Rethinking the Landa Asocio in the Internet Age

Elangligita in SenAsocioLandaEo.

The internet doesn't change everything, but there are many things that the internet changes a lot. One thing that the internet will change is the form and function of the Landa Asocio, particularly as increasing numbers of people learn about Esperanto (and learn to read and speak Esperanto) primarily through the Internet.

This isn't a new issue. At the dawn of the 20th Century, organizations struggled to embrace new communication technologies including the telegraph, telephone, and radio. The debate primarily turned on whether or not volunteers could coordiate and manage organizations effectively or whether professional staff was needed. Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, argues that professionals generally do a better job, but that removing the responsibility from volunteers reduces grassroots volunteerism in the organization, which may in the long run be more important. At the dawn of the 21st Century, a new technological revolution, driven by the global Internet, raises much the same issues of management by volunteers versus management by professionals.

The internet makes certain things easy that used to be hard. Learning about some obscure field of knowledge used to be hard; now we just type a word or two into Google. Making contact with people with a common interest used to be hard (unless there was a local group did good publicity); now personal web pages and Yahoo groups pop up in that same web search. For organizing local meetings, there's MeetUp which recruits people to vote on venues and act as hosts at meetings. Sharing a story or poem or piece of scholarship with readers used to be hard (and expensive); now anyone can put anything (of any quality) up on the web. Collaborating with far-off people (on a magazine or a newspaper or a guidebook or any big project) used to be hard; now there are a vast range of tools that facilitate collaboration at a distance.

It makes sense to rethink the function of the Landa Asocio in light of this change. Of course, individual Landaj Asocioj do this sort of evaluation all the time--but they tend to frame the question as "What are our most important functions and how can we do them better?"

This article proposes rethinking in a different way. It is clear that, in the internet age, many (maybe most) of the functions of a Landa Asocio could be handled by self-organizing ad-hoc groups. So, this article imagines that there were no landaj asocioj and sees which of its functions might be easily taken over by such groups, and which might languish.

Without a Landa Asocio

There are a few functions that are already being taken over by internet sites that do things right. For example, Amazon already has some Esperanto books--and would probably carry all of them, if the publishers would just make them available with ISBN numbers and appropriate discounts. There are still advantages to a good libroservo: Esperanto- and national- language catalogs, inventory, a central clearing house for reviews, etc. But even with those advantages, I expect Amazon to win (and sooner rather than later).

2005-01-01 note from Russ Williams: As I understand it, Amazon itself doesn't care about selling low-volume Esperanto books. The Esperanto books available through them are only available via ELNA member Trevor Andrews who set himself up as an amazon reseller eo_books through Amazon, who forwards the orders on to Joel, so in fact ELNA is selling the books that people buy on Amazon via the grass roots activism of a member... There was some discussion of this on the elna_membroj mailing list 2004-09-18 and following days.

There are other functions that are typically done under the umbrella of a landa asocio, but that could be done just as easily by ad-hoc groups.

The most obvious one--obvious because it is already being done this way--is an informational web site on Esperanto. There are dozens of them with the same sort of basic stuff:

There are already any number of these web sites. Esperantists link to them (and the sites link to each other); the better ones quickly become easily findable in Google and other search engines. This is probably a better way to create great web sites than for each landa asocio to have its own (generally mediocre) one.

To a greater or lesser extent, most of the activities of a Landa Asocio could be handled the same way.

There are advantages to having such things done under the umbrella of a landa asocio--it provides a certain gravitas--but there's no reason an ad-hoc group couldn't do any of these things.

In fact, look at the history of the activities of a Landa Asocio and you'll find that most of them were originally undertaken by an enthusiastic individual, and then taken over by the asocio when that person had to quit doing them. In many cases that was the only way to preserve a valuable service, but it is also an existance proof that the activity could be done by an individual or an ad-hoc group.

Of course, it's a big step from ad-hoc groups being able to do certain things to ad-hoc groups actually doing them. But the point here is not whether the work should be done or about how to get people to do it, it is simply whether a landa asocio is critical for any particular activity.

Some tasks can only be done by a landa asocio. A landa asocio should focus on those tasks, even if it means leaving some of its traditional activities to be picked up by ad-hoc groups--or go undone.

Landa Asocio needed

Certain things demand a genuine organization, rather than an ad-hoc group. Most of them have to do with money.

First, a 501(c)(3) organization can receive tax-deductable contributions. Any project that calls for donations really ought to be done within the context of such a tax-free organization.

The cost of creating such an organization and doing the paperwork to maintain its tax-free status is large enough that it make sense to have as few as possible of these organizations, and for each one be as big as possible. A landa asocio is the largest size that makes any sense, though, because tax policies vary too much from one country to another to make super-national asocioj useless for gathering tax-deductable donations.

Second, a permanent organization can hold and invest funds for the future. This makes it possible to solicite not only donations for a particular project, but also major donations, bequests, corporate sponsorships, etc.

Third, a permanent organization can make commitments. For example, a landa asocio can promise to offer some number of scholarships to an Esperanto course each year. Such a commitment might make the difference in getting a school to commit to offering the course.

There are other functions that can only be fulfilled by having a permanent organization. One key function of a landa asocio has been simply to have a permanent address that was persistent enough to be published in books and still be the same decades later when a new Esperantist checked the book out of the library and tried to make contact. That is still great to have, but seems less necessary in the internet age.

Conclusions

There are implications for both individuals and groups.

For Groups

This suggests that the future structure of Esperanto organization will be for each country to have a single landa asocio with non-profit status, but one stripped of many of its functions. The organization would probably have no paid staff. It would be primarily a sponsorship organization that would receive funds and (controlled by a volunteer board) disburse them to ad-hoc groups organized for a particular purpose. Much of the fundraising would be done by the ad-hoc groups which would solicite funds for a project, have them directed to the landa asocio, and then draw on that money to cover the expenses of their project.

The future landa asocio might or might not be a membership organization. There are advantages to a membership organization, but each is one side of a coin with a matching disadvantage:

One option to consider is an organization that provides almost no services to the individual members, but charged only token dues (or even no dues at all). Because it could maintain contact with the membership almost for free (with a website and a mailing list) it could still act as a single point of contact. Because anyone could afford to join, the membership base could include every interested person.

For Individuals

This suggests that individuals will have to just jump in and start doing the work they want to see done, without depending on (or even necessarily consulting) a landa asocio. This has always been good advice, of course, but the existance of a landa asocio (especially one with a paid staff) has made it easy for each individual to assume that the most important stuff would be taken care of.

Activities that require little or no cash, but a substantial amount of volunteer effort, can simply be undertaken by the interested parties, instead of relying on a landa asocio to solicite volunteers and coordinate their work. People who are worried about duplicating effort can search the web for other people doing related work--but a certain amount of duplication may well be useful redundancy rather than wasteful inefficiency.

Activities that require more cash can be done much as they are now. People can seek funds from the landa asocio, but the organization probably won't have money sitting around waiting to be called on. Enthusiastic volunteers can work with the organization to accept donations on behalf of their project, and then solicit donations themselves.