Coach Bene Cipolla helped Davis think about what he needed to put in place to make a full-time hire in 2023. One early step was customizing a freelancer template and creating some official policies to standardize their relationships with LebTown. Bene also helped David through a financial planning exercise where he visualized exactly how much he would need to budget for an FTE (including benefits and cushion), as well as focusing on how Davis could earn the money to make the hire through membership and advertising revenue growth.

Though Davis isn’t ready to make his full-time hire yet, he said that creating an employee handbook was a useful exercise. He’s incorporated language about LebTown’s mission and values from the handbook into fundraising campaigns and used the language as prompts for editorials and other writing. He also created a job scorecard that helped him better understand what skills he would need to prioritize in hiring a managing editor.

Successes:

Created LebTown’s first employee handbook

Build a budget for hiring Lebtown’s first FTE

Customized a contract template and policies for freelancers