helmer.ca » University of Waterloo

Paying volunteers is a bad idea

jesse — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:19:40 +0000

I sent the letter below to Imprint's board of directors. There is a proposal coming to the Annual General Meeting on 22 Feb 2010 (right after reading week) to increase honoraria given to volunteers to as much as $2,500/term (section editor) with lesser amounts for less senior volunteer roles. I think it will lead to worse rather than better performance and is a misallocation of capital.

Update at 11:50 pm: I hear that the proposal isn't going ahead.

Good evening directors,

I hope all is well in the office. To those of you I don't know, I was a volunteer back in the early 2000s. I spent a fair amount of time in the office.

I heard about the proposed change to the honoraria policy. I think it is a bad idea to raise honoraria to such high levels. It's slightly better, I suppose, than the awful proposal to grant honoraria to directors that was floated a few years ago, but not by much.

Before turning to the heart of the matter, let me admit that I proposed a few ill-conceived policies while I was a volunteer. I recall some about internal and external communications that were just silly.

In general, I think looking at honoraria as wages rather than a token of appreciation is at the root of the problem. Are section editors and so forth volunteers or paid staff? If they are volunteers, then I would think that the editor-in-chief is more than able to motivate them to do good work without any honoraria whatsoever. Granting honoraria was initially just a kind of gesture of goodwill -- I remember receiving my first one, for $50, I believe. I was so surprised and pleased to receive a small gift. Perhaps we erred in increasing the maximum amounts to $390. We should have just left them as token amounts. At the time, we had a big surplus of funds on hand. We didn't realize until later that the best way of dealing with the surplus was to reduce the student fee.

If you want paid part-time staff, and not volunteers, then call them such, hire them and pay them wages. Don't pretend that someone receiving $2500 a term, and possibly more than $6000 a year, is a volunteer. It's insulting to actual volunteers.

It is true that Imprint volunteers do a tremendous amount of work. They have for more than 30 years, through many different editors and boards. They also receive a substantial amount of recognition and perks -- food on production nights, term dinners, awards and honoraria. I don't believe for a second that relying on actual volunteers is a weakness, nor do I think that shifting to paid part-time staff is better. Several of the volunteers I worked with are professional journalists now and honoraria had nothing to do with the quality of their work or their willingness to devote so many hours to Imprint. I think you may be underestimating the enduring strength of Imprint's culture. In fact, I think you run a serious risk of undermining the volunteer ethos that has been at the heart of the organization for decades.

If you insist on advocating for honoraria to be raised to such high levels, I would suggest that you make the change effective four years from now, when few of the current volunteers would be eligible to receive the money. Otherwise, I expect you will have volunteers voting themselves more money, which is ridiculous.

Best,

Jesse

PS: The current class system for volunteers also seems overly hierarchical. Back in my day, there were only staff and non-staff, and the barrier to becoming staff was not very high -- four meetings and four contributions, I believe. Perhaps things are too competitive, rather than not competitive enough?

iPod and iTunes in the classroom and beyond

jesse — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:50:47 +0000

Stanford is doing some cool stuff with iTunes. University of Waterloo should be paying attention.

self-replicating machine similar to NRC and UW work?

jesse — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:48:58 +0000

I might know someone who worked on a project similar to the one mentioned in this article about a system that replicates strings of simple electronic devices from random parts floating on a cushion of air.

George Elliott Clarke wins Trudeau Fellowship

jesse — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 01:14:57 +0000

University of Waterloo alumnus George Elliott Clarke wins Trudeau Fellowship ($150,000 over five years)! Awesome.

fedopoly

jesse — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 22:30:18 +0000

Check out the new board game from Canada's bastion of erudite thought, mathNEWS: Fedopoly.

National Survey of Student Engagement 2004

jesse — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 19:15:15 +0000

I received an e-mail from University of Waterloo President David Johnston two days ago, inviting me to complete the National Survey of Student Engagement. This survey has been administered in the U.S.A. for a while; I think this is the first time it's been administered in Canada.

You can look at the survey without filling in answers by going to the survey web site and entering "guest" as the Survey ID and password.

Here's the e-mail invitation I received from President Johnston:

Dear Jesse Helmer:

I am writing to invite you to participate in an important survey dealing with students' educational activities at the University of Waterloo (UW). This survey is administered to students at hundreds of American universities, and for the first time this year, at several Canadian universities, including UW. The results will allow us to analyze, in the aggregate, experiences you and other students at UW report with those of students at other universities throughout Canada and the US.

You are one of 2100 undergraduate students in your 1st year or your expected graduating year who have been randomly selected to tell us about your educational experiences at UW inside and outside the classroom, and to indicate what you are gaining and have gained from those experiences. By taking 15 minutes to complete the survey, you will help UW to provide an improved educational environment for you and for future UW students.

The survey is administered on the Web. Go to www.collegereport.org/canada and

In the Survey ID box, please type: [snipped]
In the Password box, please type: [snipped]

If you have any difficulty logging in, please e-mail help@collegereport.org or call 1-800-676-0390 for assistance. A reminder notice will be generated in a week to prompt students who plan to participate but have not yet had a chance to do so.

Participation in this survey is voluntary and information you provide will remain confidential. The data will be summarized ensuring that no individual can be identified. Furthermore, the Web site is programmed to collect responses on the questionnaire alone; no potentially identifying information (such as machine identifiers) is collected. You may decline answering any of the questions, and may withdraw at any time. The data will be kept for a minimum of 5 years at the University of Waterloo in a secure computing environment within Institutional Analysis & Planning.

I would like to assure you that this study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the Office of Research Ethics. However, the final decision about participation is yours. If you have any comments or concerns resulting from your participation in this study, please feel free to contact Dr. Susan Sykes, Director, Office of Research Ethics, at 519-888-4567 ext. 6005 or by e-mail at ssykes@uwaterloo.ca.

If you would like more information about this survey, you can visit the National Survey of Student Engagement at www.iub.edu/~nsse, e-mail NSSE at info@collegereport.org, or call 812-856-5824. If you have questions about UW�s involvement in this project and how we intend to use the results, you can contact Mr. Bob Truman, Director of Institutional Analysis & Planning, at 519-888-4793, or at nsse@uwaterloo.ca. The survey results should be published by Fall 2004, and will be available at http://www.analysis.uwaterloo.ca.

I want to thank you personally for considering this request. The responses you and other students provide will identify areas where we can improve, and they will give us information that will lead to constructive changes at Waterloo. Thank you and best wishes.

Sincerely,

David Johnston

President and Vice-Chancellor

Hart runs his mouth…Helmer writes back

jesse — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 21:25:47 +0000

Jonathon Hart is running for Arts Regular councillor. I've some comments on his statement on feds.ca.

He writes:

In previous elections voter turnout and student apathy, related to FEDs, have played a major factor in the quality of representation from every faculty, and especially the Arts faculty. It has become apparent to me that it is time to put strength and leadership back into the FEDs so that the council and executive can do the best job possible for the constituents of arts and for every student at the University of Waterloo.

Where is your evidence? Apparently, you don't have any. You are probably correct but your rhetoric needs a foundation.

I want to get YOU involved. I want to be the person that speaks on behalf of YOUR views and direction for the faculty of arts. It is critical for everyone in the faculty to feel that they have the opportunity to contribute to their education and post secondary experience through FEDs.

The position you are running for is called councillor, not conduit. CAPs are dumb; use bold instead.

Accountability is critical for an effective council. I want you to know what I'm doing to make your education better. The lack of interest and commitment from the councilors in past years is appalling. Councilors who don't show up and when they do show up leave early, aren't there to work for you. You deserve better. I can promise you that I will be dedicated to being YOUR voice to the executive and the first step to that is being physically at meetings. The next step is being prepared and involved at meetings. At every meeting the voice of arts students will be heard.

This year's arts councillors have been very good, relative to the rest of council. You sound like you've got lots of enthusiasm. Here's hoping you can do some good on council. You've got one of my four votes.

UW blogger get together, tonight!

jesse — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 19:18:04 +0000

Tonight: Grad House, 8 p.m. Be there or beware.

A vision of Students’ Council

jesse — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 08:09:24 +0000

Listening to the media forum, I started thinking about council and attendance. The common refrain is that council is overpopulated with résumé builders who just don't show up to meetings. I think attendance has something to do with timing of meetings and the business considered at those meetings. Consider the following table of data.

Meeting date	Business	Actual	Possible	% Attend	Guests	Total at meeting
11-May	Committee positions; referendum report; councillor and executive reports	19	24	79%	2	21
8-Jun	Executive reports; Finkelstein talk; UPASS; legal expenses; council clothing; councillor reports;	19	27	70%	7	26
13-Jul	Finkelstein funding; SASAC committee; executive reports; operating budget	22	27	81%	30	52
10-Aug	Procedure for funding events; clubs procedure; councillor reports; committee reports	17	26	65%	9	26
21-Sep	Autonomy policy; committee appointments; executive reports and strategic plans; councillor reports; structural budget problems report;	24	30	80%	9	33
19-Oct	GO budget	17	30	57%	7	24
9-Nov	GZ/Tim Hortons; election procedure; arts endowment fund; GO budget; funding municipal candidates; executive reports; committee reports	25	30	83%	24	49
7-Dec	Committee positions; executive reports	12	32	38%	7	19
12-Dec	Committee positions; executive reports	20	32	63%	3	23
11-Jan	Removal of councillors; addition to the board; committee positions; committee reports; CASA presentation; OUSA presentation; executive reports	20	27	74%	11	31

Interestingly, the best attended meetings are the meetings where councillors and others were aware of important issues that would be discussed at the meeting, namely Finkelstein and Ground Zero. These meetings also drew many non-councillors.

This chart illustrates the trend fairly well. Too, it suggests that meetings held at the end of the first week of classes are better attended than meetings held before classes begin.

Consider, however, that every council meeting except the special meeting in December was held on a Sunday. Why? Does any other committee on campus meet regularly on Sundays? Regular meetings on Sunday are mental. Council meetings should be at 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month, except exam months. There would be nine council meetings instead of twelve. Holding meetings in the evening would free up executives, Feds employees, and councillors from their day jobs and wouldn't cut into their weekends, which are often used for recreation, relaxation, travel, worship, etc.

But the meeting time is not the most significant factor. The fact of the matter is that Students' Council generally doesn't talk about very important issues. If you take away councillor and executive reports, committee appointments and internal procedure, not much is left on the agenda for most meetings. Finkelstein, the operating budget and Ground Zero are important issues (although the budget is stretching it a bit). Garrett Saunders' presentation is important. Discussions about municipal elections are important.

Students' Council needs to talk about better things. Here are some ideas:

Presentation from Off Campus Housing. Listen. Discuss. Send recommendations to OCH.
Presentation from Student Society execs (COPS). Listen. Discuss issues.
Termly survey of students. I've talked about this before. Survey students, discuss the results of the survey and communicate them to UW.
Presentation from unknown groups (StudentFORCE, for example). Seek out people who are doing neat stuff and invite them to present to council.
Course and professor evaluations. Make it a priority. Stop focusing on getting them online and start focusing on making the surveys better.
Co-op updates: number of students with and without work, etc. Invite CECS to present. One problem with having a separate council for co-op is that regular students don't participate in discussions about co-op. Sometimes, this means that we miss interesting ideas from a fresh perspective.
Club presentations. Invite clubs to give ten minute presentations about what they do and how it benefits students.

Anyway, just a few ideas about how Students' Council could be improved. Hopefully, this blog entry at least calls the common refrain of résumé-building-go-for-nothing-councillors into question.

Two other things that I forgot to mention: Students' Council should be comprised of two reps from each faculty, plus six students-at-large and the elected executive (total of 22 people). An executive committee of council should be the board of directors of the corporation. It would be comprised of the executive and five councillors.

nothing new at Feds?

jesse — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:10:06 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new mailing list called fedsnews. Unfortunately, the most recent message to the list, from Feds President Chris Edey, was sent on 16 January 2004. A list that isn't used frequently isn't much better than no list at all. Dave and John should use the list, too.