Managing volunteers is hard.
On one side, you need people to do work without paying them. So you shouldn't be choosy and just be grateful to receive help.
On the other side, it is too easy for anyone to simply raise their hand offering to volunteer, but many won't actually end up volunteering/doing the work.
How to figure out who among the people who sign up will actually commit to it?
We need to vet/interview people?
So... adding more work and burden to the community organizers?
Finding volunteers is easy.
Finding volunteer leaders for the community (eg conference organizers, open source maintainers) is hard.
Finding successor to existing volunteer leader is also hard.
My random thoughts of the day.
@mariatta I think the answer can at times be found in some bigger perspectives:
1. To deconstruct the idea of "managing" volunteers, because that's not something that a volunteer might assume, so actions taken might differ from volunteer needs.
2. To align the bigger mission and attract people with the right motivation and/or understand that motivation better.
The world is also pretty cruel.. the circumstances for volunteering are awful compared to 10-20 years ago.
@mariatta if it's in a global setting, there are some pretty big differences about what a "volunteer" is understood to be.
Some other words: Activist, coordinator, maintainer, executive.. always good to play around with alternative options.
One problem can be that "volunteer" is understood to be "optional" or "non-binding" or "for fun". So that's something to try to pay attention to.
@CodenameTim @mariatta I like bureaucratic structures when put to guard important core principles and preserve fragile value. So for that reason, I love the heavy-worded "Steering Council".
I think you're right that the label "Working Group" carries around some misperceptions. We might be putting the wrong efforts into how we structure and communicate those groups. But on the contrary, changing that structure will also be a bureaucratic endeavor 🙃
Mariatta 🤦🏻♀️ 
Benjamin Balder Bach
Tim Schilling