What do you want to know about FairShares?

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the FairShares Model Enterprise. This is a public group so you can use the 'Invite' button to invite your colleagues into this group.

We will be e-mailing people soon so you may see more joiners over the next few weeks.

Do you have any initial questions you would like to ask?

Best wishes
Rory

Hello, could some one explain to me what the different "Fairshares Levels" are, please? I stumbled upon them looking at the Fairshares diagnostics tools. I don´t know if our coop is developed enough to make use of the diagnostic tools, does this have to do with the levels? http://www.fairshares.coop/diagnostics/ Also, several links on the page seem to be outdated, like the Social Enterprise Survey.

Eric,

The Levels reflect the level of engagement with FairShares IP.

Here is a description of the three levels:

http://www.fairshares.coop/wiki/index.php?title=FairShares_Brand#Levels_of_Alignment

Basically - Level 1 is verbal support, Level 2 is practice through a bespoke approach, and Level 3 is the proactive use of FairShares IP to implement the ideas.

The diagnostic tools help you work through the levels and they are all published in 'The Case for FairShares' (this is Part 2 of the book). Here's a link to the PDF of the book.

http://shura.shu.ac.uk/10198/

The 'outdated link's are not actually outdated - it is a problem with the host site for the surveys. They keep deactivating the surveys even though the 'end date' is set to 31/12/2018. For this reason, we're moving them all to Google Forms for V3.0 where they will be wholly under our control. However, I don't expect that process to be complete until June 2017. I will - for now - go through the existing surveys and reset the end dates so you can use them if you wish.

Personally, I prefer the paper-based versions - they are more useful for learning (even if less useful for research) and these are what I use in teaching at the university. Here is a link to the paper based versions (i.e. what is published in the book).

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9hhbt29fpbsnono/AAAZIuvqHXRKhB15-MboFbEYa?dl=0

Hope that answers all your questions.

Best
Rory

All online versions of the surveys (FairShares Diagnostics) are now operational again...

All the best
Rory

Thanks a lot for sharing these with me, Rory. I can see why the paper versions are better for teaching. Does Fairshares have any methods for these processes in the development of a Fairshares coop to take place through concensus? That's a bit of a challenge I am wrestling with right now. But I also understand if you don't have anything specific regarding that. Have you familiarized yourself with Sociocracy/Dynamic Governance, relatively, ways to integrate it with Fairshares?

Anyways, I will have a jolly old time reading the book and going throught the diagnostics materials, thanks a lot.

Cheers,
Eric

Eric,

I've written papers on the use of OPERA (for decision-making) - you can download a conference version here: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/12929/

On Sociocracy/Dynamic Governance - one of the early adopters built the commitment into their consitution (but this is not the default). If you want to get in touch, his email is [email protected]. I can share the Articles of Association he created, but he echewed full co-operative democracy and gave the founders most power in the early life of the organisation. There is a book chapter about to be published about it which you can download from:

http://sites.google.com/view/roryridleyduff/university/research

It is the first one in the list of publications - just click the title to obtain a downloadable PDF.

Best wishes
Rory