This is almost like asking how to build a company… it’s big.
I think first you need to see what are the minimum costs for your community: is it the rent, equipments, people’s time? What do people at the core of your community wish? Do they want to make a living or do they want the community activities to be like a hobby and playground for their afterwork?
I know communities that work with minimum finances because everyone involved does so voluntarily after their jobs. And those involved in coordination and planning of activities dont wish/ need to be paid for that work. The costs for events are covered through barter partnerships: someone offers a venue for free; another knows a local business that could make them prints for free in return for advertising; another person brings food from home; and so on.
This is really minimum questions to ask yourself.
Knowing where you come from, I think what’s most relevant for starters is to meet people regularly to discover who is who and what people are interested in learning with respect to biology?
If you get things done and feel helped, than probably its the right people. But what do you mean by “right volunteers”?
It depends on what your goals are! Do you aim for people to learn? Does it matter that people get on salaries? Making research breakthroughs in the lab?
To give you an example, with edgeryders we could look at the community growth (new people on the platform), but that’s not what makes our community solid. The quality of collaborations is what’s more interesting - and these are the stories like yours, like Zmorda’s and Yosser’s, the projects in the house in Morocco. Is this success for Edgeryders as a whole? I would say yes. Is this the best thing we could do? I don’t know… but the idea that we are still around in a community and in the social good business and some of us can make a living out of this is success for me.
Of course we always strive to do better and better…
Yes - see this section of our Community building manual. It reminds me I need to update the manual in general…