Cohousing-L Mailing List: Paid staff vs. volunteers

[RAYGASSER (RAYGASSER]

OK, so before I go spending an eon or two climbing thru the gopher, I'll 
take the easy way out and ask y'all.


or those who are unaware of us, EcoVillage at Ithaca is a non-profit
educational group that organizes lots of projects. One of those is the
EcoVillage CoHousing Cooperative. We've been blessed with the work of one
of EVI ( the non-profit) staff people and have been paying EVI for 
between 8 and 24 hrs/week for her time. She probably spends closer to 40
as our liason to the world, coordinator and the one who gets everything done
even when there's nobody else around to help (or, especially then).

Others of our group also put in considerable time, and some put in zero (no
meetings, no committees, maybe an occasional community-building function).
So we're trying to shift to a system that will encourage everyone to either
contribute time or contribute some cash to pay other "heavy volunteers" and
this coordinator. 

So, do any other groups out there have paid staff (part or full time)? If
so how does it work? How much do you pay?
We're thinking about a suggested time commitment of 16 hrs/month per adult
with a suggested contribution of $5/hr for anything less than that (meetings
are included as part of the 16 hrs), to make up the difference. Anyone
putting in more than 24 hrs doing some specifically "needed" tasks could be
eligible to get paid for the over-time hours at somewhere around $10-15/hr.

This would allow for all heavy workers to be compensated equally, while the
people who don't have the time or inclination can still "contribute". At this
point, all "donations" would be just suggested and voluntary, and would not
be "looked down upon" as being less valuable, since getting the cash can
help us in keeping an excellent person working for us and possibly be used
for other purposes.

We hope this will generate both a flood of cash and a flood of volunteer
hours, both of which are in too short supply now.

Any thoughts? Are we way off base in going off the all-volunteer army plan?
How do (or did) some other groups handle this?

It's intended to last only until move-in time: somewhere between July
and November of '96.

Thanks
Ray Gasser, EcoVillage CoHousing Cooperative
raygasser [at] delphi.com