Organizing Circle policy

This is the policy and documentation for the Organizing Circle.

A policy is a general rule designed to establish common procedures. The expectation is that policies will reduce the need for groups to make one-of decisions, increase transparency of group operations, and be iterative for organizational evolution.

References on policy development:

• This is loosely modeled on https://www.sociocracyforall.org/policy-and-operations/

Annual base operations budget report

Context: 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, https://www.loomio.com/d/NQ3BIMqf/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-february-thursday-1500-utc and https://www.loomio.com/d/h5IKL7Td/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-march-thursday-1500-utc)

Policy: We ask the Financial Working Group to develop a report of our annual expenditures including defining appropriate income and spending categories by the beginning of January. 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.

Documenting a proposal

Context: We need to clearly record decisions made for future reference. A policy decision is a group agreement that is expected to guide repeated future actions. It is particularly challenging to schedule a revisit of policies on agendas and this policy does not cover HOW to do this just that it needs to be done. How this is done is at the discretion of whomever is creating agendas for the group meetings.

Proposal:

• The wiki (this page) will be updated when a policy decision is made inside Organizing Circle.
• The policies will be listed by review date chronologically on this page.

Metrics: There are no stale policy decisions that have not been reviewed in a timely manner within one month of review date

Term: March 2026 (1yr)

Change log:

• March 2025 - Extended context and removed 'how' the revisiting should be done
• original accepted August 2004 (6 month term)

Strategic priorities

Context: During the last two OC meetings, we identified the following points (see https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf)

Proposal: We adopt the topics and calendar proposed in the share drive (https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf) and move it over to a wiki page. For reference the below recap narrative is provided:

Emergent themes in our 30 January 2025 meeting as of the time of writing were: strategic guidance on financing and technical services, onboarding both general social.coop and working group members, setting up an equity assessment and planning group, ongoing improvement of OC documentation and operations, facilitating 'Big Topic' conversation with general social.coop (including: decision making process, and interaction with other instances), and capacity building for self governance and management work of social.coop.

Metrics: Development of policy associated with these topics that everyone feels good about.

How to make a proposal

Context: We need to decide how decisions are formulated, consented to, documented, and reviewed in Organizing Circle. We need this process to be transparent, participatory, and nimble enough to respond to changing needs.

Lookio discussion threads:

• https://www.loomio.com/d/ZDEcAJma/decision-making-organizing-circle

Proposal: Proposals undergo four basic phases:

1. Scoped - proposals will be scoped (identifying the problem) on Organizing Circle calls with possible feedback from Loomio threads. Loomio threads may include the General Recap thread, topical subcircle or topical general threads. The group should strive to collect feedback from everyone affected by the issue. The result of this should be a clear problem statement to provide context for the decision.
2. Formulation - Possible solutions for the scoped problem will primarily be discussed on Organizing Circle calls with possible additional ideas on Loomio thread. Loomio threads may include the General Recap thread, topical subcircle or topical general threads. The group should strive to collect feedback from everyone affected by the issue and possible solutions. The result of this should be a broad list of possible solutions from which a specific proposal can be crafted.
3. Proposal - From the formulation discussion the facilitator (or circle appointed proxy) will craft a proposal Loomio thread that will be posted to the Organizing Circle subgroup for consent. This should provide context, specific text for the proposal, and a term for review; it may also include a metric to measure success of the proposal. Organizing Circle members will be asked to consent to the proposal and the period of consent will include one meeting so that folks can be reminded of open proposals.
4. Documentation - Proposals will be documented on the Organizing Circle Log page on the wiki sorted by review date and linked to their Loomio threads. Where possible reviews will happen on the original Loomio thread. Reviews will go through the same process of the original proposal to ensure the policy is still relevant (scoping - formulation - proposal - documentation).

Description of social.coop member types

Context: In order to move forward with an engagement plan for the community we need to identify and define where we are right now. This will be used to develop introduction material and orientations as well as look to build out our governance model by defining the aspects of membership or ways we connect as members.

Definition: We identified the following types of involvement with social.coop (all engagement is voluntary and at choice):

Contribution	Platform	Subclasses	Prior conditions
Microblogging	Mastodon server	Members may be inactive (account abandoned), invisible (no content generation but reading and possibly sharing via other avenues), and visible (content generation).	Required OpenCollective account, no mandate on monetary contributing (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws)
Financial	OpenCollective	Members may be non-contributing and contributing.	None
Strategic	Loomio	Members may be inactive, invisible, and visible.	Required OpenCollective account, no mandate on contributing. Required social.coop Mastodon account, no mandate on activity status.
Operational	Working groups	Members may be key role holders or general participants of working groups.	Invitation is unique for each working group and unspecified here.
Social	Matrix, regional meetings, reading groups	General catch all that comes and goes based on interest.	Invitation via social connections or announcements on platforms.

Term: March 2026 (1yr)

Change log:

• March 2025: made working groups unspecified to reflect diversity of current operations. https://www.loomio.com/d/h5IKL7Td/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-27-march-thursday-1500-utc
• Original discussion: https://www.loomio.com/d/7fdFsRj2/social-coop-governance-scoping