Seeking Volunteers to Run Social.Coop

Call for volunteers — All Working Groups (WGs) + the Organizing Circle of Social.Coop 

• Who should volunteer? Social.coop is sometimes called a “do-ocracy.” We need people with a spirit of generosity for using their gifts. If you have willingness to show up and get the job done, cooperatively, please check us out — “hang out,” as you are able, on a governance team and see if you find a fit for contributing to this work. Special skills are welcome in tech, finance, legal, moderation, organizing hackathons, and communication. 

• Why volunteer with Social.Coop? It is fun to meet together with cool people who care about cooperative connections. We create unique spaces to relate here. We are the ones creating “The Democratic Corner of the Internet.” As co-founder @Nathan Schneider has pointed out, nearly everywhere else on the Internet is autocratically run. You can join the cooperative governance of a social media site that you co-own! So cool! 

• Indicate your interest or any further questions you may have in the comments of this Loomio thread and members of the appropriate working group will help bring you onboard. You are welcome to be a visitor to a meeting. More details are below and on our Wiki. We have a volunteer interest form that you can fill out here. (Fixed link to form, @ansate, 4:34p Pacific Nov 3)

• Tech Working Group welcomes new volunteers! We are responsible for maintaining hosted services like Mastodon and our wiki, and developing and maintaining tools, such as our registration form, and our single sign-on platform. We meet for an hour every two weeks, currently on Wednesdays at 18 UTC (6pm), and we hope that working group members will be able to make the majority of those meetings. We invite Social.coop members with a variety of skills and backgrounds to join us, including folks who don’t identify themselves as traditional “techies” — there’s a variety of research, organising, and communications work that needs to be done. We aim to provide a supportive environment for folks who would like to develop their skills in any of these areas. Like other working groups, monetary stipends (aka honorariums) are available for working group participants.

• Organizing Circle meets twice a month on Thursdays for 1 hour at 15 UTC (3pm), with the first Thursday for business and policy decision-making and the third Thursday as a co-working session. Currently there are openings for 3 general members, in addition to members in the other Working Groups. The OC makes all financial decisions for the cooperative. OC is a somewhat like a "board of trustees," as defined in our bylaws. (Some OC members find inspiration in Sociocracy For All and other forms of dynamic governance.)

• Finance Working Group develops annual spending and budgeting reports and issues reimbursements to cover expenses. The financial operations of Social.Coop are public via Open Collective, where all members are asked to contribute. The FWG runs the Community Contributions participatory budgeting effort. Most work is asynchronous. It currently meets irregularly, scheduling as members are available. Members are currently preparing the 2027 annual budget and reviewing the 2026 budget. We need new members!

• Legal Working Group mitigates legal risk to our volunteers and organization, and it will start meeting in early 2027 (or late 2026). 

• Community Working Group is open to new members. We cover the moderation of the main server, and we have a little breathing space right now. If you are interested in any of the other working groups, they may need you more! If we had more members, we would probably:

  • set up a moderation rotation for Bonfire (it has a low volume, but it would be good to have it officially covered)

  • be more active on Loomio; both moderating, and taking part in discussions on behalf of CWG.

  The time commitment of CWG members is a 1-hour meeting, once a month (currently 3rd Fridays at 17 UTC (5pm), but it's always up for discussion by the WG members).
  Additionally, we would like members to be active on Zulip, checking in at least every week, and participating in discussions as it makes sense. This effort probably takes another hour per month. 

  It is not mandatory to take a moderation shift as part of the CWG - there are other ways to contribute, such as helping to run meetings, participating in working sessions, posting to Loomio, etc. We would like to host more activities, and this is something that could be made possible by new volunteers. If you have an idea for a social.coop wide activity that you want to make happen, CWG is the right place for you!