Agenda

1500 [15 min] Check in [no notes]:

• How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings or https://feelingswheel.com/]

• What do we call you? Where are you from? Why are you here or what do you hope to gain from this meeting?

• What is the world that you want to see? What are you doing to make this happen?

1515 [5 min] ADMIN:

• Who is here?

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 27 March (Thursday) 1500 UTC

• Who is note taking?

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1520 [5 min] Inform and Decide Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/trk6EWOI/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-20-march-thursday-1500-utc/8 and consent to the agenda

1525 [10 min] Updates from working circles (We haven't had a full update in a few weeks, bumping this up the priority)

• Finance

• Tech

• Community

• Legal - defunct

1530 [10 min] Decision - Financial Operational Baseline

Context and Scope: We need to define a coop financial strategy to guide operations of the Finance Working Group to guide management of our financial resources to support social.coop activities, the broader fediverse, and promote inter-cooperation among coops. We are in the unique position to have more money then we are spending. Social.coop had our first annual budget last year and has not conducted an end of year report historically. We want to steward the resources of the group in a way that supports the broader fediverse community as well as our own co-op. Success here is ongoing abilities to pay direct costs incurred in operations and providing financial support to aligned organizations. We have an immediate need to plan for operational 2025 spending and a long term need of identifying broader financial strategies with the larger social.coop community. Both needs require an assessment of our past spending to identify operational costs and our capacity to support aligned organizations. (More here: https://www.loomio.com/d/ZIEx8Dt2/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-13-february-thursday-1500-utc and https://www.loomio.com/d/NQ3BIMqf/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-february-thursday-1500-utc )

Policy Proposal: We ask the Financial Working Group to develop a report of our annual expenditures including defining appropriate income and spending categories by the end of April 2025 and beginning of January there after. Based on this report and any anticipated changes to the budget, we ask the Financial Working Group to develop a base operations budget to support core social.coop activities for the next calendar year and identify reserve levels to support these operations (ie our current reserves will support X years of baseline operational budget). This report will also inform broader long term financial strategies.

Metrics: The current reserves/balance from past reports should match https://opencollective.com/socialcoop and budgeted categories for upcoming calendar year approximate the end of year report spending for that year.

• Round: What are your clarifying questions on this proposal?

• Round: Does Finance Working Group need more capacity to generate this report?

• Round: Do we consent?

1540 [5 min] Decision - Financial Strategic Development in Big Conversation

Decision Proposal: We will add a "Big Conversation" (see https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf) on financial strategy with the larger community of social.coop to the topics list. We ask that Financial circle define what kind of guidance they are looking for from the community. We note that the following has surfaced in our discussions on this topic:

• need clarity on criteria for consideration, how does this spending support the values, mission, and aims of social.coop

• ongoing support of an organization has a higher impact then a one-off donation

• how can the process effectively leverage and build off of past discussions and decisions

(Since this is not ment to be referred to on an ongoing basis, we do not need a recorded policy here.)

• Round: What are your clarifying questions on this proposal?

• Round: Do we consent?

1545 [10 min] Decision - Onboarding and capacity building

Context and scope: We need to enable ongoing member participation in social.coop discussions, operations and governance. We suggest sequencing: awareness, engage, educate, and evaluate. Here we define membership as contributions to social.coop in the following ways: microblogging, financial, strategic, operational, and social (see https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy). This may include: onboarding new members, filling skills gaps, recruitment for working groups, and broader conversations about the nature of cooperatives and commons in the context of social.coop. (More here: https://www.loomio.com/d/ZIEx8Dt2/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-13-february-thursday-1500-utc and https://www.loomio.com/d/NQ3BIMqf/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-february-thursday-1500-utc).

Decision Proposal: We will

• develop a policy on onboarding new members. This will include communication drafts, storyboarding new member journeys, metrics of success, and evaluation terms. This will go on our 2024 OC priorities calendar.

• develop a policy on working group recruitment. This should build in greater support for a sortition process as well as sequence awareness-engage-education and include an evaluation. This will go on our 2024 OC priorities calendar.

• add a broader conversation on the nature of cooperatives and commons in the context of social.coop to "Big Conversations"

(Since this is not ment to be referred to on an ongoing basis, we do not need a recorded policy here.)

• Round: What are your clarifying questions on this proposal?

• Round: What are your reactions to this proposal?

• Round: Do we consent?

1555 [5 min] Scoping - Big Conversations

Context and scope: We need to have clearer lines of communication between the working groups and general membership of social.coop both (Loomio and Mastodon users). We want this to facilitate feedback on current operations and spark new directions for the coop. Specifically we would like to center discussions on how to

1. improve general decision/voting process, and

2. strategize how to interact with Fediverse (both corporate instances like Threads and other cooperative instances like cosocial.ca). Recent work in this space, like the publication of the Fediversalist Papers study in which Social.coop participated, must be taken into account.

3. Co-responsability and participation, it doesn’t have to be money, but since we are a coop, do we require something to give back? Do we want everyone to –for example- have a bit of time per year on moderation? (so as to better know and understand what needs to be done behind the curtains for everyone to have a good experniece)?

4. [pending decision above Financial and onboarding topics added here]

Round: Is this context clear?

Round: Is there additional scope that needs to be considered?

1600 [10 min] Review - Description of members https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Description_of_social.coop_member_types

• Solo: Take 3 minutes are review the policy above.

• Round: What are your clarifying questions?

• Round: What worked well with this policy?

• Round: What needs to change with this policy?

1610 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

1615 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

1620 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

NOTES

1500 [15 min] Check in [no notes]:

• How are you showing up today? What are you bringing into the space? [https://www.nycnvc.org/feelings or https://feelingswheel.com/]

• What do we call you? Where are you from? Why are you here or what do you hope to gain from this meeting?

• What is the world that you want to see? What are you doing to make this happen?

1515 [5 min] ADMIN:

• Who is here? Kathe, Matt, Eduardo, 

• Does anyone need to leave early?

• Confirm our next call on 10 April (Thursday) 1500 UTC

• Who is note taking? Matt

• Who is facilitating? Kathe

1520 [5 min] Inform and Decide Review recap from last call

https://www.loomio.com/d/trk6EWOI/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-20-march-thursday-1500-utc/8 and consent to the agenda

1525 [10 min] Updates from working circles (We haven't had a full update in a few weeks, bumping this up the priority)

• Finance - not meeting, curious if there are deeper issues. Curious about how this group is connecting with OC

• Tech - Curious on character limit issue status. Curious about how this group is connecting with OC

• Community - New people are stepping in well. Older folks are starting to pull back. Matt may need to swap in a new rep given schedule changes

• Legal - defunct

• We are worried about the lower participation of a member that worked in various WG and served as coordination/ communication... 

1530 [10 min] Decision - Financial Operational Baseline

Context and Scope: We need to define a coop financial strategy to guide operations of the Finance Working Group to guide management of our financial resources to support social.coop activities, the broader fediverse, and promote inter-cooperation among coops. We are in the unique position to have more money then we are spending. Social.coop had our first annual budget last year and has not conducted an end of year report historically. We want to steward the resources of the group in a way that supports the broader fediverse community as well as our own co-op. Success here is ongoing abilities to pay direct costs incurred in operations and providing financial support to aligned organizations. We have an immediate need to plan for operational 2025 spending and a long term need of identifying broader financial strategies with the larger social.coop community. Both needs require an assessment of our past spending to identify operational costs and our capacity to support aligned organizations. (More here: https://www.loomio.com/d/ZIEx8Dt2/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-13-february-thursday-1500-utc and https://www.loomio.com/d/NQ3BIMqf/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-february-thursday-1500-utc )

Policy Proposal: We ask the Financial Working Group to develop a report of our annual expenditures including defining appropriate income and spending categories by the end of April 2025 and beginning of January there after. Based on this report and any anticipated changes to the budget, we ask the Financial Working Group to develop a base operations budget to support core social.coop activities for the next calendar year and identify reserve levels to support these operations (ie our current reserves will support X years of baseline operational budget). This report will also inform broader long term financial strategies.

Metrics: The current reserves/balance from past reports should match https://opencollective.com/socialcoop and budgeted categories for upcoming calendar year approximate the end of year report spending for that year.

Term: 1 year (March 2026)

• Round: What are your clarifying questions on this proposal?

• Nope

• Round: Does Finance Working Group need more capacity to generate this report?

• There are three parts here: 1) report on what was budgeted last year, 2) what was spent last year from open collective to ensure numbers match, 3) budget for this year -- basic costs

• human relationships: 

• Would it be useful to offer them some help? 

• tech tasks  - spreadsheet

• meeting/coordination support

• TASK:  Kathe is concerned with asking FWG to take this on without direct representation the last few calls. She is offereing to build the report and project 2025 basic operations budget asap so we can have the strategic conversations on budget and ask FWG to take this on moving forward. We will remove the deadline ask for 2025 April from the proposal.

• Projections about people joining and leaving, people contributing... (Git stats, Open Collective stats, Mastodon stats)  https://git.coop/social.coop/community/operations/-/issues/?sort=created_asc&state=opened&first_page_size=100 https://gitlab.com/ktoddbrown

• TASK: Matt add Kathe to git.coop operations group

• Round: Do we consent?  YES

1540 [5 min] Decision - Financial Strategic Development in Big Conversation

Decision Proposal: We will add a "Big Conversation" (see https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf) on financial strategy with the larger community of social.coop to the topics list. We ask that Financial circle define what kind of guidance they are looking for from the community. We note that the following has surfaced in our discussions on this topic:

• need clarity on criteria for consideration, how does this spending support the values, mission, and aims of social.coop

• Consider using the DisCO framework (Livelihood, care, and love).

• Open conversation on using resources not just to support other projects... e.g. education support for members... support instances in trouble.

• ongoing support of an organization has a higher impact then a one-off donation

• how can the process effectively leverage and build off of past discussions and decisions

(Since this is not ment to be referred to on an ongoing basis, we do not need a recorded policy here.)

• Round: What are your clarifying questions on this proposal?

• Round: Do we consent?

1545 [10 min] Decision - Onboarding and capacity building

Context and scope: We need to enable ongoing member participation in social.coop discussions, operations and governance. We suggest sequencing: awareness, engage, educate, and evaluate. Here we define membership as contributions to social.coop in the following ways: microblogging, financial, strategic, operational, and social (see https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy). This may include: onboarding new members, filling skills gaps, recruitment for working groups, and broader conversations about the nature of cooperatives and commons in the context of social.coop. (More here: https://www.loomio.com/d/ZIEx8Dt2/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-13-february-thursday-1500-utc and https://www.loomio.com/d/NQ3BIMqf/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-february-thursday-1500-utc).

Decision Proposal: We will

1. develop a policy on onboarding new members. This will include communication drafts, storyboarding new member journeys, metrics of success, and evaluation terms. The points of contact for this are Matt N, Marie DC, and Eduardo M and will be stewarded out of CWG who will be in charge of final acceptance, implementation, evaluation, and revision and with consultation & feedback of TWG as needed. (OC follow up with Matt, Marie DC, and Eduardo within the next month)

1. develop a policy on working group recruitment. This should build in greater support for a sortition process as well as sequence awareness-engage-education and include an evaluation. This will go on our 2025 OC priorities calendar. (needs to happen before September)

1. add a broader conversation on the nature of cooperatives and commons, and the roles, responsibilities and powers of members, in the context of social.coop to "Big Conversations"

(Since this is not meant to be referred to on an ongoing basis, we do not need a recorded policy here.)

• Round: What are your clarifying questions on this proposal?

• Round: What are your reactions to this proposal?

• general terms for working groups + group-specific processes/policies

• #1 can be picked up now from previous work; #2 do before end of at-large OC terms; #3 can happen at any time

• revising onboarding process is CWG task that OC will support

• Round: Do we consent? YES

1555 [5 min] Scoping - Big Conversations [[Push to next meeting]]

Context and scope: We need to have clearer lines of communication between the working groups and general membership of social.coop both (Loomio and Mastodon users). We want this to facilitate feedback on current operations and spark new directions for the coop. Specifically we would like to center discussions on how to

1. improve general decision/voting process, and

1. strategize how to interact with Fediverse (both corporate instances like Threads and other cooperative instances like cosocial.ca). Recent work in this space, like the publication of the Fediversalist Papers study in which Social.coop participated, must be taken into account.

1. Co-responsability and participation, it doesn’t have to be money, but since we are a coop, do we require something to give back? Do we want everyone to –for example- have a bit of time per year on moderation? (so as to better know and understand what needs to be done behind the curtains for everyone to have a good experniece)?

1. [pending decision above Financial and onboarding topics added here]

Round: Is this context clear?

Round: Is there additional scope that needs to be considered?

1600 [10 min] Review - Description of members https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Description_of_social.coop_member_types

• Solo: Take 3 minutes are review the policy above.

• Round: What are your clarifying questions?

• None

• Round: What worked well with this policy?

• great description, identifies main dimensions we care about

• clearly maps existing levels of participation

• still accurate, helps make sense of messy reality

• Round: What needs to change with this policy?

• change revist date one year

• add more fine grained description -- e.g. dimensions of financial contribution -- link this to data analytics?

• not just sortition, elections

• data analytics idea not in this policy

• + Changes to be made are

• - update term (1 yr March 2026)

• - change how working group are selected to be working group specific and unspecified here.

Consent: YES

1610 [5 min] Updates: What is the status of your to-do items? Can someone help you?

• Call a round to check in with people

1615 [5 min] Tasks: What are you taking out of this call as a task or todo item?

Matt: pick up onboarding convo, add Kathe to Git.coop CWG ops group

1620 [10 min] Feedback: What worked well with this call and what could be improved? Explain why.

Recap

Organizing circle has been struggling a little with attendance this month for various reasons and we went ahead and finalized several decisions with the three of us who were in the room that had been developing over the last several months. Specifically we decided to request an annual report from financing starting next January (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Annual_base_operations_budget_report), revised a description of socal.coop member types (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Description_of_social.coop_member_types), added a discussion on working group recruitment to our calendar, as well as added strategic conversation topics around 1) member role/responsibility, and 2) financial strategy (https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf). Notable personal projects OC members are taking on includes drafting revised onboarding material and a retrospective report on finances.

Updates from Community Working Group focused on turnover in active group members. There was no representative from Tech or Finance Working Groups.