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Report of first general assembly all for climate
Published on June 15, 2020 by Leen Schelfhout

General assembly All For Climate - REPORT

12 June 2020 - 11 am CEST Brussels

https://allforclimate.earth

https://www.facebook.com/AllForClimate/ (please like the page :-))

Present

Representatives from XR Belgium, XR Austria, Fridays For Future, Parents for Future, Resq DAO, Citizen Garden, Open Collective Brussels, AllForClimate collective and XR Global Support

Agenda

  1. Welcome and check in
  2. General topic: past and present experience
  3. Feedback on OC and AllforClimate + questions
  4. Communication (facebook group, update features)
  5. Make AllForClimate sustainable for the future
  6. Pay somebody as admin?
  7. Make the network sustainable
  8. How often do we meet? What documentation and good practices can we share?

Report 

(Summary of different topics discusses. All comments welcome here )

Managing the collectives and the platform

‘Umbrella’ collectives (e.g. XR Belgium, XR Austria) look for a way to connect the different chapters/sub collectives to their main collective. Although all collectives need to stay autonomous and manage their donations and expenses, some features might be shared (expense policies, approval processes etc.)

Decision making processes. Collectives mention it is hard to either find ways to spend the money (XR Gent) or find ways to efficiently approve expenses (XR Belgium). Others mention a lack of legitimacy of different collectives to act and manage, use the money and make decisions (FFF)

Communication and visibility

External communication

Via the ‘update feature’, collectives can keep their backers updated on their activities. Latest updates across all collectives on allforclimate can be read here: https://allforclimate.earth/updates

It would be nice if collectives also use the AllForClimate facebook page and copy/paste the update on this page as well, with a link to their donation page or website. This creates more visibility. We will look for a way to automate this process and have the updates posted automatically on facebook. Once this feature is developed it can be used by all collectives but not sure if we have developers available to do that. Jennifer (RESQ DAO) might be able to help with developers, Rowan (FFF) might find ppl and/or funds to do this kind of work if we have clarity on what needs to be done. https://www.facebook.com/AllForClimate

Make the landing page more attractive to donors. OC serves as a landing page for people to donate but also to donate to different sub collectives (e.g. legal / training). Do they prefer to make a one-off donation or a recurring one or support a specific fundraiser for a given action? Making that landing page more attractive can attract more money. Work closely with the communication team of a collective about fundraising and make people understand what we do with the money. Communication team can do updates etc. 

Leen started the process of registering AllForClimate as a non-profit on Facebook. This would mean that people or organisations can do a ‘fundraising’ via Facebook, or even a birthday donation directly on the account.

Internal communication within the network + support

A forum or internal communication platform

People share the need for a forum where we can ask questions and share expertise. For now OpenCollective (OC) doesn’t provide that ‘coworking’ feature (like slack etc) and we don’t feel like starting an extra platform we need to check outside of OC.

Solutions for now:

  • Use the conversation tools on OC: for general questions you can use the main page of the all for climate: https://opencollective.com/allforclimate/conversations 
  • Email to [email protected] to ask for help 
  • Email to [email protected]. Unfortunately, emails to this address are not being answered in our experience, this needs action. Leen will look into this.
  • It is important to start our own support system as well e.g. via https://docs.allforclimate.earth 

General assemblies

This was the first general assembly of AllForClimate ASBL. The group feels like meeting 4 times a year and ask collectives to join at least one of these assemblies per year to keep a heartbeat. This requirement will be added when collectives ask to be hosted by A4C.

As an ASBL All4Climate needs to have a board that meets regularly so this assembly can count as a board meeting, and Leen writes and uploads a yearly report. This is convenient for all collectives, because this only needs to be done once for AllForClimate and not individually for each collective.

Making All For Climate ASBL sustainable

At this moment, there is no ‘host fee’ for using the services of All For Climate. Since the initiative is growing, and since the service is useful to many collectives (it removes a lot of administration work for them), we might consider looking into paying Voluntary Living Expense for admin staff which would make AllForClimate more sustainable. Leen is currently spending 8 to 10 hours a week doing admin (wire transfers and payments), follow up and support (answering emails, general support, follow up conversations), onboarding calls with all new collectives, research options etc.

Making the bank transfers automatic would reduce the workload. Besides that, all the work and the tasks that can be done directly by users, saves time. There is a need to make a list of the tasks and see which ones can be automated. It would be great to have a feature that allows people to donate by PayPal, that would reduce workload.

Questions

Do we want to create a paid position for someone to work one day a week doing the admin for AllForClimate?And pay a VLE (voluntary living expense).

Three concerns raised

  • Example problem for Belgium : we don’t have a nationally agreed VLE standard. We have a proposition that still needs to go through the national gathering of XR Belgium.1250 euro net monthly full time salary = 2500 gross monthly full time salary. So to get someone working one day a week it would be about 600 a month gross, 300 net.
  • Cultural difference: paying a commission and paying someone is normal in the UK and US, but not in continental Europe.
  • We don’t want collectives to raise money to pay someone to do the admin. Some collectives are very very small, we above all want them to exist, not to have financial issues.

Reasons PRO

  • It is not sustainable to have this work only on the shoulders of volunteers.
  • Why do we think it is ok to make a profit from producing e.g. plastic but not from this kind of work? In this case, paying someone to do this work does not even mean ‘profit’, it really is sustaining a good initiative and paying living expenses.

Different options to make this happen (short brainstorm):

  • Have collectives pay 1 to 3% of the contributions they receive as a commission to pay someone (Leen who is already doing the work)?
  • Collectives could contribute in different ways, financially or otherwise, e.g. develop features to automate tasks, fundraise, community manager, etc. 
  • They could also not pay anything for the first few months until they raised some funds for themselves first.

Outcome

We do not have enough representatives in this meeting to take a decision. We will start a poll, listing different options, and send it out to different collectives. Then make a decision.