Forget your revenue stream, it's time to diversify your staff input stream! What!? Has this blogger gone nuts or did he just fail 2nd grade grammar? Well, the former isn't true, and I'm fairly sure that the latter isn't either. Here's the point, here at TCASK we have a staff of two. That's right, there are only two of us for the whole state. Now that may sound bad, but we're actually fairly well staffed compared to a lot of state abolition organization.

Well this year we added our second staff person, yours truly, by applying for a Jesuit Volunteer. While I admittedly may be a little biased, the JVC (Jesuit Volunteer Core) and other similar service programs offer a great opportunity for state organizations to add a full-time staffer for about a third of what one would normally cost. And moving from a staff of one to a staff of two exponentially increases the output of an office. I mean with me to make his coffee, bring in the mail, and take out the garbage, Randy has a lot more time to get actual organizing work done.

Yesterday, we had an initial meeting in an attempt to further enhance our staff, in this case through an intern position. We are hoping to add a social work intern next fall, who would work in the office two days a week, particularly working to build our campaign the stop the legal killing of the mentally ill. This would bring our staff up from two to two-and-a-half, and offer another huge boost in our staff productivity. And if we can increase our funding enough to keep me on (another way to add to your staff is to find people who will work for poverty level wages) we also hope to add a new JV next year, which would bring our staff up to three-and-a-half, and boost our capacity to the point of being ready to truly challenge the practice of state killing here in Tennessee.

So, I don't actually mean that we shouldn't be diversifying our revenue streams. We obviously all need to do that, but at the same time, let's break out of the hiring professional staff/ seek volunteers dichotomy. We can find other, less expensive ways to expand our staffs and become far more powerful organizations. We've only skimmed the surface in this regard. I am sure that there are other religious volunteer orders, and probably other school programs that are looking for internships. There are probably other avenues we haven't even considered, but it's time we all started.