The Nonprofit Democracy Network is a community of practice and peer support network for organizations working to make their organizations – and the broader nonprofit sector – more liberatory and transformative. We want the nonprofit sector to be more effective at creating a just, joyful, and sustainable world. We want our organizations to be living examples of the equitable, caring, and effective communities that we know are possible. And we know that there is a rich field of experimentation and practice of democratic self-governance from which we can learn and which we can help grow by building and sharing with one another.

We launched the network at our inaugural gathering in fall of 2017 (read more about it here). At our second gathering, March 27-29, 2019, we’ll dive into the nuts and bolts of co-creating forms of collective self-governance, taking on topics like compensation, inclusive decision-making, the impact of identity and culture on participation, coordination and accountability, and collective budgeting of time and money.

Participants in the inaugural Nonprofit Democracy Network gathering

Are you part of an organization experimenting with any of these areas? We would love for you to join us! This is an opportunity to learn about the state of the field, connect with fellow practitioners, learn from groups at the forefront of experimentation, and deepen your own organization’s practice.

We’re looking for organizations that are:

• Committed to undoing dynamics of racism, patriarchy, and other forms of structural oppression;
• Playing with more democratic internal structures, regardless of how far advanced; and
• Interested in being part of an ongoing network to deepen this work.

More details:

Format:This three day gathering will include education, conversation, and co-creation around common themes of collective leadership. The first day will focus on frameworks for organizational design and how those relate to systems change, identity, and liberation. On the second day, participants will break into smaller groups to dive deeper into specific issues and growing edges (e.g. staff/board structure, compensation policies). The third day will focus on identifying next steps and how to integrate learnings into your organizations.

Cost: Sliding scale from $400 – $1500 based on organization’s annual operating budget. We want participation in this cohort to be as accessible and community-driven as possible. We also want to justly compensate our facilitators, organizers, and other vendors. (Cost includes venue, facilitation, and meals over three days for 2 org representatives.) More information on cost included in the application form.

Organized and facilitated by: Participants in the 2017 Nonprofit Democracy Network, including staff from Sustainable Economies Law Center, Community Development Project, 350 Seattle, Reflex Design Collective, and more.

For more information and to apply: Fill out this Application by December 5th, and we will get back to you by the end of December.

WHEN
March 27, 2019 at 9am – March 30, 2019
WHERE
Exact venue TBD
Oakland, CA 94612
United States
CONTACT
Chris Tittle · [email protected]

Photo by CIFOR

The post Tools for Collective Self-Governance: A Nonprofit Democracy Network Gathering appeared first on P2P Foundation.

An open and self-organized gathering, this event is structured into 3 modules:

COMMONS, MUNICIPALISM and RIGHTS TO THE CITY and MAPS and SYNERGY meetings, both dedicated to making digital tools for the commoners. The CommonsCamp will end with a workshop dedicated to identify possible follow-ups or next steps. Two exhibitions will be held during the event : “Les communs” (Commons) and “Les voies de la démocratie” (Ways of democracy).

This CommonsCamp will be focussing on actionable knowledge and skills in the field of urban commons. It intends to stimulate the emergence and the realisation of concrete projects and collaboration between the commoners.

For more information, have a look at the program:

Program in FRENCH
Program in ENGLISH

And to the list of contributors/participants

All the information (program, preparation, contributors, actions, budget already online) is accessible here.

There will be interpreting in FR and EN during the plenary meetings. For the other activities, the organisers and facilitator will make sure that everybody will be able to participate (ex.: through whispering interpreting).

Documentation (note taking, photos, audio/video) will be a collective endeavour, everybody being invited to contribute to our collective pool of knowledge. A group of volunteers will assist the harvest and publishing of the content on the web, on a daily basis.

You can already start to contribute by sending messages by editing a pad or by sending requests or materials to:
Mélanie Pinet:  pinet.melanie75 (at) gmail (dot) com   or

FrédéricSultan: fredericsultan (at) gmail (dot) com

Flyer CommonsCamp VF.1-1 shared by P2P Foundation on Scribd

Photo by THEfunkyman

The post CommonsCamp: Grenoble, France August 22 – 26 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

 To help transform our economy over the last few years, Stir to Action has organised national workshop programmes to support communities. Now, we are now planning to launch a year-long programme of practical workshops, 3-day residentials, mentoring, and live crowdfunding to build a new economy that works for everyone.

For this to be successful — and with your support — we are hoping to raise the £12,500 we need to cover programme costs. Pledges on our campaign over the next five weeks will support subsidised workshop places, local workshop venues, programme design, our mentoring network, and provide the resources to engage new communities with these ideas. This is our first programme at this scale, but we aim for it to be an annual programme!

We’re continuing to build our inspiring mentoring network during the campaign — would you like to join?!
Get in touch via [email protected]

Click here to support our crowdfund

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The digital age is seeing an informal convergence within the scholarly communication space: the Natural and Health Sciences, the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, applied and professional fields are all discovering that they have more in common when it comes to the future of research communication than differences. What is needed now is a program that will help us realize the potential of this merger: the development of a ‘Scholarly Commons.’

This program is designed to define and incubate this Commons. We will conduct a series of workshops and exercises to examine the best thinking around the world about what is required for a scholarly communications ecosystem designed for 21st century scholarship. We call this ecosystem the Scholarly Commons. It is not a single platform or tool, but rather the principles, best practices, interfaces and standards that should govern the multi-directional flow of scholarly objects through all phases of the research process from conception to dissemination. The project continues the work of the Commons working group to define what is common across communities and builds upon communications and proposals made at FORCE2015. It will extend this work by hosting a set of workshops dedicated to re-imagining scholarship, discovering, cataloging and mapping the elements we have available now, and producing a set of materials that will empower individuals, communities and organizations around the world who want to bring this vision into reality.

Goal

Articulate a set of high level principles and practical guidelines for the Scholarly Commons that can be endorsed by individuals and organizations around the globe. This program will focus on assessing the degree of convergence of thinking around these issues across communities and stakeholders, mapping current efforts against this thinking, and developing the materials necessary to promote future activity in this space. Implementation and dissemination of the commons itself (as opposed to material necessary to promote its establishment) are out of scope of this working group and will be considered in follow on activities.

Outcomes/Deliverables

1) Two workshops:

a. Workshop 1: The first workshop will be organized to build off the 1K challenge idea proposed by Dr. Sarah Callaghan at FORCE2015: What would research communication look like after a clean start? A common theme that emerges from FORCE meetings is that many of our ideas for reforming scholarly communications spring from 350 years of tradition around scientific dissemination. As shown by the discussion on credit systems at FORCE2015, we often don’t question the basic assumptions behind our current systems which are often simply electronic implementations of old practices that pre-date networks and machine-based access to information. We propose a workshop where we re-imagine scholarly communication starting from scratch in the 21st century as a system that was explicitly designed for machine-based access and networked scholarship, and not simply adapted from the old system.

b. Workshop 2: The second workshop will be devoted to putting the pieces together by comparing the community vision against our current state of “chaotic innovation.” How close are we to realizing this vision? What pieces do we have? Where are we lacking infrastructure, expertise, tools or principles? Where are their significant barriers? What opportunities exist for the community to help fill these gaps and how can we create community buy in around proposed solutions? The goal of this workshop would be to come up with a set of concrete recommendations to anyone working in scholarly communication.

2) Engaging the global community:

As an adjunct to the above workshops, we will support local efforts around the globe to consider the same sets of questions within their local communities. We will especially encourage those outside of the FORCE11 community to consider this exercise and give us their ideas.

3) Building the landscape:

We will work to identify and work with groups around the world who are assembling lists and catalogs of tools and resources currently available for creating the scholarly commons. As part of this work, we will create an interactive visual landscape that can be used for anyone to place themselves, their tool or their organization in this space.

4) Tangible recommendations and guidelines:

We will produce a set of high level recommendations and guiding principles around best practices and standards within the Scholarly Commons. We want anyone coming to FORCE11 or any organization around the world engaged in these types of activities to come away with tangible action items for their constituents, i.e., what should they do now.

More details on this working group can be found here.

Photo by ~Brenda-Starr~

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