Sustainability Circle

Overview

The Sustainability Circle seeks to ensure the ongoing viability of the collective through funding. Both financing and favorable associations with funders are crucial to secure the collective's legal structure development (DisCO) and the remuneration of the care hours 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 and potential external team members, drafting budgets and timelines, consulting with peers and experts, etc.

Membership

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

Procedures

• The members of the Sustainability Circle must 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 result in a more efficient management of time and effort.

Tools

Most of the discussion and planning within the Sustainability Circle takes place on Loomio. Trello checklists also make an extremely useful methodology 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 the Community Circle, especially during the start-up phase. Some of the areas covered by the Sustainability Circle overlap with those areas within the Media Peers Circle and the Love Circle 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.
Furthermore, the members of the Sustainability circle are expected to check the corresponding Trello board and Loomio threads on a weekly basis.

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