What is the purpose of this session?
- sharing on first data gathered
- validation of complete dashboard and agreement on a process to fill it every quarter / year (link to discussion on integration with BI tool) + on lead to follow the process + link with global hangout (recurring item every quarter to review global performance ?)
- form to send to users every year with both “improvements” and questions about them to measure our promised impact ? (with which tool ? google form ? Survey monkey ? …) When to send it ? (ex: New year)
- first draft of the global narrative / global fundraising document, how we explain our vision, the problems we identify, the solution we build, the impact we expect, etc.
- first list of Foundations
What outcomes/deliverables do we want?
Who is facilitating? Lynne
Who is scribing? Gen
Summary of decisions:
- Develop fundraising strategy
Actions:
- Nick to set up zoom to review and action the list below at ‘2. Brainstorming session on tools for funding applications’
Detailed notes:
Lynne’s proposed agenda:
- Begin with Theory of Change format
- Brainstorming session on tools for funding applications - decks, stats, etc.
- To do list on this basis
1. Begin with Theory of Change format
Starting from the bottom - problem, inputs, activities
Then vision/aims
Finally mechanisms of change - how to get there
- Vision/aims:
- Mycelium - decentralized, networked distribution (disagreement on whether this is purely a mechanism of realizing the vision, or part of the vision itself)
- Food sovereignty and tech sorereignty - common ownership, a rich commons
- Community empowerment - people empowered to create food systems they believe in
- Viable farming systems - farmers who can do good for the world and not be in poverty
- Nobody manipulated by the system - access to the truth about food
- A healthy planet
- Vibrant local economies
- Autonomy and freedom in work, self-determination
- A world where it’s easy for people to change the system
------accountability line-------
- Mechanisms of change:
- Empowered community food enterprise
- Pollination - dissemination of these models
- A living example of an alternative way of organizing and working
- Harvesting/gathering knowledge and practice - sharing and making this accessible
- Narrative+evidence+inspiration building - being able to share the vision
- Connecting across sectors, organizations
- Curating information for education
- Enabling efficient uptake of diverse models through software
- Co-construction and co-funding of tools and knowledge
- Connecting food sovereignty to technology sovereignty - demonstrating that technology is political
- Building interoperable tools
- Ego journey, personal growth - channeling collective spirit
- Continuous improvement around learning how to learn - connecting across silos
- Building a commons
- Process of software development - applying agile software development to everything we do
- Activities:
- Software development
- Product development
- Community development - collective communication, ongoing process development
- Training
- Consultancy - problem-solving
- Research - sector research, R&D, student links
- Networking - connecting people
- Facilitating learning community, learning exchange - online and offline
- Developing and experimenting with social economy business models
- Fundraising
- Input:
- Time, energy, passion, love
- Rails 3 platform
- Knowledge and experience, stories
- Network of food systems, activists, developers
- Community
- Collective intelligence - engaging ourselves and others as a whole person - methodologies, skills
- The internet - “we’re going to get it back!”
- Expertise
- in software
- in food systems, policy, research, agricultural economics
- in building community
- in a new way of working
- Skills - listening, mentoring, resilience design
- Funding
- Bad-ass dev ops and sys admin
- Connection to our communities
- Values - open source, non-profit, etc.
- Brand
- Reputation/recognition (not always good!)
- “A successful implementation of biomimicry” - mycelium
- A first functional implementation of a platform coop
- Spirit
- Problem:
- Concentration / centralization of power - lack of agency to change the system - it’s hard
- Lack of cooperation to drive change - disconnection between activists - ego
- Food system decisionmaking directed by profit - leading to waste, other negative externalities
- Climate change / eco-apocalypse
- Lack of transparency
- Disconnection between producers/eaters/people
- Low quality food - obesity, disease
- Low access to quality food
- Lack of food education
Gen asks if there’s a tension between tackling both centralization of power and disconnection of activists
Consensus that these are different things: we want increased coordination of activists and decreased centralization of power
2. Brainstorming session on tools for funding applications
What do we need:
- A list of funders
- A clear process*
- A global (elevator) pitch
- Suggest instance-level pitches that draw on the global level - unify and utilize
- A global narrative - text chunks that can be reused across applications (global/instance)
- Time/energy/resources to focus on global fundraising
- A global entity to receive funds? Or maybe wait until we have the funding - no need for organizational overheads in the meantime
- Automated repository of up-to-date data
- Outcomes
- Social return-on-investment
- Ecological value
- Impact measurements
- Pitchdeck
- Communications design
- Photos
- Videos
- Inforgraphics - standard style
- Graphic charter
- Shared and editable
*Process:
- Information flow
- Community of practice - upskilling of instances
Strategy:
- Be strategic about use of time/effort
- Engage consultants for big/institutional funds
- And networking for smaller/private funds
- Be strategic about where the money is (e.g. Kirsten and Serenity maybe focus on writing applications for funding outside of Aus)
- Partnership with a research institution (e.g. Katuma)
- Partnership with (big) users
3. To do list on this basis
- Pitchdeck
- Text for global site
- Prioritize establishing the automated repository of up-to-date data - metabase
- Find someone who can do graphics - open designers?