otherwise have remained untapped.
Be aware of money/time/skills tradeoffs. This project used minimal monetary resources,
but instead drew heavily on the volunteer time of the project director as well as other
volunteers. In addition, several of the free tools used by project developers demanded
either higher levels of skill or greater inputs of time than more expensive options would
have done. On the other hand, money does not necessarily buy quality: the geographical
functionality that Paul Fitzpatrick incorporated into the directory was so technically
advanced that money might not have been able to buy it. In addition, a major feature of
the directory is its openness to user modification, an option that might have been missed
if money were available to pay for staff to maintain the directory entries.
Maintain clear roles and responsibilities. In the case of this project, it was the role of the
Board of Cooperative Life to establish priorities and ensure that the project served the
mission of the organization. The project coordinator planned and carried out activities,
including coaxing other participants along. The Web programmer researched and
implemented the functional features identified by the Coop Life Board and online
products committee. The Web designer created the visually engaging and attractive
interface for the website. The programmer and designer were able to work smoothly
together, and both cited this as a major project success.
Be aware of any "network effects". For certain products, the more people who use it the
more useful it will become and the more people will want to use it. The success of this
project rides on the snowballing effect of more and more organizations adding
themselves to and using the online cooperative directory. One reason for the directory's
initial impressiveness and success was that it started with a large database. This "network
effect" cuts both ways, however. One reason for the accompanying "postings" tool's
initial failure was that it started with almost no entries.
Don't expect volunteer energy to last forever. Although a project can get launched using
only volunteer energy, it needs to aim for some other form of sustainability or it will
likely die out before long. This project's sustainability does not depend on continued
expenditure of concentrated volunteer effort, but rather taps the diffuse volunteer energy
of people to maintain entries that they care about. It also provides a valuable service at a
defined cost that can easily inspire small donations from users to cover those costs.