# Governance Draft

### Preamble
The Inclusive Naming Initiative (INI) was formed to accelerate the consistent, identification and replacement of non-inclusive terms used in IT.
The premise :

1. Learnings and insights from organizations, companies , projects and standards bodies, who have already embarked on this journey to help those who are just starting.
2. Even those who are well on their way to making these language changes have open questions and issues that others in the Inclusive naming community have addressed
3. Open questions that no one has been able to address, are more likely to be answered by diverse groups working on the question together than any one individual company or project.
4. Consistency requires collaboration.
The challenge of the inclusive naming working group is to create a collaboration model with the tools and governance to strikes the right balance between structure and openness to help the community achieve our collective goals

An effective collaboration model optimizes the time participants invest in value-added activities to achieve desired outcomes.

A governance structure establishes the principles, policies, resources and decision criteria needed to sustain and protect the interests of the collaboration.

A governance structure enables smooth progress, clarity of priorities, a funding model to support INI needs, and productive sustainable engagement of participants.

### Organizational Structure
INI has already spontaneously organized into workstreams:
* ws-admin
* ws-community-and-tooling
* ws-company
* ws-language
* ws-marketing
* ws-open-source
* ws-standards
each with their own leads and participants.

The workstream leads meet together regularly to coordinate and collaborate. De facto the governance of the INI consists of the workstreams and the workstream leads group providing coordination.

The workstreams lead group should evolve to being the Board of the INI project, retaining its representation of each workstream. The representative from each workstream to the board should be by default the lead for that workstream. Each workstream may elect to send a representative who is not the workstream lead at their discretion.

The Board may also choose to extend itself with representatives for other constituencies, for example:
1. Some number (1 or 2?) representatives elected among companies providing substantial material support, whether financial, human resources, or significant workproduct.
2. Some number (1 or 2?) representatives elected among standards bodies that have made a substantial commitment to collaboration with INI.

The Board may also choose to appoint non-voting advisors as it sees fit.

Board meetings should be default public, with the understanding that the Board may at times need to meet privately to discuss more sensitive matters.

The purpose of the Board is to facilitate collaboration and support of the INI community. It is not to direct the INI community. As such it may:
1. Facilitate collaboration
2. Mediate disputes
3. Raise funds to support the INIs needs

### Funding Model

Some activities require funding. Examples include:
1. Holding and protecting trademarks
2. Funding services provided by vendors to INI such as:
* network domain registration and other technical infrastructure
* PR services
* Program management services
* Events

The Board should seek first and foremost to seek donations of services where possible. Examples thus far include the gracious donation of [1password](https://github.com/1Password/1password-teams-open-source/pull/312). Donations should be publicly acknowledge in a manner to be decided by the board.

Some needs may best be met by pooling of money from supporting organizations and individuals. For those purposes, the Board should facilitate means to receive and hold funds for those purposes, bearing in mind the impact of mechanics of receipt of funds on the ability of donors to donate. Examples: companies need to be able to engage at the level of POs, individuals more likely at the level of credit cards, etc. Donations should be publicly acknowledge in a manner to be decided by the board.

Ideally, funding should be kept targeted and lean.