of failure. New leaders need places to temporarily live and be fed. They also need to reach the next stage in their leadership development.
The type of infrastructure that is useful for these purposes can include: volunteer housing and food systems, retreat centers, and in-kind donation structures.
Fund those courageous enough to escalate
Established organizations are often wary of taking action that could risk relationships, antagonize, or stray off program.
The creation of a dedicated fund to encourage nonviolent direct action could spur innovation in tactics, as well as provide a lifeline to groups that want to experiment with actions that involve high levels of sacrifice and disruption.
I had the opportunity to speak with sofie malm who experienced living in a needs-based economy system! She gifted us her experience and knowledge in tremendous ways 
. sofie is actually working on a workshop to dive into this further and I promised to support her via conversations and early feedback!
Key learnings
We could have two different systems: one for a set income and one for a redistribution of resources. For example, let’s say Person A and Person B do the same exact role at YPC and both receive, income-wise, $60,000, but this results in excess income for Person A. Person A can redistribute this excess income, including to Person B, outside of the confines of YPC itself
We could create a savings bank to free up additional cash. When multiple people pool their risk, then less cash savings is needed to provide a safety net for the same number of people.
It’s important to make sure people have their own networks outside of a single organization for their needs to be met. For example, instead of a single organization running a Free Store, it would be better for people to access Free Stores run by other organizations.
Trust is key to making needs-based compensation work. Build trust by having study circles, being vulnerable, being transparent and reflective about all the resources we have. Do not make it the responsibility of designated people to collect needs and communicating them out because that decreases the desire to give when we don’t know who it is with those needs. And, it may lead to blame being put on people gathering that information for not meeting those needs instead of having it be a communal responsibility.
The system needs to be constantly maintained, especially as it grows. When new people come, make sure they understand, buy into, and can defend the system. And, make sure we start with the personal reflection and community reflection on needs.
Capping people’s time was healthier. People who had a cap of 20 hours/week, for example, would more accurately hit those numbers. People who were more “general” would under-invest their time because they may say yes to more things outside of the organization than they could really do or over-invest and burn out.
Have all income be shared and needs-based compensation level across all income generating and support functions whether it’s building community or consulting with high-paying customers. Else we’ll recreate inequity where support functions are undervalued and functions that have greater proximity to existing wealth can then pay its people more.
There are challenges to how different people will define “need”. And, there’s a dynamic where people may be fine with their own relationship to income (such as having a higher risk tolerance for little savings and for dumpster diving and not getting new clothes) but then feel resentment when comparing themselves to other people in the same organization who are not making the same sacrifices or who are not contributing what they promised to contribute. And, there’s a dynamic in the opposite way, where people may not be fully transparent with and reflective of their own resources and expenses and therefore may report a greater need. We need to build in accountability, balancing, self- and community-work.
Full Notes
Organizers, please see the notes in our Compensation shared folder.
I appreciate how compensation is messaged as redirecting resources in the Maine Youth Action Network’s 2021 Impact Report:
REDIRECTING RESOURCES
Contributions of time and expertise
Wherever possible, MYAN programming is designed to create opportunities for young people to build their 21st Century Skills AND to be compensated for their contributions.The Maine Youth Action Network uses a youth employment model to guide much of our programming each year. Wherever possible, programming is designed to create opportunities for young people to build their 21st Century Skills and to be compensated, even nominally, for their contributions; both are
integral elements of the work.Young people may join MYAN as summer team leaders or members in the Gateway to Opportunity program. Others plan and host the annual Maine Youth Leadership Conference through the attached leadership development program. Some youth organizers earn stipends for their work with
issue-focused campaigns or projects, such as the Maine Recovery Advocacy Project or Aroostook Teen Leadership Camp. Finally, many young people begin their journey by applying to present at workshops or training through the Network, sharing their experiences in local community projects with peers across the state.$52,304.20*
In Stipends
to 262 youth and young adults for their work on Gateway to Opportunity projects and conference leadership teams and as presenters and keynote speakers at the Black Student Caucus and Youth
Leadership Conference*Total includes stipends directly from the statewide/MYAN team but does not include the money diverted through district partners directly to youth leaders regionally across Maine
$33,424.55
in salaries and benefits
to 5 young adults for 2,088 hours of work with us this year as Gateway to Opportunity Program Team Leaders as well as social media and conference lead facilitators267 youth and young adults earned stipends within the Network in 2021. We directed $85 728.75 directly to young people positively contributing to our communities.
We’re now talking about compensation within the context of the Leadership Development circle!
One comment Carline made sparked another design question for me, which is what does money represent? What is it for?
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Means to meet basic needs: purchase food, housing, clothing, healthcare, childcare (self or others)
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Means of security: savings for loss of source of income, retirement
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For pleasure: go on a trip, purchase a treat
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For achievement: money as a way of keeping score
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For convenience: to-go meals, cleaning services
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For advantages: move to a “good” school district, be surrounded by other wealthy people
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For recognition: raise for doing good work or earning a degree
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For prioritization: pay people money so they prioritize paid work over unpaid work
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For reparations: close the gender wage gap, close racial wealth disparities, make amends for past and ongoing systemic harm of slavery, colonialism, and exploitation
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For control: the person or system controlling the source of income has the ability to exert power over the person who does not have the means of leaving an abusive situation
I just had another conversation with sofie and together, we moved to some increasingly practical ideas!
They are
- Have time per week be a trigger for when we definitely need to talk about organizer sustainability. This breaks down the “staff role” versus “volunteer role” dichotomy because then ALL hours count.
- Consider the time needed by organizers to do all the work associated with being part of a collective care economy the work itself.
- Make the budget transparent and then have people go through a participatory budgeting process - money that goes to organizers isn’t something that’s super special, it’s just part of how we share resources as a whole!
- Make the budget about both what we spend and what we mobilize resources for and that these resources are beyond just money - some people joining this work would be about contributing money, not receiving, and all people joining this work have access to resources to share
- Break the connection between personal needs, interpersonal relationships and accountability, and money. For example, money doesn’t need to be the answer to having more stress - it could be something else. Do this by separating out the conversations. Perhaps in January, talk about personal needs. March, talk about capacity, accountability, and other interpersonal relationships. June, talk about compensation.
- Organization role becomes vision/mission/values/culture, accessibility of financial information, and support structures for engaging in this work, not policies and procedures - accountability comes from community and culture
I just spoke with volunteer lawyers and staff, Sue and Erika, at Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) and here are additional ideas
- As payment for being an independent contractor, make the argument that the independent contractor also does the same kind of work with other clients.
- Who is paid what once they are employees is relatively simpler. The complication comes from figuring out who is an employee if you have employees and volunteers and independent contractors.
- Consider separating out the nonprofit itself from the projects the nonprofit supports.
- Consider employees people with specific admin responsibilities
- Consider mutual aid options
- Consider stipends when there’s an educational component to the work
- Self-select into a volunteer, partner organization, payment, donor
- Consider people donating back to the organization or other causes
- Definitely talk to a labor lawyer in NYC!
Additional Resources
Employment Law
Who is not an employee?
Vallay introduced us to Riccardo and here’s his recommendation for process! While Riccardo cannot be a pro bono consultant, he does offer this: I would be glad to thought partner around concepts or ideas and be an external sounding board for you, should you have the need. Just let me know.
What I heard
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You have implemented a decentralized organizational structure that seeks to empower the different circles to act both independently and interdependently, maintaining open and transparent communication across the teams.
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You believe in outside-in design and initiatives and want to reflect this value/commitment in the implementation of your systems, structures, policies, procedures, and culture. Your thinking and management processes are evolutionary, in other words, you look to experiment, course correct as needed, and evolve in what you do.
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The organization has received a new round of funding and has started compensating its Executive Director. The intention is to develop an outside-in compensation structure (policy) for the 18 to 20 volunteers of the organization.
Thoughts
Given where YPC is in its life cycle, its current funding level of under $50K, and its desire to be at the leading edge of outside-in system design thinking, I believe that establishing a policy this early in its compensation journey, especially if it is to evolve over time, might be a premature engagement initiative for a compensation consultancy.
I would offer two slightly different paths for your consideration:
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Develop and implement a plan to experiment with different compensation practices which, in turn, would inform the development of a more robust compensation policy that would not need to be tweaked as often.
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Design the process to create and implement a compensation policy for the organization.
Both options could be implemented in the proposed timeline and projected effort, and would
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Allow YPC to experiment with concepts and ensure that they reflect the outside-in interests of a multigenerational organization (option 1), and
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Ensure that the organization has identified/able to procure the resources needed for a successful implementation of a compensation policy (option 2)
Below are some general project steps for each option, together with estimated windows of time:
Option 1:
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Survey for the compensation needs of targeted beneficiaries. Understand what motivates them, and what their specific needs are (15 days).
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Develop principles and practices for testing with the beneficiaries (15 days).
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Implement practices and obtain feedback (60 days).
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Assess whether there is a need for a full-blown policy statement or a simple set of compensation principles/practices that reflect the organization’s values and resource availability (15 days).
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Codify and implement the principles and practices (15 days).
Option 2:
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Survey for the compensation needs of targeted beneficiaries. Understand what motivates them, and what their specific needs are (15 days).
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Develop principles and practices for testing with the beneficiaries (15 days).
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Leverage the findings to create a compensation policy, then implement the following steps:
a. Create the policy (30 days).
b. Determine the needed funding for policy implementation (15 days)
c. Procure funding and determine rollout (TBD)
d. Implement the policy for the full organization (TBD)
At this time, I would recommend that YPC implement Option 1 which is (a) experimental, and (b) offers greater flexibility to include tested practices in a compensation policy.
More approaches!
This one is from Vega Mala Consulting and it defines the framework of equity based salaries.
Quotes
Market-based salaries
The attitudes this promotes
- Whatever the market will bear
- The market reflects what you are really worth
- The market will correct itself
- I’ve worked hard to earn this salary
- I deserve this salary
- Continually growing your salary means you are advancing your career
- People’s salaries are private information
- I should be able to negotiate for how much I am worth and what experience I bring in
- Salaries should allow those with privilege to maintain their power and standard of living
Labor-based salaries
The attitudes this promotes
- I work hard to earn a high salary, and if you take that away, you are stealing from me (my hard-earned property and wealth)
- I work more hours than others, so I deserve to be paid more.
- If I produce more work than others, I deserve more pay.
- I come with more experience and skills, so I deserve to be paid more.
- Wages should not take into account people’s personal choices and needs (e.g., having kids, college debt, relocating)
Italicized items added 9/2021
Equity-based salaries
The attitudes this promotes
- We are not all the same. Our positionality is relative and changes as we associate with different groups.
- Some of us have unearned privilege, which has contributed to our relative positionality. How do we start giving back to account for the ways in which we have been advantaged by that unearned privilege? Some of us have experienced more systemic oppression and discrimination which has suppressed our ability to access the resources needed
- Co-creation - A collective framing of what we want to lift up
- Each person gets to name what they need (e.g., minimum $ constraint)
- Transparency
- What else?
New resource!
All Due Respect believes community organizing is the foundation of the progressive movement.
That’s why we’re working with funders, organizational leaders, and organizers to set new movement standards, so that organizers—no matter their race, gender, or geography—get a fair wage and a fair shake.
We’re here to set new labor standards and make sure that community organizers get a fair wage and a fair shake—because supporting social justice means supporting the people on the frontlines.
Success for us means securing a future in which organizers—especially organizers of color, women, LGBTQ+, those with disabilities, rural, and/or undocumented organizers—are valued and supported as the foundation and the future of the progressive movement. The people who are working day in and day out to build power and win big fights should be paid a living wage, receive good benefits, and work in a culture that supports their livelihoods. Organizers shouldn’t be burning out after a few years, and they shouldn’t have to make impossible choices about their futures and their families because they can’t support themselves.
That’s why All Due Respect is working with donors, managers, and organizers to improve working conditions and set new movement standards. We believe that respect, security, and transparency are fundamental to organizing for social change and that all organizers—no matter their race, gender, or geography—deserve it.