Have you ever talk with a member of the board of directors of a volunteer organization? Take a sports club as example. Now, ask to the director what is his most important priority. In nine out of ten cases you will hear that he, or she, wants to increase the participation of the members of the club. You will hear things like "it is a pity that few people really want to be active" or "the club is run by a few because the rest do not really care".

What idiots they are.

Take the same director, and propose him a simple exercise. Ask him for the last task that he is working out for the club. It could be to write the report of the last meeting of one or another commission, it might be organize an outing, a workshop. Ask him to crowd-source the task to the rest of the participants. Can you guess what will you get? My own guess is that you have three possible answers:

Whaaaaaat?

Of course, most board directors today have little understanding of terms coined few years ago. The time in which they strive to learn new things is long gone. So to most people you will have to explain wikis, collaboration via internet, the use of the cloud, and such basic things. And when they will eventually get what you mean, you are still not there, because they haven't yet. They will have get that you want to do "something with internet". And then you will have to expend the rest of your time explaining that no, copyright is not a problem; that no, that it is not illegal; that no, that unknown people is not going to sabotage your own work; that no, the government is not going to make you liable of nothing if you do your work online... and a long list of preconceptions flowing around.

"They" can't possibly do this

You might get through the process to explain crowd-sourcing to some director of the board. Or you might be lucky, and the director might already know what you are talking about. Then comes the second line of defense. The paternalism in its original and most pure state. "Are you really suggesting that the members of my club will do THIS? The thing that I do? Of course they do not know how!". It seems to belong to the nature of a director the full conviction of his absolute irreplaceability. And, associated to it, the conviction that the poor ignorant members of his club will not make it without him. Apres moi, le deluge, these nouveau-Pompadourians would say.

"They" are not allowed to do this

Imagine that you manage to scrounge through the two first trenches. You have explained that crowdsourcing is nothing else than sharing the load, and you have argued that the knowledge of a collective might be surprising. You are there! Are you? No, you aren't. You aren't because the last trench is still untouched. The best one, actually. The one that hits you in the face when the director tells you: but it is not legal, my friend. The amendment three hundred forty five made to article six thousand five hundred thirty three from our statutes some couple of hundred years ago made that impossible. It's a pity, no?

And there you will be, facing your director, your director complaining of the current times, when clubs are not what they used to be, when people is all individualistic and do not want to collaborate anymore. And you will realize that he has decided to surround his fat ass with all sort of trenches, you will realize that he actually do not want anybody doing what he does because, after all, he is afraid.

Afraid to loose the little power that he's got.

And that looks like plunging into a deep pool of cold water, into an unsafe universe where everybody might know as much as him, where he is not received anymore as a "member of the board" in every meeting, but just like anybody else. That scary situation when hierarchies are really gone for good, and people, actually, has real spaces for participation.

Scary plunge.