2019-05-29 Toronto Workers Co-op: Business Planning

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Time: Wed May 29 @ 18:00 - 20:00 EDT
Location: OCAD 2nd Floor Cafeteria
Attending:

• dc (cultivator)
• udit
• benedict
• yurko
• garry

Notetaker:

• dc

Agenda

• Discussion: Review business plan and Y1 strategic/financial plan. Key points: 4. Membership - Member classes - Member fees - Relationship between employee and member, founding members 5. Projects: Pricing and Leads - Leads and opportunities - Project pricing - Discuss alongside “first project” examples: Aether; Fee-for-service Cloud; Consulting (Patcon’s) 6. Compensation - Relationship of “billable” and “non-billable” work and compensation - Wage (Living Wage, Guaranteed Income) 7. Financal Plan - Y1 operating costs - Projected income (profit-loss) statement 8. Strategic Plan (lite) 9. Review/walkthrough Articles of Incorporation

Notes

4. Membership

• Member classes

• Member fees

  • [name=patcon] money vs time for buy-in
    • no desire to block on one-time or recurring fees, but only understanding it as means to create buy-in/ownership (initially), and healthy membership atrophy (recurring).
    • interested in finding other ways to guage/build the above things in long term. others seeem to agree.
    • Feel there are other, more aligned metrics to do that.
    • Feel inclined to set 0$ for all fees, and lean on some other metric.
    • Curious about using time as both buy-in metric, and yearly membership check-in.
    • Unsure if min % or static hours is best.
    • Time-tracking is category-specific, and knows “internal” vs “client-billable”
    • I feel our membership entry/renewal metric could be time-centric and category-specific.
    • Encourages time-tracking from the first stages of membership convos.
    • Mature and failed co-ops flagged time-tracking as very important step in growth.
    • building this capacity as part of member onboarding feels significant: “we don’t want your money, but we want commitments to be legible to one another”
    • Traditional co-ops might not have a way to participate in internals before memberizing.
    • Our open source work and open resources mean that folks can contribute time before memberizing or even contracting.
    • Disclosure: I am prone to anti-patterns through overestimation of others’ and underestimation of my own time commitments. But there are more systemic perks we’ve heard from other orgs.

• Relationship between employee and member, founding members

  • DC: From Fourth Pig, this can be more straightforward than thought. Recommend ALL sign articles of incorporation b/c benefits without obligations, but just the subset who indicated interest sign on as Directors of the Board.

• Consensed on single class of membership

• Approved with no blocks a $0 membership fee

• Approved proposal for all involved to sign as a Founding Member but not as Initial Directors (unless they want to)

5. Projects: Pricing and Leads

• Leads and opportunities
• Project pricing
• Discuss alongside “first project” examples: Aether; Fee-for-service Cloud; Consulting (Patcon’s); Udit

Start with three pitches:

1. Aether (general sense of fit)

• hourly rate are we okay with it?
• some capcity, we are on the learning side (understood and okay with that)

2. Patcon’s: Consult (less, but sense that it fits)

• consultation; maybe moves into implementation (unclear)
• Is it okay if projects are individual?
• Prioritizing repeat and ongoing leads
• timeline: immediate, lead generation
• budget: unknown

3. Udit’s (less clear but sense)

• (unprepared)
• lead through other employer involved in much larger set of strategy and development
  • sub outcomes: technologies they want to build: website; design deliverables
• coop as vendor
• timeline: project mid-2020; implementation late-2020
• budget: unknown (bit potential range)

Opening to discussion:

• Member involvement (stronger?)
  • no issue or hard no with people running individual projects through the co-op
  • build a texture/develop shape for involvement of multiple members important for now
• Are there things people don’t want to work on?
  • e.g.: dc “no military contractors”
  • Develop a priority matrix as part of our strategic
• #todo Leads (over time):
  • develop pitch template
  • portfolio/bios
  • initial phase priority matrix
  • next step on Aether Pitch: async develpo project back
• Project Pricing
  • Hourly? Project rates?
• Reduction/discount for “neighbours”
• Retainer model (up to hours or above # at a rate)
• Clear deliverables and scope (project management!!)
• Our internal calculations?
  • hourly
  • not seperate per role/hourly rate
  • but some “roles” e.g., admin, copywriting
  • (do we reveal an hourly rate that we bill out?)
• In lead discussions: we need to be armed with some “quick math”:
  • one-pager near term important
  • udit: bottom-up (hours); top-down (client; spend;)
• #todo Pricing next steps:
  • collect/share some examples
  • task/rate sheet midterm goal
  • pricing math

6. Compensation

• Relationship of “billable” and “non-billable” work and compensation
• Wage (Living Wage, Guaranteed Income)
• Preliminary discussion but needs more, in concert with project

7. Financal Plan

• Y1 operating costs
• Projected income (profit-loss) statement
• Skipped due to lack of time

8. Strategic Plan (lite)

• Skipped in interest of time

9. Review/walkthrough Articles of Incorporation

• Had a ceremonial signing, photographed!

Follow Up

Actionable Items

• ino-wg: Migrate Loomio to hypha.coop
• all: collect examples for handbook toolchain discussion
• ben: next step on Aether Pitch: async develop project back
• biz-wg Leads next steps (over time):
  • develop pitch template
  • portfolio/bios
  • initial phase priority matrix
• ino-wg Pricing next steps:
  • collect/share some examples
  • task/rate sheet midterm goal
  • pricing math

Upcoming Discussions

• Review Y1 strategic/financial plan:
  • Compensation
    • Relationship of “billable” and “non-billable” work and compensation
    • Wage (Living Wage, Guaranteed Income)
  • Financal Plan
    • Y1 operating costs
    • Projected income (profit-loss) statement
  • Strategic Plan (lite)
• Design jamming continues
• Check-in on Transition of Infrastructure (and Cleanup)
  • decision: using shortlinks in official way
• Check-in dc’s research/study proposal
• Finances software

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