The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits in Practice.” View the full webinar here.
Ramiro Murguia: I think we all have hinted at it‚ and I think it’s something that I just want to say outright—the idea and the concept of a worker self-directed nonprofit does not mean that hierarchy no longer exists within your organization. And I think oftentimes, that is the biggest misconception when I’m chatting with others about this structure. They’re like, “Oh, so how have you gotten rid of hierarchy?” And it’s like, “No.”
I think for us, and for me, the best way I have described it is hierarchy becomes fluid. Instead of having an executive director that is just at the top constantly, hierarchy shifts [depending on] what the topic [is].
So, like, we have a development director. So, whenever we’re talking about fundraising, they are the ones that are ultimately making decisions for the organization about that. Depending on the topic that you’re talking about, the person that is in charge of that role is the one that ultimately holds that space and should be trusted in the organization to make decisions around that topic.
Instead of having an executive director that is just at the top constantly, hierarchy shifts [depending on] what the topic [is].
So, for us, we’ve had the opportunity to build that trust within each other. And it is a lot of remaking policies or making new policies that you never heard of…because so many decisions, and even inadvertently, in a traditional nonprofit, fall to the executive director. Like Faye [Christoforo] mentioned, when you reach a decision or you’re like, okay, who is making this decision? Typically, it fell on the [co]executive directors.
We now need to write a policy for when this decision-making [situation] comes up again—to be able to know what to do. Because the idea is that ultimately what you want to have is groundwork laid, so that when you or somebody else steps into this model—I think another big part of what I’ve seen is how do you get people into this model when you’re hiring new people or new people are joining, because it is a very different model if you’re coming from a traditional nonprofit. It is having those policies and having everything written out and laid out, so that people can understand how you interact with the structure.
