[New-imc] membership criteria re participation on global lists - what's a liaison?

[Sheri Herndon]

hi andy and everyone,

thanks again for your question.  participation by local imcs on the 
global lists is central to our work and to our functioning as a 
social network spread across the globe.  your question also makes 
clear that if you have questions about it, so do others.  i think it 
is easier for people to understand the network in terms of the 
digital connections and less so the responsibilities of participating 
in a social network.  i think this is where participation on the 
global lists comes in.

so it's a very good question and thank you and the local pittsburgh 
collective for seeking clarification.

we do not have a formal definition of liaison, but ideally it should 
be someone who is chosen by the local collective (therefore an 
"empowered" liaison rather than someone who has self-appointed 
themselves), who participates on the global lists and who brings back 
proposals to the local collective.  so rather than speaking for 
themselves, they act as a kind of conduit, a liaison from global to 
the local.  they are responsible for bringing those proposals or 
critical information to their local lists/general meetings and seeing 
that there is discussion at the local level.  those discussions 
should then be brought back to the global lists.  this really has 
only been happening on the imc-finance list, although 
imc-communication also is comprised of liaisons.

the imc finance list is supposed to be comprised of empowered 
liaisons who review proposals sent to the list.  the current process 
on finance is for emergency spending up to $500, it can be done by 
the liaisons on the list and there is a short time frame.  for 
anything over $500, it is 2 weeks and the request needs to go to the 
local where it is discussed and a response sent back.  the 
imc-finance list is currently empowered to deal only with the funds 
in the bank for the global network, which is about $40K.

some imcs don't have empowered liaisons on finance, some just have 
people who are from local imcs but who don't really take their role 
as liaisons very seriously because out of 100 imcs and more than 120 
people on imc-finance, the last few proposals regarding funds to be 
disbursed had about 3 responses from local imcs.  that's not a very 
high percentage of participation.

i think it is partially because we do not have a clear sense of what 
a liaison is, what are the roles and responsibilities, etc.  i hope 
that with each new imc that comes into the network, we can make this 
very clear so that at least all of them know about it.

you can have more than one liaison on the lists.  the main lists are 
tech, process, communication and finance.  finance and communication 
are currently the ones who are working as liaison lists.

hope that answers your question.  please let me know if i can clarify 
anything.  i'd like to see us clarify this in our membership criteria 
and on the newimc page.

sheri
seattle imc