the ethics of working commercially

[FOI Czech]

Hi All

Thought I might as well post this one here.

All our team are more or less from the commercial world. So far we
have done everything on a volunteer basis. There are differences
between us about circumstances under which we would work
'commercially'. I'd like to ask your opinion on the ethics and
implications of various scenarios, e.g:

1. After successfully launching, we offer to public institutions that
we can use the Alaveteli platform to build them websites for their own
use. We charge them a reasonable rate for the work, the people in our
team get paid for their work, and a small amount of profit goes into
the organisation as fund-raising revenue.

2. A variant on this is that we set up separate limited company to
offer such services. Some of our team would like to get commercial
assignments leveraging their expertise gained on this project.

A couple of our guys are "fundamentalists". They basically think we
should all work for free and that the above scenarios somehow 'taint'
the project.

Looking forward to your thoughts

Best

Richard and all in Czech Rep.

[James McKinney]

You can structure it as two organizations: a charity/non-profit that runs the Czech Alaveteli, and a for-profit company that offers services to government. The fundamentalists can stick to the non-profit and the rest can help both organizations. I guess that's your option 2.

I don't understand how people can object to option 2. I assume everyone has income from some other source. What's the problem with that other source being somewhat related to the activities of the non-profit?

[FOI Czech]

Hi James

Our "fundamentalists" half suspect that they are not entirely
rational, and that's why it will help if people from within the
Alaveteli community give their views. I think their feelings are a
function of the post-communist society they live in. Many politicians
adopt that career simply to enrich themselves. They get appointed to
boards of companies and they also set up "charitable organisations'
with very dubious charitable aims. Our guys are disgusted by all that
(as is a good chunk of the population), and don't want in any way to
invite accusations that we are the same. Personally I think the
separation you describe is the right way to go, but it helps when we
hear people from "Western" countries endorsing it.

[Seb Bacon]

Hi,

mySociety is run both as a charity and a company. The charity part
does stuff "for free" and gets funding from various foundations etc;
the company does commercial consulting work which helps support the
activities of the charity.

Funders are very keen on arrangements like this, as it is not in their
interests for the fundees to be entirely dependent on them for income.

The two parts of the organisation are legally distinct entities.

This is a very common model in the UK. Sometimes there are not even
distinct entities and the charity will charge for consulting to
certain clients. I think the legal distinction is helpful.

Having said all this I completely understand that the context in cz is
very different. But would complete transparency help with this?

Another approach might be to be very clear on the subjects on which
you do consulting. Right now, mySociety is writing some simple
software that is aimed to help a local council manage all their FOI
requests (including those coming by post) [1]. This is a commercial
project, but the software will be Open Source (of course). The
software will integrate in both directions with Alaveteli. Perhaps
you could do Alaveteli work strictly on a volunteer basis, but consult
around related projects (e.g. developing this FOI request software
further, customising it, etc)?

Regards,

Seb

[1] https://github.com/mysociety/foi-register

--
skype: seb.bacon
mobile: 07790 939224
land: 01531 671074

[Francis Irving]

NOTE: Below is from my only minimal experience in this. I'm sure other
people on the list have a lot more experience, so do chip in.


So the danger here is of corruption due to the consulting becoming a
good source of revenue for individuals, that will lead them to be
politically manipulable regarding the core website.


Logically, this can happen in two ways:

1) The paid consulting is extremely lucrative. You can avoid that by
not paying excessive rates for the work. (Examples of this going wrong
would would be things like paid directorships, which can be massively
lucrative per hour, and so more likely to be corrupting)

2) There isn't much other work for the profession. For example, I've
seen a real case (involving lawyers, not programmers) in a country
with extremely little good work available. Fear of losing a well paid
job in a non-profit (via political manipulation), led (I believe) to
actions that were destructive to the mission of the non-profit.


Mitigations are:

1. mySociety pays an average amount that NGOs in the west pay
developers, which is low compared to what a developer could earn
elsewhere. There's a booming market right now for developers (since we
are still in the early stages after invention of the computer and the
Internet), so at these low salaries it is unlikely that a mySociety
developer is corruptly making WhatDoTheyKnow worse to retain
mySociety's consulting work for money. They could get more money much
more easily.

2. In countries without much other work in that field available, avoid
paying even decent wages (as your fundamentalists suggest). Hopefully
this isn't a problem with programming. I would guess that in all parts
of Europe and the ex-USSR, programmers could easily earn more by
travelling to another country, or doing commercial work over the web.

Maybe - hiring practice can help also. i.e. making sure of the
motivations of people you're recruiting. Although I'd guess that that
can be quite deceptive, as later on money can distort things.

BTW, I hate the first sentence of 2 above, it seems sad. But also
logical, and as I say I saw it having a very negative effect in one
case.

Francis

[Gabriela]

This is something that I have experience with working on other activists organizations in Uruguay. There is somehow the idea that money only corrupts people and doing volunteer work is the only way to do social change. I can see how in Uruguay would be really hard to have volunteers (activists) for a project that has paid staff. This is an organization's decision.  I would go for the scenario number 2 and have the for-profit organization help the non-profit one...

[FOI Czech]

Dear All

Thanks so much for all your comments. Its great to have access to such
a community!
I don't think even our fundamentalists fear that any of the current
team will become corrupted. Rather, its the problem that we plan to be
firmly in the public eye, and scepticism is an integral part of the
Czech DNA. They fear that people will assume that we are "up to
something" if we are seen to operate commercially. On the other hand
Czechs generally still aspire to "Western" standards. So the great
value of this discussion is that our team can be reassured that there
are reasonable international standards and conventions, and it will
give them the self-confidence to defend whatever we do.

Seb has made a very important point that funders prefer to see the
fundees having other sources of income. We just won a grant from OSF
that will ensure we get up and running, but we have to plan ahead.

Any more thoughts will be most welcome, but this allows me to open a
well-rounded discussion with my crew, and they can come here and read
your thoughts.

Cheers!

Richard

[Michael Morisy]

Just to chip in on the other side, we've run our organization as a for-profit (though not much profit ;) ) company since day one. Most newspapers in the United States are run as for-profits, too, and while it's definitely problematic at points, I think we have a more robust, active media watchdog because it is something that can invest in itself.

I think there is definitely potential for perceived and real conflicts of interest when money becomes involved, but the reality is that by not paying anyone, you also limit the good that can be done (having a developer, PR person, administrator, etc. for 40 hours as opposed to 5 a week can make a world of difference).

I think tying what your commercial activities are tightly to your mission, and saying "no" to all the potentially lucrative but distracting side opportunities, and having people up top very mindful of why you are doing what you're doing, can balance things out, and in the end not paying anyone will ultimately limit what and how much you can do.

It's a good discussion to have, and I think about it all the time, but so far I haven't ever felt our for-profitness has hurt our mission, and it's allowed us to engage in some very interesting opportunities we might otherwise have missed out on (such as being able to speak very openly about FOIA reforms we'd like to see, and support candidates who support those reforms and call out candidates who work against transparency).

- Michael

[Uldis Sprogis]

I think nothing worthwhile is for free in this world and members should not make sacrifices of their time and money for nothing. I recommend that all paid team members post their yearly filed tax forms on the internet so that everyone can see that the team members are doing an honest and truthful job. All members of the public can follow the money and all fraudulent behavior will not be encouraged but weeded out sooner or later when caught. Sincerely, Uldis Sprogis

[Nadia E.]

Hi Everyone,
am now in here. Just came across Alaveteli and it looked interesting so I'm poking around a bit.

With regards to the issues of Ethics and getting paid I think your main challenge is crafting a good set of social contracts that harmonise expectations between the different stakeholders. Especially if community building is an important part of what you do. How dependent are you on volunteer input, perhaps those who want to keep it free from commercialisation are contributing in important and less visible ways?

We are exploring a model with Edgeryders which we are calling the Social Capital for Social Ventures fund. Our community started out as a Council of Europe funded crowdsourced research initiative which tipped over the engagement threshold into becoming a real community. It is now completely community-volunteer driven but we are going to have to pay some people to take responsibility for driving the big projects coming out of the collectivity. In order to keep it going we are turning it into a membership based organisation where the membership fee is one day of work per member per year or the equivalent of one day's wages for those who can't afford to put in the time, but want to support it anyway. People are free to fundraise or charge clients as they wish independently of what else is going on because but only those initatives which have community consensus get picked up and acknowledged as official Edgeryders projects or publications. Decision making is by rough consensus and this way we avoid situations where anyone can really veto anything anyone else is working on while still maintaining integrity. Hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Nadia El-Imam

[Seb Bacon]

Thanks Nadia -- that's really interesting and the "one day of work" model sounds like a good way forward, if you can reach that tipping point.

This raises loads of questions for me, but here are just two for starters!

Is your sense that there is a minimum size for a community to start to drive itself in this way? Or is it more about the size of the core of really dedicated people?

What is "rough" consensus? Consensus can so easily turn into veto-wielding -- and in a virtual community even more so.

Thanks,

Seb