Re: Call for OPW project ideas

[Karen Sandler <karen gnome org>]

On 2014-11-10 04:38, Magdalen Berns wrote:
> I highly doubt being an OPW mentor will increase the likelihood of my 
> ending up in court.
>
> I think that is not in question here. The point is that if a big
> organisation who can afford to get sued is not willing to take a risk,
> why should an individual volunteer be EXPLICITLY asked to do that when
> there is seemingly no similar such demand made of the mentor
> organisation for which they are volunteering their free time?

I'm sorry... I've been traveling a lot and am not caught up on emailing. 
I hope to find time to address more of these concerns on list but I'm 
completely swamped now.

I do want to say that many of our participating "orgs" are not really 
orgs at all. Some have absolutely no corporate form. Getting them to 
sign is not possible. Also, of the orgs that do have corporate forms, 
some of those aren't big and can't afford to be sued either. We have 
evaluated getting the mentor orgs to sign but after discussing at length 
with our pro bono counsel when we had the legal infrastructure written 
up we decided it made a lot more sense to set it up as we have, as the 
mentors have the most control over their participation in the program, 
ie their ability not to behave with gross negligence, recklessness or 
intentional wrongdoing. We do meet with the mentor "org" admins before 
allowing an org to join the program discussing the expectations for 
participation. Mentorship and expectations around it are a big part of 
the discussion.

karen