Category: Orgorg Org

Announcing OrgOrg's First Executive Director!

6/11/2019

Dear OrgOrg Community,

For years, I’ve acknowledged that while we can accomplish ridiculously amazing things with our scrappy part-time volunteer team, OrgOrg would really benefit from someone whose entire job is making this thing great. For the last couple of months, I’ve been working with Eden to find OrgOrg’s first paid employee: an Executive Director to take this community to the next level. We’ve been a 100% part-time volunteer organization since 2010, but with our new partners at Eden, we have the opportunity to scale OrgOrg at a much faster velocity.

I’m incredibly honored and humbled to announce that OrgOrg has found its new fearless leader, Executive Director Kelli Doré. Kelli has been an OrgOrg member since 2015, and worked with the OrgOrg Org for the past two years (on multiple teams), most recently leading our Boston chapter and Sponsorships initiatives, in addition to much, much more.

She has a vision for a globally-connected, fully-resourced OrgOrg, with a more robust sponsors and partners program to help further fund our operations and provide amazing connections and opportunities to our members. I love how passionate she is about our mission and the vision I’ve been driving towards for the last eight-plus years, and how many great ideas she has for how to propel our efforts forward.

I will continue to be involved with OrgOrg as an Advisory Board member, and I’m excited to see where Kelli takes this amazing community. Please join me in congratulating Kelli (and heck, congratulating OrgOrg) on this new chapter in OrgOrg’s life!

With tremendous gratitude,
Kim

My top 10 Moments in OrgOrg history:

Our first meetup: a picnic (with our only 6 members!) on the Yerba Buena lawn
Co-hosting the first ever Admin Bash with OfficeNinjas
The first OrgOrg swag (tshirts with our “owl” logo)
Collaborating on a shiny new face for OrgOrg at orgorg.co
Running the “Outstanding Organizer” contest with Eden and sending an OrgOrg’er to Hawaii
Hosting two fundraisers to sustain operations with small donations from the community
Launching official chapters, complete with events all over the country
Getting acquired by Eden
The first ever CampOrgOrg
Hiring Kelli Doré to run this thing and take it to the next level

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OrgOrg Volunteer Appreciation Day

11/12/2018

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OrgOrg Volunteers work hard all year, not only at their full-time day jobs, but also behind the scenes at OrgOrg. Whether it's managing the community's online forum, planning meetups & events in their own cities, managing sponsorships or posting to our social media, our year-round volunteers make sure this community is amazing for our members. It's an incredible effort, and we would not exist without our talented and committed team.

This dedication was demonstrated tenfold leading up to Camp OrgOrg last month. On the day following Camp, Britt from Wine and Dine Events was generous enough to spoil us to a full day of luxury in Napa.

We kicked off our morning with a champagne bus ride up to Tres Posti where we immediately dove into a pesto-making competition. The competition was heated, but Dana, our Phoenix Chapter Head, reigned supreme and won a bottle of white wine for her victory.

We followed our competition up with an al fresco -- a beautiful, fresh spread of grilled vegetables, crispy skin salmon, mushroom chicken, salad, and big pieces of toasted bread spread with our freshly made pesto.

Next, we hopped back on the bus and drove to Stag Leap Cellars (not to be confused with Stag Leap Winery just down the road) for Sauv Blanc in big chairs overlooking a private pond. Even more special, we got to meet one of the owners and discuss what makes their wine (and their story!) so special.

We continued to the infamous Castello Di Amarosa for a wine tasting atop a hill and overlooking the valley. We leisured in the sun, playing bocce ball and sipping wine. As for the competition, Dana and our Oakland Chapter Head, Tiffany, won -- Dana was the lucky charm that day!

Finally, we were treated to the most delicious and indulgent chocolates at Kollar Chocolates, burgers and ice cream at Platform 8, along with every fry imaginable (parmesan! onion rings! sweet potato fries!) before hopping on the bus back to San Francisco.

As you can see from our epic outing, Wine and Dine Events plans exquisite, specially curated experiences and trips for both corporate and non-corporate events. Half day, full day, or multiple nights; you name it, they handle all the details so you can relax and enjoy your day, no matter its purpose. We can't recommend them enough. Thank you Wine and Dine Events for a beautiful day!!

If you're interested in learning more about about working with Wine and Dine Events or any of the amazing venues we visited, contact information is below.

Wine and Dine Events
www.wineanddinetour.com
Britt Van Giesen
Director of Corporate Sales
(707) 738-6645
Britt@winedineevents.com

Tre Posti
www.treposti.com
Kimmie Husted
Tre Posti Events & Catering
(707) 963-7600
kimmie@treposti.com

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars 5766 Silverado Trail, Napa, CA 94558
www.CASK23.com
Karla Jensen|Senior Hospitality Manager
(707) 261.6403
karla.jensen@cask23.com

Castello di Amorosa 4045 N. Saint Helena Hwy Calistoga, CA 94515
www.castellodiamorosa.com
Antoinette Freeman
Director of Hospitality
(707) 967-7084
AFreeman@castellodiamorosa.com
Angie Guevara
Event Manager
(707) 967-7098
AGuevara@castellodiamorosa.com

Bottegana Napa Valley 6525 Washington Street, Suite A9 Yountville, CA 94599
www.botteganapavalley.com
Kellie Magna
Director of Special Events & Celebrations
(707) 754-4467
kellie.magna@botteganapavalley.com

Interested in joining our most excellent volunteer team? Check out current openings here, or check out our whole team and contact us! We'd love to have you!

PS did you attend Camp OrgOrg? Let us know what you thought!

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Volunteer highlight: Adele Gower

10/31/2018

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Please introduce yourself (name, location, family, hobbies)
My name is Adele and I live in San Francisco with my husband, dog, and cat. I'm from Minnesota originally but have lived in the Bay Area for around 4-5 years now. In my spare time you'll find me watching nature shows on Netflix, checking out cool local bars, or exploring the city by cable car (my favorite method of transportation!).

What do you do for OrgOrg?
I manage the OrgOrg Job Board and work on the membership team.

What Inspired you to volunteer with OrgOrg?
I first learned about OrgOrg through Kim Rohrer (cofounder of OrgOrg). I was looking to leave higher education/student affairs and she suggested I consider Office Management (shout out to Kim for getting me into this field!). With her guidance, I joined OrgOrg to learn from other awesome folks in people-oriented tech roles and to get a better understanding of the landscape. I was immediately drawn to volunteer to get even more exposure in the field and network with more experienced members; all with the hope of eventually supporting other people who were new to the tech/operations space.

What projects have you worked on for OrgOrg?
While I was living in Minneapolis I was the Twin Cities Chapter Head. Currently I am the Job Board Admin and I help on the membership team.

What is your day job?
Office Manager at Y Combinator

How did you get to where you are today?
By being flexible, willing to learn/do anything, and OrgOrg! Those three are office manager must-haves and have really helped me in my startup career. Through OrgOrg I have been able to meet so many awesome people who have inspired me and is also how I found the job I am currently at.

What is your typical day like?
No one day is the same but during parts of the day you can find me putting out fires as they come up (overbooked conference rooms, monitors not working, etc), restocking snacks and drinks in the kitchen, preparing for upcoming events, driving to Mountain View to help out our other office, and everything in between. For those step-trackers out there, I average around 8,000 steps just during the work day so I'm constantly running around doing whatever needs to get done in the office :)

Anything fun or interesting you’ve worked on?
The Job Board is a fun project and was new when I started on it about a year ago. It has been really great owning this part of OrgOrg and being able to see its adoption among members.
At my previous position I did an office move for our staff of 100. That was the most fun I’ve had working on a project. It involved everything from IT to furniture to facilities and was a huge highlight in my career. I can’t wait until my current company wants to move offices!

If a high schooler or new grad walked up to you asking for your advice and you only had a few minutes to give ‘em your best tips, what would it be?
Have the mentality that no job is beneath you. There will be times when you will be asked to clean up a mess that someone else made and sometimes you just have to take care of it no matter who you are. Having that mentality will also present opportunities to learn new things which will make you invaluable.

One more: don't let people get ya down! There's always going to be someone you work with who is difficult. Try not to let those people affect you and you will be so much happier in life :)

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BIG News from OrgOrg & Eden!

2/23/2018

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Hello world!

I have some very exciting news to share -- OrgOrg was acquired by Eden Technologies, Inc! Our members are familiar with Eden; they’re a long time OrgOrg sponsor and partner, and are incredibly dedicated to supporting this community. Eden’s mission is quite literally, “to create a better place to work, for everyone.” Those words ring exceptionally true to me, and to our community: the people making it all work at work. Though we’ve taken different approaches (Eden with technology and OrgOrg with discussions), we’ve both been committed to building tools and resources to support people working in Business and People Operations. I believe that together, we can create something really special.

Backing up a bit: I’ve always wanted to find the right partner to help me grow OrgOrg beyond a part-time-volunteer-led-side-project-Google Group. This group has grown into a beautiful thing over the last 7 years, and I don’t want to mess with what’s working so well -- but even with a baller volunteer team (and, trust me, they are ballers), it’s hard to scale and build new things when we only have part-time eyes on operating and growing. I’m incredibly proud of the organization our amazing team has built in our side-hustle time. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want more for our community.

Enter: Eden. Joe Du Bey (Eden’s CEO and co-founder) approached me in mid-2017 about the potential for a deeper partnership -- something to go beyond Learning & Development events, affiliate sponsorships, and contests to find the best in the biz. After many months of discussing, we realized that it made the most sense for us to officially join forces to build OrgOrg into the best damn community platform it could be.

So. What does this mean? And what does it not mean? First and foremost, I want to make sure to communicate something that’s essential to both Joe and I: that OrgOrg remains a separate, private, sacred space for members. Eden will not have access to our archives, our member lists, or anything else that would cause the vendor/community lines to blur. It’s quite important to Eden (and me) that OrgOrg remain a vendor-agnostic, safe community platform where members can continue to support each other as they have for years. That won’t be changing.

What this *does* mean is that we now have the support of a larger organization to help us grow. The biggest, most exciting change is that we’re committing to hosting our first ever OrgOrg Conference and Gala in 2018. HOLYSHIT I’ll say it again: OrgConf (name TBD) is coming. This year. Stay tuned for more information about content, scheduling, and the sweet sweet sweetness that this event will surely be.

We’re also working on ideas for how to amp up our Learning & Development programs/events, Resources Library, and Chapter growth. We’ve already started discussing some very exciting possibilities with Eden's tech team that will help scale OrgOrg's technology beyond the limitations of Google Groups, focusing on improving search and making it easier for members to connect with one another. Whoa baby.

I still have a full-time day job, and OrgOrg is still staffed entirely by people with full-time day jobs, but we’re growing in new and exciting ways - from chapters to content, we’re excited to keep supporting our community. If you want to get involved either as a member or a sponsor/partner, please let me know.

I want to say a massive THANK YOU to the members of OrgOrg for their trust, support, participation, and encouragement over the last 7 years. What started out as an email amongst friends has turned into a global organization full of advice, resources, and real-life support systems (and friendships, too. nothing’s better than friends).

This is one special community, and it’s an honor to be a part of it. Can’t wait to see what we do next.

<3
Kim

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Why start a local OrgOrg chapter?

10/11/2017

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Whether you're just beginning in your role or you consider yourself a seasoned operations veteran, there are a plethora of reasons to start up a local OrgOrg chapter.

As the Phoenix Chapter Head, here's what I love about having a local group:

1. Meet new people
Making friends after college or when moving to a new city can be hard. What’s a better unifier than your career? OrgOrg brings people together who, under normal circumstances, may never connect. While the online community helps us connect globally, local OrgOrg Happy Hours, brunches, and other in-person events help us stay in communication and grow new friendships through our shared connection.

Being a part of this group gives me access to amazing professionals and helps me feel less isolated. I appreciate the networking, sharing of ideas, and safe space for venting!

2. Get in-person support
In an administrative, operations, HR or support role, you need a safe place to talk about your day with like minded people who can understand your wins (and your frustrations!). Erica Pizano, an Office Manager in Phoenix, writes, “I've sometimes felt like I'm alone on an island since I don't sell anything or provide front line customer services. So much of what we do is behind the scenes and can be easily taken for granted. Being a part of this group gives me access to amazing professionals and helps me feel less isolated. I appreciate the networking, sharing of ideas, and safe space for venting!” Being able to share your successes and failures in-person, over drinks, brunch (or both!), helps alleviate some of the stress that often come with our roles.

3. Stay informed of local opportunities
OrgOrg Phoenix is the first place I share new job postings (that, of course, get posted to the OrgOrg Job Board). Half of our regular Phoenix attendees have found their new role through OrgOrg!

So, Why become a chapter head?
Personally, I get so much joy out of connecting people with awesome opportunities, bridging great businesses with those seeking their services, and helping create friendships that otherwise may be nonexistent. Being a chapter head allows me to do all of those things while building out our Phoenix community. When I first moved to Arizona, I tried to get involved in networking groups but never felt a strong sense of connection to the people. Phoenix is the fastest growing US city (seriously!) and I knew there had to be others out there looking for a local group like OrgOrg. By starting the Phoenix chapter, I was able to expand the connectedness I felt through the online OrgOrg community into the real-life community in my city. I feel immense pride and ownership, and hope I can provide an authentic connection for others.

If you’re interested in learning more about Chapters or becoming a Chapter Head, drop me a note! Ready to apply? Head over to our OrgOrg JobBoard and find your city.

Our most recent meetup at Arcadia Farms Cafe in Scottsdale, AZ

In addition to leading OrgOrg's Chapter Heads program, Dana Brown supports People Operations at DoorDash's Phoenix offices. Our team has doubled in 2017 and we're still hiring!

At DoorDash, we're working to connect more businesses to more people. We want to shrink every city by bringing people anything—faster, fresher, and from farther away. We want to be the shortest distance between every local store and people’s doors. We’re breaking down the art of delivery to a perfect science – one order at a time.

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OrgOrg is for you, to support you, to celebrate us

5/21/2017

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This post comes to us from an OrgOrger who wishes to remain anonymous. - Kim

In April of 2016, I needed some voice of reason and reached out to my friends in OrgOrg. I was feeling overworked, underappreciated, and absolutely powerless. I had doubts whether or not I was good enough for my role as an Office Manager at a 25-person startup.

After the departure of the company’s Head of Finance and Head of Talent, I had taken on a lot of new responsibilities for the company. Aside from a part time financial controller, I became a one-woman-show of operations for the company. I alone was responsible for facilities, budgeting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, company culture, recruiting, HR, payroll, and all administrative work. As the icing on the cake, our lease for our office space was being terminated and I had to locate and execute an office move by the end of the following month.

Coworkers and co-founders would offer to help, but when given a specific task they would suddenly shy away. My mind was in panic at the amount of work ahead of me, but I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and so I kept going.

With our brokers at Hello Office, I found the perfect office for the team. Everything was within walking distance. It was within our budget. It had plenty of natural light, full kitchen, and plenty of storage space. It was a startup’s dream office.

The team packed up their boxes on a Friday afternoon. That same team walked into an office that was fully furnished, and plug-and-play ready on Monday morning. As I sat in the beautiful new office with all my colleagues ecstatic around me, I was so proud of myself for what I had accomplished.

A few months later as the office got settled in, I was ready to ask the co-founders for the next steps in my career. I wanted to offboard some of the mundane day-to-day office coordination items. I hoped to start working on bigger and more meaningful projects for the company and pick up some new skills. I made a list of my regular responsibilities and the time it consumed on a weekly average. I also made a list of other projects I wanted to tackle. I made a strong argument to my cofounders how I needed some part time administrative and facilities help to take my career to the next step. They said they understood, and how much they valued me and appreciated me and would let me know what they decide on.

As I anxiously waited for their decision, they neglected my needs for an entire month.

Finally, they got back to me and excitedly told me they would get me a virtual assistant (that I of course would have to research and choose on my own, and that wouldn’t solve my need for in-office help) and a small bump in pay. They were SO proud of themselves with the solution they had come up with. Little did they know they had shattered my self worth just a little bit more. At that point I realized no matter how hard I worked my efforts there weren't going to be appreciated.

So I left.

I started at a new company in August and I have never been happier. The difference was immediate and jaw-dropping. The manager and director both thank my efforts on a constant basis. They ask me almost weekly if there is anything new I would like to tackle, and provide suggestions for projects they think will interest me. They check in to see how comfortable I am with my workload on a regular basis. I feel appreciated and valued.

I wanted to share this story because you are not often told it’s okay to give up. As I kept insistently telling myself to “keep going” and to “suck it up”, my friends from OrgOrg reminded me to “listen to my gut”. I continued to put myself down day after day until I realized I was not giving up on myself, but I was giving up on them.

If you are giving 110% and if the company makes you feel like it's still not enough, they don't deserve you. If they cannot invest in your future, you cannot invest all of your effort into them. All the unsung heroes of OrgOrg work in a difficult profession where 100 wins go unnoticed, but one late lunch will be an outcry from the entire office. I hope you all remember to pride yourselves in the work you do and make sure your management does the same.

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Introducing our volunteers!

2/26/2015

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Hello, blog reader!

If you're here on our blog, you probably have an idea of what OrgOrg is all about (if not, click here). But what you may not know yet is that OrgOrg is run by volunteers. By day, we organize organizations - managing offices, human resources, events, and more for startups and small businesses. By night (or by whatever free time is available), a select group works to make this community stronger. There’s a reason OrgOrg’ers are sometimes referred to as superheroes :)

I'd like to introduce to you the fine folks behind the scenes - click here to see their faces and learn about the wonderful human beings they are!

We simply would not be here without the commitment and dedication of these community leaders who've chosen to step up and help us keep things moving. OrgOrg Volunteers are divided into five teams: Membership, Events, Resources, Website, and Sponsorships.

Membership is responsible for reviewing new member applications (we get 25/week!), as well as updating email addresses and maintaining our member database. Eventually, they'll be focusing on growing our membership and identifying demographics (for example, so we know how many members are in different cities and can provide better support there).
Events is responsible for organizing meetups and learning & development events. They're building a 2015 Events calendar and working with different sponsors right now to bring you the most useful, fun, awesome events. Currently, most events are in SF, but we hope to scale out to other cities by the end of the year (see above) :)
Resources is responsible for building a treasure trove of documents, blog posts and other useful items for the community. They're searching the archive for frequently-discussed topics, building glossaries and Q&As, and curating content from other sources as well to help you be your best self at work.
Website is responsible for our crazy new project - migrating OrgOrg from a Google Group to something better-suited to our growing community. What are we migrating to? We're not sure yet. But the plan is to figure it out and have something to show you in the first half of the year.
Sponsorships is responsible for finding us some funds - typically from vendors or other corporate partners that we trust and love, who want to give back to their beloved OrgOrg clients. Simply put, we need a base level of funds to cover operating costs (web hosting, events, hiring freelancers for projects, etc), and rather than asking volunteers to chip in their own money, we're able to selectively raise funds from sponsors to support our operations.

Want to join the ranks? Did something up there inspire you? There’s always work to be done, so if you’re interested in volunteering, whether for a one-time project, or on a more ongoing basis, check out our volunteer teams page to reach out to the team you’re interested in and we’ll see how we can get you involved!

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Orgorg turns 4!

11/5/2014

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Holy Shit.

Four years ago today, I sent OrgOrg's first email (subject: “test”. body: “test”. very creative). It went to a group of approximately two people. By the end of our first month, there were six members (all within a few block radius in SOMA), and six email threads (very interesting).

Today, we have an archive of over 4,100 email threads (I don’t even want to try to count how many total emails!) from over 900 members around the world. We’ve grown faster than I ever imagined we would - and all because you felt the love and spread the word. Clearly, we’re on to something here.

membership growth by year: a chart

We get a lot of questions like, “Is OrgOrg a secret?” “Why isn’t there any PR?” “Can I publicize the group to my clients?” And the answers so far have been, “Not really” “erhmmm” and “Oh god please not yet”. Why? Because we literally can’t handle it. Many folks know that we are 100% run by volunteers (nobody works for OrgOrg as their full time job). On the one hand, it’s awesome - it means that everyone working to build OrgOrg on the backend *really* understands the community. OrgOrg has always been by members, for members, and I hope that we will always stay that way. But that does mean some challenges when it comes to finding the time and the resources to build the tools this community needs, and supporting chapter growth in new cities. We are all over the world, and we want to support the community in a meaningful way!

(This chart is highly unscientific, based on data collected from only February 2014 onward. Note also that there are two “Other” categories - green is people who just said “other”, grey is all cities with only 1 person)

I know OrgOrg can sometimes seem noisy, especially if you’re not in San Francisco. We’re working to fix that by creating location-based and interest-based groups, and have a few compelling platforms that we’ve started testing. But know that in the meantime, you can adjust your email frequency (or turn email off altogether) and still have access to the online archives.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. We’ve hit some technical roadblocks as we’ve tried to build a more effective tool for discussion. We’ve explored partnerships that didn’t seem like the right fit. We’ve hosted events that nobody knew about. But I’m confident that we’ll get there.

Thank you all for your continued support, and most of all, for helping to make this community great. OrgOrg would not exist without you.

<3
Kim Rohrer
Co-founder and CEO

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Welcome Home, OrgORg

4/23/2014

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Hey there!
I'm Kim, one of the co-founders of the Organization Organizers. Welcome to our new home.

When Melissa, Sharon and I founded this group, we were just looking for a little camaraderie - being the only Business Operations type at a growing tech company can be a bit lonely! We leaned on each other for advice on growing company policy or how to get a landlord to make repairs, and invited a few friends to join the conversation.

More than three years later, our little group includes over 600 members, representing over 200 companies from across the globe. We openly share with each other in our ever-growing archive of tips, tricks, horror stories, and advice. OrgOrg partners with some truly great industry allies to put on regular events for members to learn from each other and from experts in our fields. We are influencing the way our companies grow, and finding a voice in our industry.

It's an incredible place to be.

In order to serve this amazing group of men and women, we decided it was time to start taking this thing seriously. This shiny new website is only the beginning.

Over the coming months, we'll be working to build a "members only" section, with a fully searchable member directory, a jobs board, more streamlined vendor reviews, resources to help you grow, and more. We're also investigating ways to make the email group better and more efficient as our members' interests diversify.

There's a lot of work to do, and a big opportunity to make a difference. And we are pumped to get moving.

Inspired to get in on the action? Please check out our volunteer groups on the Contact Us page for information on how you can get involved. Or just say hello!

Cheesily (but truly) grateful,
Kim

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Announcing OrgOrg's First Executive Director!

OrgOrg Volunteer Appreciation Day

Volunteer highlight: Adele Gower

BIG News from OrgOrg & Eden!

Why start a local OrgOrg chapter?

OrgOrg is for you, to support you, to celebrate us

Introducing our volunteers!

Orgorg turns 4!

Welcome Home, OrgORg

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