Sustainability Circle

This entry is currently being written. See Working circles trello card for more

Overview

The Sustainability Circle seeks to ensure the ongoing viability of the collective through fundraising. Achieving funding and establishing favorable associations are necessary to secure both the development of projects such as DisCO and the remuneration of the care hours that members have worked during the start-up phase.

The responsibilities of this circle include pursuing funding opportunities, preparing applications, keeping track of oncoming funding calls and submission deadlines, fostering and nurturing relationships with funders, drafting budgets and timelines, consulting with peers and experts...etc.

Membership

Check the Roles/Availability mapping for updated information on the current stewardship configuration of this circle.

Procedures

The members of the Sustainability Circle keep a list of grants and funding opportunities and a calendar of due dates.
We store all submitted applications in a GDrive folder.
A previous evaluation of the level of affinity, accessibility and difficulty between our collective and the funder might lead in a wiser management of time and effort.

Tools

Most of the discussion and planning within the Sustainability Circle takes place on Loomio. Trello checklists as a methodology are also extremely useful for breaking down tasks and keeping track of what needs to be done. We use GDrive and GDocs to store applications and work on proposals.

Connections

The Sustainability Circle is mainly tied to the Development Circle. Funding leads to or results from relationships with organizations, and so these relationships are part of our development goals and strategy. Secondarily, Sustainability is also connected to Community, especially during the start-up phase. Some of the areas covered by the Sustainability Circle overlap with those areas within Media Peers and Lovework that deal with relationship building and maintenance.

Rhythms

Fundraising is of high priority during the start-up phase - until the DisCO project becomes self-sustaining.
As in every other circle, the steward is expected to check-in briefly on Slack once a week, preferably on Monday. In this little report, the steward will attempt to identify what needs to be pushed during the week ahead, if help from other circles is needed or whether some things ought to be ported over to Loomio, for example.
Besides, the members of the Sustainability circle are expected to check the corresponding Trello board and Loomio threads.

The goals and needs of every circle are also addressed during the bi-weekly sprint.