SCN: Re: OPS: w3m ...

[Sharma]

I personally wrote a grant application when SCN was still a CPSR project
and no one objected. We did not win the grant, but it was done and as far
as I know, the only reason other grants have not been applied for is that
no one or group wrote them. I have never heard of any policy about not
applying for grants. There was a period of time when I was not assisting
much, about a year, so I cannot speak about that, but it has not been
mentioned in the last two years while I have been on the board. 

Many of the minutes that are available are on the webpages. Which ones are
missing that might have the information you are looking for? I ran across
some of the notes I took during the Coordinating Council days a few days
ago, but they were way less than minutes and really not worth working on
except perhaps as history. There certainly were early discussions about
whether or not SCN should look for ONE sponsor - a corporation,
university, the city, and so on - and we decided that it was very
important to not put SCN in the position of ending up being really owned
by anyone other than its members. 

The work done in the name of SCNA always depends on people to do it and in
the absence of people to do it, follow up, keep bringing it to the fore,
keep looking for resources and people, it does not happen. I know it is
frustrating when some wanted change does not take place, or takes place
very slowly, but that is the way the system works.

The changes made in the last year to enable SCNA members via committees to
determine what they want to do to improve services is major. We still need
to recruit people with the skills to bring about those changes, and
find ways to support current volunteers to either do the work they know
how to do or increase their skill levels to that needed.  

Please do not take this as any sort of rejection but as I know nothing
about what it would take to upgrade our system to provide the services
wanted, and I simply do not have time to read through numerous posts
discussing it, I would much prefer that these discussions not be sent to
the board. 

Who could make the wanted changes? Is there an SCNA volunteer with the
time and skill to do so? If so, what support do they need? If not, how
could such a volunteer(s) be found? Where might they be found? Who will
take the responsibility of finding/training the volunteers? Who will
follow up to make certain the work is done? This needs to take place
within the appropriate committee. If that committee is unable to do the
needed work, then something will have to change, i.e. more volunteers,
another committee, other resources, or ???

A volunteer organization does not accomplish tasks in the same way an
individual or a private business does. It is much slower for one thing,
and it has a different range of resources. One of our most important
resources is mutual respect and good will. Sometimes frustration gets in
the way of remembering that. As SCNA gets larger, and has a larger budget
and possibly a staff, it will be a different organization and we need to
be sure that if/as we go in that direction, we continue to create the best
approximation we can of what we want.


Cheers,

-sharma




On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Joe Mabel wrote:

> Then, not to put to fine a point on it, Andrew and I are entirely correct 
> to say that the SCN board has made suc a decision.  If they are now 
> considering reversing it, all to the good, but I don't think I'm at all 
> "mistaken" in what I said.
> JM
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Rod Clark [SMTP:bb615 at scn.org]
> Sent:	Wednesday, February 23, 2000 11:38 PM
> To:	AH
> Cc:	Gianni Truzzi; scn at scn.org
> Subject:	Re: SCN: Re: OPS: w3m ...
> 
> Andrew Higgins wrote:
> > 2c Joe Mabel wrote:
> > 2c > If SCN's decision not to fundraise from corporations and to focus on 
> a
> > 2c > volunteer
> > 2c > staff leads directly to this sort of consequence, I think this 
> consequence
> > 2c > calls that decision into question.
> >
> > On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Gianni Truzzi wrote:
> > 2c Allow me to correct this mistaken belief. The Board of SCNA has NOT 
> made
> > 2c any such decision. In fact, we expect to begin soliciting corporate 
> and
> > 2c foundation funding rather vigorously in the coming months. However, 
> that
> > 2c kind of fundraising effort has taken a back seat to other efforts for
> > 2c which it would be prerequisite. It's simply been a matter of 
> allocating
> >
> > This "mistaken" belief was first espoused by a member of the Board, and
> > made to sound like a policy decision.
> >
> > http://www.scn.org/volunteers/scn-l/msg00022.html
> >
> > Perhaps if we had published minutes it could be made more clear how this
> > confusion arose...
> 
> Andrew,
> 
>    There's never been any confusion that (until the very recent
> City education grant) almost all of SCN's revenues have come
> from small personal contributions to CPSR and then to SCNA, and
> from small contributions by users for new accounts.
> 
>    The City grant was a big departure for SCN, but still we
> don't depend on it for providing core services. Those still come
> from the sum of all the small personal contributions.
> 
>    This is not accidental, and CPSR set it up that way for a
> reason. That reason was to avoid any possibility of anything
> other than a competely free and independent viewpoint that would
> take into account only the interests of the membership and not
> of any partner organizations, government agencies, underwriting
> businesses or any other entities at all.
> 
>    There is a proposal for SCN, called SCN II, that Gianni
> drafted recently and that he mentioned during the Annual
> Meeting, that would add greatly to the range of possible funding
> sources. In the process, it would make membership contributions
> relatively much less important because they could not reasonably
> be expected to rise to meet the funding levels necessary to
> provide greatly improved services to underserved consituencies
> and otherwise greatly increase SCN's activities.
> 
>    The SCN II proposal has been circulated in draft form and I
> hope that you'll soon have a chance to study and comment on it.
> Since this is an important new initiative, we all should be
> interested in shaping it to provide the best chance for SCN to
> grow and at the same time to keep a stable, dependable funding
> base and keep its independence. I believe the SCN II proposal
> can adequately addresses these concerns, and also believe that
> everyone in the Association who is concerned should have the
> chance to contribute something to this discusion as we go
> forward.
> 
> Rod Clark
> 

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