Yep, that's right - professional staff and 'USOF' in the same sentence.
Some background: The USOF Board has created a working group (headed by Greg Lennon, QOC and Director-at-Large) to examine the many issues around supporting a paid staff. Some of the questions the working group will be looking at are: What will be the job responsibilities for one or more paid staff positions? What would the anticipated cost(s) and commitments be? If an office is also recommended, where should it be and why? What would be the impact on ongoing programs? What will be our candidate search and hiring plan? Will any Bylaws need change? What benefits will USOF be expected to gain? How do other NGO's handle the transition to paid staff? Are there insurance implications?
We are looking for USOF members interested in serving on (or just
plain advising) the working group. We would very much like to tap your
expertise in related fields (accounting? insurance? nonprofit
management? fundraising? recruiting?) even if briefly to help this
effort.
This isn't just a cross-post - I know that AP is home to many people who surely must have lots of good ideas and strong opinions, so please speak up!
If you would like to join this endeavour or offer constructive advice, please send an email to Greg Lennon at greg_lennon (at)
usorienteer.org. If there is interest for such a thing we'll establish an info-only list for those who wish to be kept up-to-date with the progress of the working group.
Thanks!
Bravo! One day the IOF might emulate USOF. This is a great initiative.
The IOF has about three paid staff, plus paid contractors.
I assumed the IOF had paid staff. I was thinking more abstractly.
I got an e-mail on August 4 with some details about the Plan. There is a USOF working group and it has released a preliminary report to the Board of Directors. I haven't seen the report, but I have seen comments on it on the Board of Directors e-mail list, which is closed but which any member can request access to. Two issues raise flags with me. Not sure which color flags they would be with you, the reader, or how many more flags you'd have, but I urge you to ask your Federation to share as many details with you upon this long-ranging transition as possible.
1. The person who is apparently a front-runner to lead USOF as the new Executive Director is Bruce Ward. I google "Bruce Ward"+orienteering and I get 71 hits, but in reality there are only 12, the rest are "entries very similar to the 12 already displayed". The majority of these 12 are either from 1995 or from Australia and NZ.
Does anybody know this Bruce Ward? How many US Champs of any kind has he been to? Does he know much about orienteering? If not, how does USOF expect him to be able to lead?
2. The leading proposal is for the ED to be an independent contractor. A director? as an
independent contractor? To me this does not pass muster and looks like a way to skirt wage and labor laws. If USOF indeed wants to have no control over the means and methods of how the ED leads USOF, only over the end result, I don't want that leadership. It's not accountable to me, the member.
I am 200% for a transition to professional staff. It should be done in a way to not discredit the whole concept, which the details that I've seen appear to do, intentionally or not.
I am not sure about the motivation for 2, but it certainly could be partially economic. But, there are other valid reasons.
But 1 doen't really personally bother me at all. Often, the most effective leadership comes from outside the organization. In the case of orienteering, to get a capable leader, it seems, IMHO, reasonable to cast a wide net to get candidates with the right skills. Orienteering is a sport, right? There are lots of people familiar with sports who aren't orienteers. Heck, there are people who aren't even familiar with sports that could bring a lot to the table in leading an organization like USOF. It would be sorely self-defeating to limit the list to those who have attended X US Champs, etc.
I'm sure a robber has a valid economic reason for redistributing wealth in her favor. I'm not likening USOF's behavior to that, just noting that economic reasons should not override societal limitations. One of the aspects of being a good (corporate) citizen is paying taxes. Some corporations indeed get away with paying less than their share; that may be perfectly acceptable to their shareholders, but does not make it so to the rest of the society.
My largest concern about (2) is that it looks like more dancing around the idea of having professional staff, rather than actually going out and hiring staff. If with every new position there is a discussion of how to escape wage and labor laws, I question USOF's commitment to the idea. I think USOF should just bite the bullet and figure out how to do deductions and quarterly filings and FUTA and all that once, and be done with it. Tens of millions of small-business owners have done so. It's not that hard. I'll donate $200 for QuickBooks if it will help do things right.
Back to Item 1 and Clem's very valid points. It is indeed true that an outside candidate may be better suited for a job than any of the insiders
if the candidate is otherwise qualified and has valuable skills relevant to the position that the insiders don't have.
What are the qualifications for the ED position? I look at the
the original proposal before the Board (Page 11), and the sequence of intended actions to transit to professional staff. The proposal is clear; first identify the goals, then the sources of funding, then the job description according to the goals and funding limitations, then amend the Bylaws, then form a search committee for the candidate, and finally, recruit and hire. This sequence seems quite justified.
Now instead we first have a candidate, while the job description is still vague and the staff search committee isn't even on the horizon. Maybe Bruce is not intended to come across as the clear candidate, but his name is the only one mentioned, which means that at least the Transition Committee has already formed a bias in his favor. What is the chance that the job description will continue to morph as we go, to fit said candidate? Has the membership, or even the Board, agreed on the importance of orienteering expertise to the position? I think these are valid questions to ask. I think it is very important to avoid appearance of impropriety.
Here we have a candidate without a position definition, and possibly an independent contractor to boot, someone who by definition of "independent contractor" isn't going to be fully accountable to USOF. If this doesn't have at least a small chance of coming across as a plan to siphon off some of the money USOF has sitting idly in its non-interest-bearing accounts, then someone's critical thinking skills aren't up to par.
P.S. IOF's paid staff is all orienteers, and it has been so for as long as I can remember. I think all of their job ads have had the requirement of at least some direct familiarity with the sport.
As someone who has done quite a bit of work as an independent contractor, I'm struggling with how that "by definition" makes someone not fully accountable. In my experience in the corporate world, the contractors are held to the highest standard of accountability in that they can be fired at any time for any reason with no recompense. That's quite a motivator to bring your A game every day. Most salaried execs at large firms are quite well taken care of regardless of how well they perform. Clearly USOF is in no position to be offering a golden parachute to anybody, but even there, it would be far easier to remove a contractor than a "permanent" employee.
None of the above is meant to support the idea of making the ED position (or any other) a contractor, but if we're going to debate the merits of such a decision, let's at least stick to pro's and con's that have some basis in fact.
More grouching until I've had all to say.
Hiring someone from, say, Coca-Cola to lead, say, Intel: maybe OK. Fortune 100 multinational company leadership skills are largely transferrable and independent of the particular market. Some industries present particular challenges and the Boards who make hiring decisions may or may not take experience in the specific industry into account.
Hiring a Math professor to lead a Physics department: no, sorry, doesn't work that way. Unless it's a community college with 200 students, and even then quite unlikely. No matter how much one argues that serving on the various committees has prepared her for the leadership role, if the Ph.D. is in the wrong discipline, there is no chance. Somehow Boards of Trustees in most developed education systems seem to agree on that.
So which one are we closest with USOF and the ED position? I seem to recall that an important part of the proposed job description was trying to sell orienteering and USOF to sponsors and media. I may be wrong, but then I'm as in the dark about the job description as anyone. Would I trust just anyone with selling orienteering? Having seen more than the deserved share of articles in major U.S. metro newspapers about a treasure hunt with compass, written by people with lots of experience in sports and outdoors coverage, well... the chance of misinterpretation seems quite large. And they were presumably talking to experienced orienteers, but still managed to fit the image to some preconceived notions they already had.
Orienteering is a hard product to sell. I personally would want an orienteer to be in charge of selling it. Working perhaps in tandem with a marketing professional without specific experience, as there aren't any people around who have both kinds of experience.
Oddly, the more arguments I see for inbreeding, the more I am in favor of bringing in outside blood, stat. Get the most dynamic leader possible, get new ideas, get mojo. Seek a tabula rasa. Otherwise you will get more trailO and microObe. Ok, that's a cheap shot, but from where I stand, I want someone who will let us see ourselves in the mirror, warts and all, rather than have us continue to wonder why we aren't getting any dates.
Also, the analogy of maths and physics profs, while illustrative and tractable to me at least, is a little frightening when we are talking about the position in question.
As someone who has done quite a bit of work as an independent contractor, I'm struggling with how that "by definition" makes someone not fully accountable.
"The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if [the employer] ha[s] the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not the means and methods of accomplishing the result."
The way I understand this IRS instruction is that should the ED be an independent contractor, USOF (i.e. Board) gives up the right to exercise control over day-to-day functioning of the ED in exchange for less responsibility with taxes. This leaves the Board with little leverage upon the ED. The Board does have the right to terminate the ED and seek a new one at any time, but would that be practical?
With Robin (a volunteer ED), I know that if I, a member, make a request for things within Robin's competence, it will typically be honored within hours (unless Robin is orienteering!) Robin doesn't have to do this, but she does. I don't know if I'd ever have that hope with an independent-contractor ED. The way I read things, s/he won't even be answering to me (the member), only to the Board, and conceivably only on specific occasions.
It's entirely possible I misunderstand this whole issue.
The way I understand this IRS instruction is that should the ED be an independent contractor, USOF (i.e. Board) gives up the right to exercise control over day-to-day functioning of the ED...
Well, I should hope that would be the case regardless of employment status. Anybody who can't be trusted to take a mission statement and run with it has no business serving in an ED spot. If the BOD's intention is to look over this person's shoulder at every turn (I don't believe it is), then the whole concept is quite flawed.
As for accountability, trust me, it's quite practical to fire a contractor. I see it all the time and have even been on the receiving end (with no justification given the day after I was told I'd be extended).
Finally, given the track record, the last person I'd want to see selling orienteering is someone from within the orienteering community. We have failed miserably and if that's the goal, we need to look outside.
Maybe Bruce is not intended to come across as the clear candidate, but his name is the only one mentioned, which means that at least the Transition Committee has already formed a bias in his favor.
Bruce Ward is not intended to come across as a candidate at all. The Task Group was lucky enough to talk to Bruce about his extensive experience helping outdoor organizations transition to having a paid staff. It helped the task group get a feel for what a professional ED can do for USOF. There are no real candidates yet because there's no job (yet?). I haven't seen any indication that the group is eager to hire Bruce over doing an extensive search, or tailoring the job description, or any such thing.
BTW, please keep discussing. Issues such as contractor vs. paid staff are not decided, so the more inputs the better.
The way I read Donna's message, it said [such and such from the Committee] feel it's better to hire a contractor vs. employee because then we won't have to pay payroll taxes. "Too many pitfalls with employment laws"? Sure. What other laws does USOF wish were not there?
[Aside: Immigration is truly a tangled mess and it's unclear whether a sensible approach would include full compliance. However, most workers in the U.S. aren't immigrants, but the majority of workers are full-time employees, so most businesses have figured out how to comply with wage and labor laws. My offer of QuickBooks stands.]
Also, the only place where I got the idea that Bruce Ward was a candidate for the ED position itself was Donna's message. If he's not, my preference would still be for an orienteer/rogainer as ED on payroll, with another paid position, this one indeed possibly a contractor, for a PR/Marketing lead. Neither has to be full time, although that might not be practical.
These positions as I see them would have quite nonoverlapping job descriptions. We need a person to do more administrative tasks, better; even if Robin keeps doing what she's been doing under a different name, there are more things that can be done. We also need a professional with a PR/sports marketing background to do PR and marketing tasks. We need this person precisely for the reasons Eric and Clem have articulated. But I don't think I can trust a single marketing person to [not] lead the organization [astray]. I can see too much temptation to oversell the product for what it isn't and can and should never be.
[Aside: I worked, until I took a break, at a place where we love our marketing people but we never let them run the show. Maybe that's why the bias.]
IOF has both positions, at full time. Both are orienteers, and to the best of my understanding, regular employees, although my knowledge of the Finnish labor code is quite limited. Television coverage for the last WOC should be in large part credited to the IOF's Sports Director, an orienteer.
Non-profit executive as
employee vs. contractor;
more IRS
employee vs. contractor;
IRS
forces to reclassify executives as employees from contractors;
and finally,
the clincher (registration for the Times required).
I think is is more important to find someone with executive skills than orienteering knowledge, given that dilemma. The latter is easier for someome with the former to obtain, than vice versa.
I will agree with Vlad on the point that making the position a contract one to avoid payroll taxes is misguided at best. The truth is that under current law, the club would still be liable for the taxes. This little nugget was slid into the tax code in 1986 in an attempt (largely successful) to restrict the use of independent contractors in IT. There is a rather stringent set of criteria for qualifying as a true independent contractor. It is very difficult to meet all of these when devoting most or all of your efforts to a single client. When the criteria are not met, the client is on the hook for the employer share of the taxes whether or not the contractor pays them. Failure to pay such taxes for housekeepers took down a couple Clinton cabinet nominees as I recall.
Issues such as contractor vs. paid staff are not decided, so the more inputs the better
So this the exact opposite of what I hear from some key members of the Committee. The independent contractor is a done deal and the decision cannot be questioned. Input from members (regarding the concerns I outlined, or other aspects of the staff transition) is not welcome at this stage; it may be so at a later stage, and only in regards to specific items open for discussion.
I will not spend any more time on this beyond going through the formal channels suggested to me; I'll write a letter to my Regional Representative outlining my concerns in detail in hopes that it at least goes on file somewhere and becomes public record, unlike the workings of the Transition Committee.
I will stop donating to USOF if in the future there is an audit directly related to changes brought by the transition.
The US has had several medals at World Masters Champs (in "foot o'").
Why do people always seem to feel the need to slam Trail-O in this country? Is it an inferiority complex - "Our sport is geeky, but not as geeky as Trail-O"?
I don't like trail-o. I don't think it is orienteering. To me, an essential element of orienteering is decision making under the stress of physical exertion and the clock. Trail-o does not have this essential component, hence my classification of the activity outside of orienteering. Not every activity that involves map reading is orienteering; take that from someone who does several such activities.
Note that I do not have an inferiority complex, and I don't judge the merits of activies based on their "geekyness". I judge them based on my personal enjoyment of them. I don't even slam trail-o, but I am still entitled to dislike it, and even write about my dislike of it, and have half of USOF incorrectly feel I am anti-disabled when I do so.
I'm missing the point of the pejorative tone of the above quote; I think one the things out-of-band w.r.t. to the activity that does bother me is the oft heard self-righteous defense of it, and the constant mantra of "trail-o is real orienteering". These bothersome out-of-band opinions don't cause me to dislike it, but I would probably be more amenable to it if its proponents allowed it to stand on its own merits.
Its not like those who are proponents of Trail-O on the board are taking valuable resources away from other types of orienteering
I disagree. But don't really care to elaborate further. The resource drain is minor, and I don't begrudge its proponents spending energy developing it if they feel that is valuable, so long is it is not my resources at work My dislike of trail-o is not based on resource allocation, although I will suggest that the representation of trail-o interests on the USOF board is dis-proportionate to the interests in trail-o amongst USOF membership at large; moreover, I feel there is more trail-o representation than elite level foot O representation.
it is the only type of orienteering in the US that I'm aware of where people have actually worked hard enough to medal in at the international level.
Medalling at anything at the international level is an impressive achievement, and anyone who does so is to be sincerely congratulated. However, doing so does not change my classifcation of trail-o as being anything other than trail-o, and not a vector to promote the growth of traditional orienteering, as Vlad suggested was a risk factor.
Thanks Randy. I could offer my own thoughts, but your views seem to dovetail with mine, so unless more detail is requested, I will defer to your well-argued, and well-mannered observations.
I guess I will relent and emphasize one thing: trail-O is not a sport. It is a mental exercise.
Orienteering is a sport with a mental component. Most sports have mental components, so that is not defining. One unique thing, and the trap orienteering falls into, is that one can segment the mental from the physical. Doing so leaves trail-O as a byproduct.
I contend that the whole (orienteering) is greater than the sum of its parts (running and the mental game.) IMO, this is its touchstone.
Running is interesting to a lot of people and gets a lot of participants and some spectators. Mental games may get some participants, but generally not many spectators. I hope orienteering is construed as being closer to running.
That is not to denigrate trailO, but, and I know conceptual analysis is out of favor, it is not orienteering.
an essential element of orienteering is decision making under the stress of physical exertion and the clock
Of course there is no physical exertion, but there is definitely a clock. It decides a lot competitions.
Let's start a separate thread for the trail-O discussion.
Back to paid staff... As a member of the committee (albeit a minor one), I can state that Independ. Contractor versus employee issue has NOT been decided. Suggestions for all aspects of the decision are definitely welcome. I certainly would like to express my appreciation for T-D's offer of quick-books, if it turns out that employee is the optimum decision.
As to the timing, like many volunteer tasks, the committee rushed to have something ready to present to the board and AGM this week. There is a lot of hard work, thought & research that has gone into this effort, but certainly much more polishing (and perhaops some major surgery) is needed. Let's keep the comments coming.
I don't follow the USOF forums, so maybe this has been discussed. I won't be in Wyoming either. But I'm curious how people think the planned budget will break down.
Sounds to me like USOF is planning to put up 100k/year and this will be matched by grant, bringing total funds to 150k/year? Or is USOF planning to put up 150k/year, with matching grant bringing budget to 200k/year? Or something else.
Besides salary; what other expenditures are there? I can think of office space, travel expenses, taxes, health benefits, workers comp, plus a general operating budget.
It sounds like this persons first job is to shmooz with enough people to pay for themselves. But I'd like to add that I hope the board doesn't view this as someone to reduce volunteer work load, but rather, someone who can dedicate large amounts of time to recruiting and coordinating even more volunteers.
But I'd like to add that I hope the board doesn't view this as someone to reduce volunteer work load, but rather, someone who can dedicate large amounts of time to recruiting and coordinating even more volunteers.
That is definitely the hope. The work that the ED takes up is stuff that no one is doing right now, for the most part.
Although I know that everyone posting on this topic has a sincere interest in what?s best for orienteering, I am somewhat appalled by the tenor of some comments. People are leaping to conclusions and extrapolating into the future based on what they?ve ?heard? or read in other comments about the Professional Staff Transition Report.
The members of the task force (and I am one of them) worked for several months to examine and identify the issues raised by the proposal. It was a challenge to pull a report together in time for the board meeting yet criticism has been leveled for not getting it together sooner. The report was made to the board, not the general community, because that was the mandate given to the task force. Furthermore, it is unfair to claim that the task force?s work not done in a public setting: something had to be prepared for discussion--that is the point of the report--and it will be aired in a setting open to anyone who can attend. Also note that there was a general announcement seeking people to work on the task force, so any USOF member could have joined even if all they wanted to do was monitor the progress.
Someone reading the report with an eye towards style and composition will no doubt pick up fact that it was done by committee. Yes, there are conclusions and recommendations, but that is not to say that there were not differences of opinion. For instance, some task force members did not want to include the resume of Bruce Ward because they did anticipate that some readers would think he was being proffered as a candidate. Other members wanted to demonstrate that we had input from someone knowledgeable about the issues. Also, for a little background, Robin has a contract with USOF as an independent contractor. So we have the benefit of that experience in considering the issue of employee vs. independent contractor.
IMHO, there is not one thing in the report that is cast in concrete. While I personally think it would be a mistake not to pursue the idea of using professional staff in the future, the board has the discretion to approve, amend, and decline any recommendations made by the task force. In the meantime, I hope the critics will take a look at the bona fides and experience of the people on the task force, give us a little credit, and direct their comments to the merits of the issues.
Is there a copy of the report posted someplace?
In case anyone would like to read the actual report, you can find it
here.
Thanks for sharing that and more importantly thanks to everyone who put it together. It is a very important, and potentially transformative initiative.
And apologies for continued irreverence and unncessary questions, but exactly what is the "National Physique Committee of the USA?"
Fascinating.
I have little doubt that USOF would be better off with a full-time ED. That has been true for a long time. It seems now to be a possibility. Go for it.
In the process, if the Board needs to be restructured and reduced in size, go for that too. It is quite disfunctional as it is now.
And, in the process, if the ByLaws need to be revised, go for that too, but don't just do it in bits and pieces. The current ByLaws are way too long, way too complicated, way too restrictive. Start over, make them as simple as possible.
Sure, there are details, some of them important, to be worked out. But that is not a reason to stay with the status quo.
Does anyone really think that orienteering in the USA currently is doing so well that we should just stay with what we have?
The full report reads like a wonderful breath of fresh air. The Transition Committee has done an impressive amount of thorough work under a tight deadline. The number of issues considered far exceeds what little grains of information leaked out about a week ago. It's regrettable the report could not have been released earlier for public awareness so that the membership could appreciate the full extent of the work and research done by the Committee.
Many thanks to all on the Committee who approached the task with full professionalism and responsibility. I do not have any more questions regarding the process of defining the job description or the choice of a candidate, and I apologize for any confusion or extrapolations that I may have made in that regard.
My other concern still stands after reading the full report. Its text (Page 11) supports my assumption that this decision is being driven by convenience rather than compliance. The proper way seems to be for a qualified person to set the list of job reponsibilities in Appendix E, once this list has been agreed upon, against IRS criteria in Publication 15A and make the best possible determination of the Director's classification. I understand that the IRS (or is it the SSA?) can make that determination if USOF sends it Form SS-8 and that USOF is in some way protected from further reopening of that question in the future.
In partiicular, job responsibilities should not be defined so as to conform to the limits of what the authority of an independent contractor can reach. We should give the Executive Director the work that we want to get done, and if the government requires us to pay taxes or comply with certain wage and labor laws in the process, we should do it. Proceeding in a contrary fashion simply because it is easier to manage, costs less, or is easier to oversee is ethically wrong.
The list of administrative tasks that the report proposes to leave in Robin's purview (Page 26) clearly reads like something a contractor would do. As to the scope of the new Executive Director position's responsibilities, the majority of them are not what Robin has so far been doing; it is because we want these things done and nobody is doing them that we are getting this position defined and filled. Robin's current or future status therefore bears little relevance upon the classification question. A key IRS criterion appears to be "The extent to which services performed by the worker are a key aspect of the regular business of the company." I read the 26-position list on Pages 24 and 25 and I think that we'd be well served to hope that the majority of these tasks become and stay a key part of USOF's regular business. I would like to specifically point out the tasks of securing external funding (new), recruiting volunteers and employing staff (new), and liaising with the IOF and the USOC (existing), but I have this hope for the majority of the rest of them, too.
IRS's regulations also raise the question of the permanence of the position. "If you engage a worker with the expectation that the relationship will continue indefinitely, rather than for a specific project or period, this is generally considered evidence that your intent was to create an employer-employee relationship." So it depends on what we want. If the true goal is to only have this position for some transitional period and without fully committing USOF to its existence and funding, then a contractor is the right answer and USOF should let its intentions be known as it advertises to fill the position. If our goals are of much more permanent nature, then a contractor does not to me seem like the right answer.
The ultimate question is, how committed and serious is USOF about the whole idea of a transition to professional staff? The report as a whole gives a solid positive answer. And we should get it done right so that there aren't any parts of it that leave an opinion to the contrary.
FYI, the task force is making some edits to the recommendation report based on feedback from the board and will make it available to the general membership in the next two weeks. Feedback and input are appreciated.
In addition, Donna will be including more detailed information in ONA.
This discussion thread is closed.