Several topics around volunteers came up fast and furious at the last meeting. This is one I wanted to talk about a bit more.
We were discussing the time commitment different type of work requires, and how some work - community management was the example we used - requires the type of time commitment that is much easier to give when you are getting paid to do it. What I wanted to dive into a bit more was the ethical implications of volunteer work that takes up more than x time. My bar was enough time that it would interfere with the personâs ability to earn a livelihood, so letâs use 40h as a starting point.
First thought - Being realistic about who has time
Without implying that we do this, Iâd suggest that it would be wrong to design pathways that rely on finding volunteers that can contribute more than x hours. Everyone needs to make a living with few exceptions - retirees and the wealthy are the two examples I can come up with. Students have obligations to school, and stay-at-home parents have obligations to their children equivalent to earning a livelihood. So as weâre thinking about volunteer roles and responsibilities I think we need to consciously factor in the time commitment required to do a good job, and be realistic that we shouldnât hope for a volunteer with x hours of free time to come along.
Second thought - How to design for participation in time consuming roles
So how do we design for participation in roles that take more than x hours? Is there a way to split the work up among a committee or multiple volunteers? Are there roles where sharing the load just wouldnât work? Do we have examples of this working either within Mozilla or in other 3rd party groups?
Third thought - Is the ethical answer to just pay people? How?
This one got a bit more time in the meeting than the other two. This oneâs also a bit trickier, I donât want it to derail discussion of the other two points, but of course you canât really talk about the other two points without considering this as well.
Mozilla pays its interns, so if we do find there are volunteer roles that are best served by someone who can put in full time hours, is it more consistent that we also figure out how to pay these people as well? I would use an example of a community working on something that requires a lot of time in the short term. Perhaps a FirefoxOS launch team, or community members advocating against legislation in their region, but a short term, intense project that could really benefit from having a single community/project manager to make sure things are driven at the necessary pace.
This sounds pretty similar to an internship to me, but internships are only open to post-secondary students. Are there other ways to explore financially supporting people besides employment and internships? Grants, sponsorships, short-term internships or apprenticeships for non-students? Besides cost, of course, do regulations make these things prohibitive for the occasions where we might consider them?