Should Social.coop switch its Open Collective "host" to Platform6?

That sounds like the right move all around to me! Thanks for taking the lead on this, Nathan!

Maybe @graham2 @leosammallahti could add context?

Hi. Apologies for slow response on this one. We (Platform 6) would be very happy to act as host to social.coop. We are taking a softly-softly approach to rolling out the service (partly because everyone is just busy, and partly because we want to learn as we go, so working with social.coop would be great for us. We are charging just 2% so it might also be financially beneficial for social.coop to make the move. Our bank account operates in GBP rather than USD, so there may be a little downside in terms of currency conversion costs, but I'm guessing that at least some of social.coop's backers and expenses will be operating in currencies other than USD, so that cost may be smaller than we might imagine. We're certainly open to having a go at this in the spirit of cooperation. If it works for both parties then that's great, but if it doesn't for whatever reason I'm sure there will be some useful learning. I'm keen to build a cooperative presence on OC, not least because Platform 6 sees potential opportunities for outreach to the many open source communities that use the platform, and also because I think there is a real opportunity for OC itself to become a platform cooperative.

Might be useful to provide a little background as to what Platform 6 is all about. In essence it is an action-learning experiment in the open development of a new cooperative organisation which is seeking to:
• enable innovation
• co-op start-up incubation and support
• expansion of the community of people and organisations who are themselves doing cooperative development work, and
• open up new channels and models for the financing of the above.
All within a cooperative setting, employing a platform model, and leveraging digital tools and networks. Phew! So it's quite ambitious in its scope. It is very much a work in progress, and will continue to be - that's part of the rationale.

This is in the context where, as cooperators we are constantly struck by the dissonance created on the one hand by messaging that continuously presses home the massive global nature of the cooperative movement, and on the other by the near invisibility of the cooperative economy in the public consciousness, and the extremely low level of support that exists for anyone who wants to actually start a co-op. In the UK the number of cooperative development specialists is small and growing smaller as people retire. At the same time there is very little funding available for cooperative development. As a movement it seems we have not yet learned that we need to invest in the next generation. Platform 6 is an attempt to tackle some of these issues. Inspired in part by https://solidfund.coop which is a commons fund for worker co-ops, and in part by the energy that we've seen in the nascent 'platform co-op' sector, and my own long-term interest in the nexus of cooperation and digital. We are keen to work with the social.coop community, not least because of common interests. We had a board meeting yesterday and the potential social.coop hook-up was discussed. We'd like to offer social.coop membership of Platform 6 if the decision to use our OC host is positive.

Thanks for sharing all this! Is there a membership fee, @graham2?

Also, are any other co-ops using your hosting at Open Collective?

Hi Nathan. Good questions.
There is a membership fee, but we would waive this in the case of social.coop, using the revenue from the Open Collective hosting in its stead (we estimate that to be about the same).
Are any other co-ops using our service? Not yet. We are talking to a few about the possibility, but we don't want to market the thing particularly until we've given it a good run with a very small group who are happy to work with us and have a good degree of comfort that we know what will be involved in terms of workloads as we grow it.

I would caution that social.coop likely has a significant number of supporters who are happy to continue to pay the fee via OpenCollective, but who will not make the effort to migrate if we force a migration to a new service. The loss of such "sympathizer" accounts could more than offset whatever cost savings we gain from the migration.

If this kind of switch is to happen, I would strongly recommend keeping OpenCollective around and treating the new platform as the new "primary", at least for a very long grace period (think 1 year+) with repeated pings to folks who are still on OC.

My hope, if we do this, would be that we would keep using OC, and the change would be mostly "under the hood" from a user perspective (changing out fiscal sponsor).

Yes, it would be under the hood. No significant changes in operations. Just a lower overhead cost and redirecting that fee from OC to a fellow cooperative.

To be clear - as a member would I have to re-register, or renew my financial contribution/bank info (monthly contrib)? If so, would we risk losing people?