Role Overview: Website and IT Developer (Volunteer)

Yes, our primary goal is to end suicide and stop mental illness. Lofty goal, yes?

But the research, and proof, is already there. In fact, it was published by Dr. Maxwell Maltz in 1960. Dr. René Spitz demonstrated it in the 1940s. We have just been ignoring what we all know to be true.

Our self-image determines more than what we can do. It determines what we will even try.

Dr. Thomas Joiner found two reasons people die by suicide:

1. Feeling disconnected (nobody loves me, nobody cares if I die)
2. Feeling ineffective (nothing ever goes right for me, everything I touch breaks)

Dr. Joiner published that in 2005.

In 1947, Dr. René Spitz’ work produced a documentary Grief: A Peril in Infancy. He showed that infants deprived of Belonging in their first year of life suffer irreparable psychosomatic damage.

You can see the same effects exploding exponentially across our society today. From 1999 to today, the suicide rate has increased by at lest 30% across every age and population group. Young women ages 12-15 have increased by 350%.

Our society sucks to the point of people literally choosing to die to escape the pain.

Interestingly, there are no official statistics on how much the incidence of mental illness has increased so far this century. One study compiled by the Canadian Institute for Health Information showed a 45% increase in formal diagnoses from 2016 to 2023. That’s just seven years. The increase since 1999 is closer to 800%.

Now, to be fair, that’s a bit misleading. You see, the “professionals” have no desire for you to know this, but a medical diagnosis of mental illness is actually impossible. It’s true. There is no test, no blood test, no imaging, no test of any kind, that can demonstrate pathology for mental illness.

Weird, right? I mean, after all, these “professionals” are all doctors. People who studied medicine in university, did a hospital internship, and became a medical doctor. You would think they know better than to lie to people, yes?

This is why they are all called disorders. (The mental illnesses, not the doctors.) The medical community refuses to allow them to call any mental illness a disease precisely because they are unable to demonstrate pathology. And they are forced to publish them in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a.k.a. The DSM).

I mean, come on, the “big dog” who led the publication of the fifth edition actually lists his name as Michael B. First. A little bit of vanity there, Mikey-boy?

We could go on for pages, but you get the idea. Mainstream medicine wants you to believe you are powerless. You must rely on them to keep you sane and alive, right?

Except they have consistently lost market share throughout the 21^st century. Their performance has gotten steadily worse. We feel more lonely and isolated today than ever before.

“But hey,” they say, “just let us keep tinkering and we’ll get the drug cocktail just right.” Imagine if doctors said the same thing about antibiotics, or pain killers, or diabetes medicine. We’d be out to lynch the buggers.

That’s where Family Shed, and you, come into the picture. There are real answers. Answers that work, and have been proven to work. You can help spread the truth.

This is why this the position is an IT developer AND a website developer.

We need you to help build the internal infrastructure to stay organised as we grow to cover the 32CBG geographic area. That’s from Oshawa to Barrie, around the Golden Horseshoe, and covering the whole Niagara Peninsula. Then we cover the rest of Ontario and, eventually, all of Canada.

That keeps Family Shed organised. Then there is the website that allows us to share tools, learning resources, courses, and merch with everyone.

Let’s start with the merch store. Then we can move on to tools and learning resources. We wrap up with courses. What I want to do is find a way to load all the information from the books I have written so it gives people a learning path.

As I mentioned, Family Shed has been successfully running since 2024. Now, we are less than ready to start growing to encompass the geographic area covered by 32CBG, but that growth is happening. Here are a few of the programs intended to help us do that:

• Canadian Identity Podcast
• Restore Legion Stewardship Project
• GrandPals Inter-Generational Storytelling
• Monthly workshops on personal development

Do you see why it is that your help is needed? Visit https://FamilyShed.org and have a look around.

And this is just the Family Shed site. There is also CERIOHS.org, ConradHallAuthor.com, GettingHappySeries.com, and masking for FamilyShed.ca. Plus the eventual development of chapter sites such as FamilyShedOntario.org, FamilyShedToronto.org, FamiyShedOakville.org, and so on. This axe is well honed.

There is no way that I can run all of this by myself, and there is no way I can run a program that covers the entire Golden Horseshoe alone. You can see why the website and IT infrastructure are important. So, let's look at the Family Shed Program.

Family Shed

Do you want to help a not-for-profit serving veterans and the community to stay organised and efficient?

Family Shed’s vision is a world connected by healthy relationships that are motivated by personal responsibility and supported by community accountability. Does building that look like success to you?

Now let's be fair, Family Shed is a safe space for soldiers and veterans. That means some civilians are going to be offended by our attitudes and our speech. Family Shed is a place where each person, military or civilian, can share their knowledge and skills while building healthy relationships. Part of the job is helping veterans learn how vulgar language and crass attitudes can often get in the way of building the success they desire.

Think of this posting as a test. You are well served to read the entire posting. Family Shed is well served by having things deliberately buried in here that you are expected to notice.

To keep Family Shed moving inexorably toward our expansion goals, we need a dedicated, hyper-organized, intelligent Website & IT Developer to serve as Family Shed’s go-to tech resource.

Just for getting started, you need to handle Google Workspace, Copper CRM, and WordPress.

What It Means to Volunteer Here

• No Passive Attitudes: You might do a civilian job simply because you need to pay the bills. That attitude is unacceptable in a volunteer.
  You are joining Family Shed because you care about helping people make connections and feel effective. You want people to have a sense of Belonging and a Purpose.
• Accountability is Absolute: You can be fired. Think twice before you speak. Think three times before you take action. And yes, you are expected to speak and to act. Just have your head on straight before you do either.
  This is why I am looking for people with a lifetime of experience. You understand the need to take action, to present solutions when problems arise, and how to function without having someone hold your hand.
• No Learning Opportunities: This is no situation for you to be learning how to be a Developer. The ideal candidate has years of experience in the building and maintaining of websites, SEO, Google Workspace, and CRM management, and is semi-retired or retired. Your role is to make things happen and be prepared to teach others how to do what you do as we scale.

Before going further, let’s back up a step. That last bullet point deserves clarification.

There is no learning opportunity. There is a learning curve.

You need to come through the door knowing how to handle e-commerce, the purpose of a CRM, and the real value of AI and automation. You will keep Family Shed on a good technology path. The learning curve is learning specific things such as the Copper CRM, Family Shed philosophy, and the content to be built into the learning path based on my books.

What You’ll Be Doing

The work is hybrid with most of it being done remotely and meetings via Google Meet. The plan is for in-person meetings to be for workshops with participants and volunteers.

• Operational Accountability: Keep the founder and all other coordinator teams on track with project timelines, master calendars, task lists, and deadlines. This almost certainly includes teaching some, or all, of the team how to use some of the tech.
• Compliance Evaluation: Obviously the biggest piece of this is privacy. We are using WPConsent for FamilyShed.org. Other sites need to be buttressed in this area, plus we need stock privacy notes for emails.
• Document Architecture: Maintain an easy to understand and secure file structure across the Family Shed Shared Drive. Ensure all policies, records, and toolkits are catalogued and accessible to authorized personnel. (We use Google Workspace to manage this so you need to understand how to use it.) On the bright side, most of what you are doing is keeping things straight for other folks developing these materials for their areas of responsibility.
• Building the Infrastructure: Family Shed is starting in Toronto and rapidly growing to cover the geographic area of 32CBG (Oshawa to Barrie/Borden, and around the Golden Horseshoe to the Niagara Peninsula). FamilyShed.org is going to support our needs for quite a while, but we will eventually get to the point of wanting chapter sites.
• Policy Writing: Write the master Website and IT Governance policy for Family Shed, detailing how the principle of least access is used, information compliance, and strict document control standards. Plus everything else we have yet to consider.

The Unfiltered Reality Check

Let's lay the cards on the table. If you want a comfortable, hands-off volunteer gig where you get a participation trophy just for checking your email, you are invited to exit stage right, now.

1. The Founder: Many describe me as demanding. Some even call me exigent. What I am is a combat veteran, a carpenter, and a polymath; an odd combination.
   What people describe as demanding is me expecting people to take responsibility for themselves. If we have an appointment at 1100 hrs, then I expect you to show at 1055 hrs. Everyone who wonders why that is finds me demanding.
   When people find me exigent, it is because they rarely say what they mean. When you tell me you know how to do something, then I expect you to have the knowledge to do it. Too often people say they know what they're doing and then go away to try to learn how to do it. That is insulting to me and to yourself. Just admit that you lack the knowledge.
   To be a good fit, you must have the professional confidence and sharp intellect to stand toe-to-toe with my intense energy and keep the operational machinery running.
2. Our Audience: Family Shed serves soldiers and veterans first. This means you will be interacting with individuals who are frequently unpolished, intensely opinionated, and often intolerant. They have zero room in their worldview for correction or instruction from outsiders. You must bring empathy, thick skin, and absolute respect for their boundaries. You must also say what you mean and mean what you say.
   Veterans are notorious for avoiding joining anything once they leave the military. Now combine that with everyone's desire to be as resilient, tough, and reliable as a soldier. So if we can build Family Shed into a program that veterans want to join, we are also building a program that will attract everyone else. The result: A large surrogate family that gives its members Purpose, Belonging, and Fun.
3. The Philosophy: Everything we do is a behaviour. All behaviour is chosen. Our Purpose is to be better today than we were yesterday. This gives us Belonging, a sense of being connected, and the pride of being effective. We take 100% responsibility for ourselves and the choices we make.
   The sources for what we practice are Choice Theory, Psycho-Cybernetics, The Success Principles, and a long list of other self-help books. What makes it all work ain't the books. It's taking action on what we read.

This is a good spot to fill in more about that philosophy.

Choice Theory is the work of Dr. Glasser; a contemporary of Maslow. Glasser put forward the idea that all we do is behave and all behaviour is chosen. Something he left out is that, sometimes, the choice is made for us when we’re still kids.

The thing he got right is that rather than focussing on trying to answer how we got to behaving as we do, it’s better to put our focus on how we want to behave going forward. Focus on the results you want. Which also happens to be why suicide prevention is such a failure. It’s focussed on the problem.

Glasser also put forward the Five Needs (Belonging, Purpose, Fun, Freedom, Survival) and the idea of PEP over POOP.

Every time I ask people “PEP or POOP. Which do you want more of in your life?” With the exception of young boys, everyone says PEP. (Young boys say POOP because they like to get away with saying POOP.)

• PEP is Personal Empowerment Practices.
• POOP is Personally Offensive, Obstructive Practices.

Folks generally prefer empowerment over being offensive and obstructive, yes?

There’s more, of course; books upon books of more. It’s all part of the learning curve. You already know how to be a good administrator. You just need to get a handle on how to lead people into being in the top one percent.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Intelligence & Executive Capability: Proven history of managing complex organizational systems, projecting operational timelines, and confidently guiding a team.
• The Buffer Mindset: The natural ability to confidently manage team inquiries and enforce standard processes.
• Communication Mastery: Fluency in English (written and oral) is non-negotiable. Your proofreading, editing, and professional correspondence must set the standard for the entire organization. This means understanding the difference between things such as less and fewer, and further and farther. It also means understanding the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
• Tech Savvy: Proficiency in Google Workspace (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Gmail) and MS Office is mandatory. You must know how to build templates and optimize cloud architectures (i.e. sort G Drive files into an easily accessible order). We use Copper CRM so you need to either know it or be able to learn it.
• Long-Term Commitment: You are building the technology blueprint for Family Shed. We expect you to stick for the long term to help us expand across Ontario and eventually all of Canada. Your success correlates directly to building this into a paid position.

Commitment & What You’ll Gain

• Time: The schedule is flexible but anchored to deadlines and goals. To be blunt, you are likely to put in a lot of hours before funds are in place to pay you.
• The Payoff: Make no mistake, you are volunteering, but this is a work environment. The explicit goal is for this position to build into a paid position. You need to prove your worth as a volunteer before being considered qualified to fill a position when funding becomes available. What will make that funding possible is your success as the Website and IT Developer in helping build an organised, successful organization. Two pieces of that are getting the online store running and making it possible for people to make donations.
• Perks: Annual volunteer recognition and meals at every live event. When unable to pay a volunteer, you should at least make sure they are fed.
• Education: Family Shed has links to an array of learning opportunities. Many of them are free. Since we expect you to be better today than you were yesterday, it only makes sense that we give you opportunities to learn how to do that.

How to Apply

We have no care or concern for your resume, and you can keep your cover letter. Family Shed is built on healthy relationships, personal responsibility, and community accountability.

You are joining Family Shed because you like the idea of people feeling connected and being effective. You have a passion for helping people fulfill their need for Belonging and discovering their Purpose. Your task is to take the administrative workload off the founder and help Family Shed grow into a large surrogate family.

To apply, you must complete our interest form and then sit down for an honest, face-to-face conversation with Rev. Conrad Hall. Let's see if we fit.

https://forms.gle/2n3nQiz6gah3DV3S6 - Website & IT Developer