Ground in equal, open pay & roles over titles
Goal: At the foundation of budgets, start from the assumption that every member’s time is equally valuable and reflect that in a flat rate. Estimate how much time each task will take, grouped into roles with consistent definition across projects. Roll hours up for each task and multiply hours by a flat hourly rate that is either collectively determined or based on overall budget.
We ground in a flat compensation rate and stable, pre-planned pay, usually based on fixed budgets that are dictated by very limited funding and project restricted funding.
Everyone involved in a project is asked to provide feedback on the number of hours they think they'll spend and the budget and hours overall, including expenses. Project participants include people who are working day to day on the project, as well as people who give less frequent advice, like collaborators. We avoid fixed titles in favor of role types that are determined by how many hours are worked, but we also recognize founders more often. Roles are not tied to specific people, nor equivalent to voting rights.
Why
Our current model values labor and assumes that all participants have equal wisdom. That's why we avoid “titles” as much as possible. When we really need to describe roles, we favor role types that are limited to the nature and amount of work the individual is doing for a specific project. The role can vary by project. We recognize founders more, because founders in our community spend many thousands of unfunded hours to build projects, and are never made whole.
The purpose of developing a common role system is to show structure around estimated hours. But until we are able to cover costs of our work, many of us volunteer time as mutual aid.
Embodying Characteristics
Responsibility Roles
Cross-project role types help us have common language for how teams are set up. But each time should have role descriptions visualizing the day to day. Our responsibility roles are based on relative hours spent and can change over the course of a project.
System Studio
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Research, create, and shepherd processes & policies driven by MJN values. Responsible for ensuring that the work advances.
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Provide regular advice or feedback on system innovation projects. Generally support sustainability of organization.
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Participate in system innovation by contributing needed wisdom at key moments.
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Provide general support and sounding board when capacity allows.
Venture Studio
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Turn organized ideas into plans & carry them forward. Responsible for team-building, project management, and implementation. May work before funding comes in and support fundraising efforts.
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Funded to independently advance areas of work, under guidance of Architects.
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Provide regular, critical advice, within their own capacity. At least 1 system studio member (2 recommended) must be a collaborator on every venture. This enables feedback loops to form as MJN system concepts are put into practice.
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Generate, organize, and plan ideas for ventures. After structuring a project, including setting up responsibility and voting roles and funding, may step out. Usually work before funding comes in.
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Provide general support and sounding board when capacity allows.
Tensions
How can we better estimate hours? And what happens if we find out we’re wrong mid-way through a project?
People work at different speeds. Could we unintentionally penalize people who do less — or more — on similar tasks?
Ground-up estimations of hours usually result in sticker shock. We don’t look at the bottom line first. Instead, we go through the exercise of objectively breaking down tasks in smaller units and hours before we multiply. The results are often surprising.
“Contract support” VS “team member”: not everyone we work with is automatically a team member. Sometimes, people are less interested or primarily seeking specific contract work at their own rates. Since our founding, contract rates have always been more than what we pay ourselves.
Do years of experience or certain kinds of relevant training make a person’s time more valuable? Is it truly just for us to pay everyone at the same rate? What if you are used to a higher rate or your participation includes mentorship?
We’re not always able to meet our budget goals. Also, we must often begin work on a project before we've achieved our funding goals.
Project participants might change. It isn't always possible to have project participants in place throughout the lifecycles of both fundraising and carrying a project out. While any collaborator is able to see our budgets on request, we also don't have a process in place to gather feedback from people spending much less time on a project.
How We Handle Tensions
For now, we are reliant on volunteer hours across the board, which leaves us at the early stages of applying all of our policies to their fullest extent. Also, collective members have similar enough years of experience or complementary skills to apply a flat compensation rate. Our policies will evolve, but it is more important is for us to resist following status quo standards of value, such as “going rates” or benchmarks.
We also rely on the value pool to leave space to discuss what is “just.”
