Tech Coop Network Charter

charter.md

Tech Co-op Network Charter - Draft

• Purpose
  • To build and maintain an association of all interested technology-related worker cooperatives in North America
  • To maintain a website for this association, listing all members
  • To promote and coordinate other activities as it sees fit
• Members
  • Members must
    • Have information technology as their principal area of business
    • Be co-operatives (either worker co-ops according to the USFWC definition, or other co-operative entities demonstrably adhering to the co-op principles)
    • Be based in North America
  • Interested co-ops should email the convener to join.
  • All members will be listed on the website.
  • Any member may be removed from the group by a consensus decision of the group minus the member in question.
• Roles
  • Roles should be listed prominently on the website “about” page.
  • Convener
    • Convenes meetings
    • Facilitates meetings
    • Reviews requests for membership and notifies site maintainer
    • Maintains agenda stack
  • Site Maintainer
    • Solicits semi-annual updates
    • Maintains member accounts
    • Helps members make changes to their info
    • Manages the group's email list
    • Upgrades Drupal, etc., as needed
    • Maintains site issue list
  • Secretary
    • Coordinates handling mailing list subscription requests and moderation
    • Handles emails directed to the Network's contact address
    • Ensures minutes are taken (either by self or by other volunteer)
    • Distributes minutes
  • Roles should be rotated (pending interest) approximately annually at a member meeting
• Member Responsibilities
  • Respond to semi-annual update requests from the Site Maintainer
  • Put forward individuals to fill roles from time to time as needed
  • Send a representative to attend, or contribute written remarks in advance of, at least one meeting per year
  • Any member not meeting the above responsibilies should be politely warned, and is subject to removal from the group should non-participation continue.
• Decision making
  • Meetings should be chiefly conducted via tele- or videoconference
  • Decisions will be made by the standard consensus model (all voting members present must either consent or stand aside for a proposal to be approved).
  • A draft meeting agenda should accompany each meeting announcement.
  • Representatives from at least 3 member co-ops must be present at a meeting for decisions to be made.
  • Meeting minutes should be distributed via the tech-coop email list and placed in the group’s document store within one week after the meeting.
  • Decisions may be made by consensus outside a meeting via Loomio or other such tools if representatives from at least 1/3 of the current membership participate.
  • At least one week's notice should be given via the group's mailing list for meetings or other decision-making processes.
• Email List
  • All members of member co-ops are entitled to join the group's email list.
  • Interested individuals that are not members of co-ops may also join the list, but may be removed from the list at the discretion of the membership.

1. No, no in person meetings stipulated. I can clarify that in the text.
2. Interesting. Perhaps we could combine with this mailing list admin (which I think would be pretty light), and call it "Secretary" or "Agent".
3. I hadn't really considered that, but I would tend toward still distributing via tech-coop since it's good to keep the community informed and I don't expect will be discussing anything super sensitive. Another possibility would be to have a tech-coop-members list or something, but that seems a bit weird to me. How many people from non-coops are on the list anyway? Now I am curious...

I updated the text to add a secretary role and specify remote meetings.

There are A LOT of worker cooperatives in the network. Having 3 coops represented to make a decision does not seem like enough representation to be thorough.

In terms of the roles, a yearly role seems that it will be an opportunity for many to take ownership/leadership rather than 2 term roles or longer.

I see a need for coordinating "haves" and "wants" -- be they co-op members, service providers, computers or free lancers, etc. I personally am new to tech coops, but would like to be part of one that can develop a couple of my current projects ... or start a new one. But I need a bit of coaching on how to do this. Could initiation coaching be a service to provide?

"Any member may be removed..." should add "..and also if they themselves feel like being removed." :) We wouldn't want to coerce anyone into participating heh.