LEAP President Howto

Copyright (C) 2002 by Linux Enthusiasts and Professionals, Inc., all rights reserved.
Document started by Steve Litt

According to its bylaws, the LEAP (Linux Enthusiasts and Professionals) president has three duties:

  1. Preside at general and executive committee meetings.
  2. Be ex-officio of all committees except the Election Committee.
  3. Appoint committee chairmen to fill vacancies during his/her term of office.
Those duties say nothing about the real function of the president. As LEAP president you have two functions:
  1. Leader
  2. Worker of last resort
The more effective you are with #1, the less #2 you need to do. The remainder of this document details leadership and delegation tips for an optimally efficient LEAP. It is hoped that in years to come, each LEAP president will add his/her own thoughts to this document.

In an effort to define leadership as it relates to the smooth function of LEAP, this document is divided into several sections:

Part I: Preventing Time Wastage

Depending on how the day to day running of LEAP is handled, the 7 Exec members could become the bottleneck restricting further LEAP growth. This is especially true when things slip through the cracks, or when the Exec committee repeatedly considers and debates identical or similar questions. Such problems can be minimized by keeping focus, and using systems and policies to handle the mundane.

Keeping Focus in a Volunteer Organization

If running LEAP were an Exec Committee member's primary occupation, he or she would maintain focus on his or her LEAP tasks. But because we're all volunteers, we depart the Exec meeting with a todo list and great intentions, but then the next morning a hot task at our real job consumes our attention, and all too often the LEAP tasks are forgotten after several backburnerings. This is a natural prioritization of income before volunteerism.

During the Exec meeting most Exec's write down their own action items, but sometimes those action items fall through the cracks. As president, your Exec meeting notes should consist almost completely of action items and the volunteers doing them. In the long run, it will save you a great deal of time if you transcribe those action items to your main computer IMMEDIATELY upon arriving home from the meeting. Yes, it's late, but once you can conveniently track and remind action items, nothing will fall through the cracks.

Similarly, you should urge the secretary to get the minutes up as early as possible. This serves as a reminder, for each Exec member, of the context of their action items.

Use Systems and Policies to Handle the Mundane

LEAP is growing, and as it grows, simple day to day running of the LUG consumes time that could otherwise be used for strategy and new growth. Once we know how to do something, it should be documented and implemented as policies and procedures, and if possible, automated. Here are some examples: As president, you need to consistently look for Exec activities that could be automated or trivialized, and guide others in such automation or trivialization.

The following are some specific examples:

Part II: Disaster Prevention

One disaster can ruin your whole day. A disaster could severely impact LEAP's ability to grow, or possibly destroy it. Our committee and bylaw driven corporate government reduces the likelihood of some disasters, such as departure of a leader wrecking the LUG. But we have some potential disasters that must be anticipated and headed off long before they get serious:

Preventing Bankruptcy

Our bank charges us a $15.00 monthly fee just to keep our account. That's roughly 6 memberships a year just to maintain our bank account. Our annual Uniform Business Report costs $61.50 -- roughly 2 memberships a year. Our accountant costs  over $200.00/year, or roughly 7 memberships per year. Every year, our first 15 memberships go into corporate paperwork.

Things like petty expenses, Hamcation (which may gain or lose money), CTS (always consumes money), and other projects must compete for funding from any memberships over the first 15. LEAP's cash in bank is usually between $500.00 and $1500.00 -- a cushion but certainly not security.

If our cash position goes down near 0, we'll either need to quickly have members give or loan us money, or we'll have to disband. It's absolutely vital that never come near happening. The two prevention methods are increasing revenue and limiting expenditures.

Increasing Revenue

There are many ideas to increase revenue. Some are more workable than others: Certainly meeting sponsors are an excellent source of revenue. LEAP did this in its early years, and it worked quite well. As president, you should find a volunteer to contact local businesses and ask for meeting sponsorships. Because these sponsorships result in advertising at the meeting and on the website, I'm pretty sure that they can be written off BY A BUSINESS as a business expense, whether or not we are 501C3.

Both Suncoast LUG and the Melbourne LUG make a substantial amount of their revenue selling raffle tickets. As president, you should explore whether this is possible. The LEAP culture may make a $1.00 raffle ticket unpopular, and unless we can consistently get good SWAG nobody will buy a raffle ticket. Furthermore, legal aspects of "gambling" must be explored.

In 2001 DeVry paid LEAP $400.00 to train some professors in the installation and use of Linux. This more than made up for what would have been a shortfall year. As president, if you can figure out a way to get such "gigs" on a regular basis, it would help quite a bit.

Limiting Expenses

First and foremost, there will always be those who advocate paying for meeting space. As the steward of LEAP, you must convince them otherwise, until such time as LEAP is regularly taking in over $2500.00/year. At $75.00 per month, that's $900.00 per month, or 2/3 to 3/4 of our current annual budget. After one such year we'd be living from membership to membership, and wouldn't even have the money to pay for a place if an emergency forced us out of our free places.

If you look at the other LUGs in Florida, none of them pay for meeting spaces. Methods for preventing loss of meeting space, and getting new meeting space, are discussed in the next section. The main point is persuade the Exec Committee not to fall into the trap of having regular meetings in a spot that costs money.

Thoroughly scrutinize any plan to spend money. Vigorously resist any plan to have LEAP subsidize goods and services for members. Everything we sell should be sold at a profit. Our members are more in need of the information we can provide than they're in need of $5.00 off on a T shirt or a book. The one exception is CTS, where selling things is banned.

In summary, as president it's your duty to keep LEAP a going concern, and financially speaking the way you do that is to scrutinize every expenditure, and as a leader persuade the rest of the Exec committee to reject all but the most necessary or opportune expenditures.

Preventing loss of meeting space

Many a LUG has dissolved after losing its meeting space. Of course you can always buy meeting space, but if that goes on for more than a month or two bankruptcy is the result. The result of canceled meetings is almost as bad, in that regulars stop coming, and don't start again when a new meeting space is found. When a LUG is small and new, irregular meetings are acceptable. When a LUG reaches the status of LEAP, meeting regularity is a must.

As president, you must institute procedures to consistently find meeting places, BEFORE they're needed, and then fill those meeting spaces with LEAP SIGs. This kills 2 birds with one stone:

  1. Scales LEAP through SIGs.
  2. Ensures that if we lose our main meeting place, we can quickly move into another.
As president you might be too busy to do this yourself. In such a case find a volunteer to do it for LEAP. Such a person is preferably a likable, persuasive person with lots of contacts.

You'll also need to convince the Exec committee that SIGs are placeholders for meeting places, and that a SIG needn't be mature to occupy a meeting space. In fact, a SIG can be quickly manufactured to occupy a meeting place. You might get a lot of resistance on this, but keep hammering on this idea. Keep reminding them of the ramifications of losing our last meeting space, and the fact that for various reasons meeting spaces typically stop working every year or 2.

Preventing government paperwork bungle

If you have set up documentation, procedures and automation properly, it should be just about impossible to bungle any paperwork.

Preventing flame war

The first public LEAP meeting was June 18, 1999. The Lockheed Martin meeting room was filled to capacity. Then a vicious 7 day long flame war erupted around June 27, causing a split between LEAP and ELUG, and making the sum membership of those 2 organizations  substantially smaller than that of LEAP on 6/18/2002. It would be 2 years before LEAP would be restored to the power of the former ELUG, or the LEAP that existed on 6/18/1999. ELUG died during those 2 years. LEAP spent 2 years of licking our wounds instead of reaching out to Central Florida Linux users. The June/July 1999 flame war was started and continued by five people. Old records indicate there were in excess of 250 on the mailing list. Five flamers set Central Florida Linux back 2 years.

As the president, you must prevent flame wars at all costs. This was easy in the days when LEAP was governed by its founders, who remembered first hand the dreadful cost of the five flamers. As time goes on, with less people remembering the June firestorm, there may be a feeling that nipping a flame war in the bud is somehow a restriction on "free speech". It's your job to convince your fellow Exec members that left untended, flame wars carry the potential to break up a LUG.

It's simple enough. Profanity is banned because it offends a large section of our mailing list, and is likely to trigger further flames. A personal insult is banned, because it is very likely to trigger several negative and insulting responses, and also because it intimidates many would be list users. Racist content is banned because it's against our bylaws, and also for the same reasons as personal insults.

A single "lightweight" instance of profanity, insult or racism is probably best dealt with by a personal email from our list admin or the Exec Committee. A single aggregeous instance is best handled by the email admin immediately eliminating the flamer's posting rights, and then making an immediate public announcement repudiating the post, requesting nobody respond to it, and reiterating our policy of banning posters who aggregiously violate our posting guidelines. If it was the flamer's first offense in recent memory (a year), he or she should probably be let back on after an apology and a request to be put back on. Repeat offenders should be banned from posting for a significant amount of time, and the Exec Committee should post a conspicuous LEAPLIST message announcing the flamer's banishment for multiple offenses.

Offtopic posts are not as serious as profanity, personal insults and racism. If an offtopic post is harmless, it's best to let it go. If it's offtopic AND controversial, an immediate post from the email administrator asking that the thread be moved to LEAPBS is the best way of handling it.

In 2001 LEAP adopted a moderator policy in which the email administrator(s) have full authority to instantly unsubscribe a poster they believe to be flaming. The email administrator then asks the advice of the Exec Committee, who might ask him to resubscribe the person. We've done it this way so that flame wars can be stopped when they're little one-post affairs, and yet the banished poster has recourse to more than a single email administrator.

As president, it's your job to make sure LEAP has at least one email administrator -- 2 or 3 is probably better. These admins should be fair and impartial people, and should be made aware of their duty to prevent flame wars. As president, you need to also impress upon the rest of the Exec Committee that flaming is extremely dangerous to LEAP's health, and should be addressed quickly and decisively.

Ensuring ability to recruit a treasurer

Treasurer is the hardest job on the Exec Committee. Recognizing that, the Exec Committee recently commissioned the writing of a Treasurer's FAQ, which to a great degree makes the Treasurer's job a simple checklist. As president, you must do all you can to make sure the Treasurer's job is as easy as all the other Exec Committee jobs. This can be done by continuing to refine Treasurer's documentation, oversee clean handoffs between incoming and outgoing treasurers, and offloading tasks from the already burdened treasurer.

For instance, give the Treasurer the authority to assign the Uniform Business Report to the Vice President, who has very little in the way of official tasks. The Treasurer is still responsible, and he must oversee the work, but the Vice President can fill out the form and assemble everyone's information. To the extent possible, obtain volunteers to make the Treasurer's job easier.

Announce elections early, and announce the Treasurer's FAQ and any other Treasurer's documentation, discussing how it makes the Treasurer's job fairly easy. Do what you can to obtain an early candidacy from someone the Exec Committee considers competent, so LEAP never has to go without a Treasurer.

As president, always remind the outgoing Secretary that he/she must take minutes of the election meeting. Failure to do so could delay for several months the new Treasurer's ability to sign checks, and would cost LEAP an extra $61.50 for a new UBR.

Ensuring ability to elect a complete Exec Committee

The LEAP bylaws contain language to prevent LEAP from being kidnapped by a clique. Specifically, for an election to be valid, the bylaws state that "Any vote by the general membership requires the presence of 10 or more members in good standing, of whom less than half are executive committee members.". That means that the election meeting must have 8 paid members who ARE NOT on the Exec Committee. In the past that's been difficult to achieve.

If we don't get a large turnout at the Election meeting, some of the current Exec members must relinquish their right to vote and leave the room. In a hotly contested race we may not be able to get anyone to leave the room, forcing a constitutional crisis.

As president, you need to make sure that people know early to come to the meeting. Also, have some sort of fun topic to happen right after the election, so you draw members.

Furthermore, as president you need to energize LEAP insiders to pay their dues for the next year and urge others to pay dues, so there are enough members in good standing to hold an election.

Part III: Scaling LEAP

Encouraging Volunteerism

Here's where the rubber meets the road. One volunteer president can do little, and even seven volunteer Exec members cannot expand our LUG to anywhere near its potential. Somehow, we must encourage volunteerism.
 

What Doesn't Work

In its first three years LEAP has ended up in many blind alleys while dealing with volunteers. Certainly the biggest mistake is micromanaging the volunteer, or when "recruiting" a volunteer, acting like we will be micromanaging him or her. Words like "accountability", "report to",  or "under the control of" are the kiss of death. That stuff might work on a person's day job, but our experience has shown it doesn't work with volunteers.

This is especially true when the volunteer COMES TO US. Such a volunteer has an idea he or she wants to implement, and is highly enthusiastic about HIS or HER vision. Not the Exec Committee's vision. In fact, such a person might think of the Exec Committee as too stodgy to pull it off, and therefore he or she will cut through the red tape by doing it himself. Such a person will back away very quickly if constrained by the Exec Committee.

Asking for volunteers for a long term task, such as heading a SIG, also doesn't seem to work. It's even difficult to get people to accept nomination for the LEAP Exec Committee, and that is a high honor.

We seem to have better luck recruiting volunteers for specific events, such as Hamcation.

What Might Work

This is originally being written by Steve Litt (LEAP President, 8/2001-8/2002). Succeeding presidents should record their findings in this document. Here are some things that might work:

Get out of the volunteer's way

If we're lucky enough to get an enthusiastic volunteer, it might be best to get out of his or her way. As long as there are no violations of our bylaws and it doesn't cost money (or doesn't cost a material amount), and it doesn't put us at obvious risk of litigation, what do we have to lose?

We help when asked, but otherwise stay out of the way.

Accept a Fait Accompli

Perhaps the "volunteer" would prefer to start something on his or her own, recruiting from the LEAP list. Once it's up and running, the person may or may not want to integrate it into LEAP. If so, that person should be left in charge of it, and not be messed with.

Of course the exceptions are something that has nothing to do with Linux (and is therefore against our Bylaws), or something that directly competes with LEAP (basically another LUG serving the same geographic area).

In LEAP's first three years, we've tried recruiting volunteers. It works, occasionally, with certain people.

Part IV: Working with the Exec Committee

One might have fantasies of coming up with great ideas and having the Exec Committee enthusiastically champion them. Naturally that's just a fantasy. Many of your best and worst ideas will be voted down. Obviously you can't take it personally.

It's likely you'll get no more unanimity as president than you did when you were a director. The Exec Committee is comprised of 7 intelligent individuals, each with his or her own viewpoint.

Just keep discussing your vision with your fellow Exec members every chance you get. Some of it may rub off. It's likely that when your vision is finally carried out, credit will go to someone else. That's cool -- it got done.

Summary

As president, the buck stops with you. You have ultimate responsibility for the growth and protection of LEAP. This can be done with a lot of work on your part, or with less work and delegation to skilled and enthusiastic volunteers, both on the Exec Committee and off. Obviously volunteers are the better choice.

Try to foster a culture of partnership between LEAP and its volunteers. There should be no "reporting to". Only a curious and enthusiastic EXEC committee asking how it's going.