Summer Working Structure
From Common Energy UVic
This page is for proposals and discussion about the creation of a more transparent and intuitive structure for making decisions that will also make it possible for Common Energy to have the legal existence necessary for raising and managing funds. The Development team is responsible for it, and it is intended to create a space for discussion in advance of Common Ground III.
Contents |
[edit] Items for Discussion on Sunday
[edit] Forming a Society
The rapid success of Common Energy has lead to a number of welcome challenges. Currently, in order to have important things such as legal standing to do things like open a bank account, Common Energy needs to form as a Society under the Society Act of British Columbia, and we need to do this sooner rather than later. In the last hour of the session this Sunday we will be discussing an interim governance structure that will allow us to form a Society in the coming week, but will only cover the month of May until our Governance Retreat from June 1-3 where formal decisions on the constitution, bylaws, and mandate of Common Energy will be decided.
To do this with the least disruption to the way that we organize possible the suggestion coming from the Development team is that we create a society with a temporary three person "Board of Trustees" to fulfill the legal requirements of creating a society without giving them a new authority. Furthermore, these people should not be chosen from people who have been consistently putting in 10+ hours a week to Common Energy and have thus acquired informal authority within the organization. The rational for this is that the purpose of creating this interim Board is not to create a formal centralized power structure. Finally, the by-laws that we adopt can be a slightly modified version of the default by-laws for a society that will constrain the decision making power of the "Board of Trustees" so that before the June retreat the society is able to do little more than have a bank account.
[edit] Common Energy Membership
Societies have memberships. So, how does someone become a member of Common Energy?
- Initially, it probably makes sense to invite everyone that has already participated in the Working Groups and the Teams
- After that, one idea would be to have membership based on volunteer time. So a person could be eligible to become a member after spending five hours volunteering for the organization, for example. And, to this we could add that a number of weeks have to pass. So, it could be five hours of volunteering and three weeks since the first hour began. Finally, at the retreat we may want to develop a couple of basic ground-rules for the organization that people would agree to in signing up to become a member.
[edit] Team Jurisdiction
One issue that has come up several times over the past few months is what is the mandate and jurisdiction of the teams (Research, Coordination, Communication and Development). The most notorious example of uncetainty around making decisions is the Communications meeting where we discussed at length if some members of Common Energy should have business cards, and if the Communication Team had the jurisdiction to make this decision.
Below I have outlined what I believe to be the mandate of the teams. Teams are able to make binding decisions if the decision fits within the mandate. Furthermore, I have added a new section, Common Energy Collective, for decisions that I believe should be discussed and approved by Common Energy as a whole.
There are also suggestions for quorum and meeting protocol.
Research Team Mandate
- Planning the common ground process, including the development of ideas for events.
- Taking advantage for opportunities for more limited research projects as they arise.
Coordination Team Mandate
- Planning and implementing events and conferences.
- Orientation of new members and volunteers.
Communication Team Mandate
- Communication of Common Energy's events and activities to the UVic community and the community at large.
- Deciding whether to publicly endorse the initiatives or events of non-partisan organizations.
Development
- Seeking out and applying for public and private funding.
- Fostering our relationship with other universities.
- Troubleshooting organizational challenges that do not fit well into the team mandates (e.g. with the wiki)
- Creating staff job descriptions.
The Commons - a monthly meeting where members can interact with as much of the group as possible
- Review and discussion of strategic direction
- Feedback on decisions and their execution to inform Team and Working Group operations
- Hiring of staff.
Quorum - To make decisions, at least three members of Common Energy must be present.
Check out the Meetings page for the protocol to have a meeting that can make substantive decisions.
