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title: OCF Monthly Community Forum - Dec 2021

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# OCF Monthly Community Forum - Dec 2021

## Agenda
**Intro/Check-In**
*[Who are you? Where are you from? What initiative are you with? What brought you to the forum?]*
* Grace - Appalachian Land Study - West Virgina - Bringing with her residents who live in the region and looking forward to listening and learning from others
* Ben - Minneapolis Northside Mutual Aid - Minneapolis - Supporting camp of unhoused people and seeking to be resident led. Using OC to facilitate shared power and trasparency in the project. Also works in Agaric web development cooperative which is building web tools for cooperative organizing.
* Nina - Ridgewood Community Garden - Ridgewood - Also works for fiscal sponsor (Fractured Atlas). Interested in chatting with other people who are creating better structures to support collective projects and cooperative economies. Bringing with her to the meeting her fellow gardeners as well as friends and colleagues who are building better world for artists, creators, and others.
* Sebastian - Proofing Future - Stuttgart - Running a fiscal host and collective as a consultancy which is deeply informed by communities they have encountered on Open Collective. Creates campaign and mobilizing events on the platform which they are learning from.
* Joe - Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective (SPEC) - Empower individual to learn skills and knowledge to locate work and also contribute to projects serving community. Building STEM and diversifying technical skills. Have started building relationships with other collectives hosted by OCF and providing contributors to their work. Available for collaborative fundraising campaigns which enable other collectives to hire contributors from SPEC.
* Mike - Open Collective Foundation - Chicago - Program Manager and Coordinator of two hosted collectives (Cooperation for Liberation Study & Working Group + The Kola Nut Collaborative). Always loves to experiment and experience the collaborative possibilities of OCF. Joining OCF full time in January. Bringing Kola Nut and Coop 4 Lib members to the meeting.
* Reshama - Data Umbrella - Harlem - Community for underrepresented persons in data science. Comes to the meeting to connect and ask important administrative questions.
* Nathan - Open Collective Foundation - Grand Rapids/Ridgewood - Joins the meeting to hear what initiatives are doing and what their needs are. Bringing OCF staff with him to the meeting since they are unavailable due to scheduling.
* Lori - Civic Hacker Network - Redding - Open Collective represents a huge opportunity for the Network and lots of other people. Seeking to learn ways to more fully participate within OCF and with other collectives. Bringing other people who believes problems are solvable and that they have they ability to solve them.
* Tim - Portland - Working on various cooperative/collective projects, especially oriented to housing and homelessness reponse. Visit [website](https://www.tmccormick.org)
* Lindsay - Appalachian Land Study 

**Review of [new updates](https://opencollective.com/foundation/updates) from OCF**
* Check out [Money Health Collective](https://moneyhealthcollective.org/) which is hosting an innovative educational/dialogue-based project which enables individuals to unpack their own money stories
* Lori: Should projects be engaging OCF for contract signings (such as speaker releases)? Nathan said, "Yes. We want to be involved."
* Reshama: Is there a template for contracts? Nathan said, "No. We do not." Also asked about HelloWorks as source for templates.
* Mike: Reach out to us and we may be able to engage the lawyer in structuring or developing contracts.
* Reshama: Do we need contracts for our volunteers? Nathan said, "No. Not generally." Mike reminded others that we have not asked any of our mutual aid initiatives to sign contracts with their volunteers.
* Reshama: Wants to know more about the health insurance plans for those employed through OCF offering. Nathan offered more general feedback, but issue was related to activation which has not occurred. Mike mentioned that 2022 activation was not prepared yet.
* Lori: Privacy agreements for volunteers might be recommended if they are handling PII.
* Joe: Paid contributors with SPEC who need to sign an NDA would need to be part-time employees according to hiring rules in CA which created some complications with recent SPEC process.
* Joe: SPEC seeking to do marketing and podcasting in the near future. Would like to be put in touch with anyone who is designing our podcast so that they can be connected with a SPEC contributor who is interested in audio engineering.
* Mike: Robin Bean Crane and Ebony Gustave are the developers of the Cooperative Journal podcast and may be able to provide feedback on their podcast workflow/process. They are also doing some storytelling work around projects hosted by OCF.
* Reshama: Seeking an app developer and a website designer.
* Mike: Advised on an internal design team being built out who might be able to source or support requests in the future. Nina B. offered to support with advice on marketing and may also be able to connect to artist networks in Fractured Atlas. Ben advise that [Agaric Coop](https://agaric.coop) also does web development and design.
* Joe: SPEC has three contributors who might be able to support with different aspects of web development, design, or user experience.

**Agile Check-Ins (What are your blockers?)**
* Sebastian: Thinks there should be more webhooks provided on the platform beyond Twitter since this is a helpful tool to disseminate the platform and shed more light on the projects hosted here.
* Nathan: Advised that platform is entirely open source and anyone can submit a feature request for the platform via [GitHub](https://github.com/opencollective). Suggested that Sebastian submit one there.
* Reshama: Advised that it would be nice if we could pause or stop the cards as project admins. Would like to be able to turn off the cards directly rather than putting in a request and waiting for admin team to do it.
* Nathan: Advised on transition to another virtual card provider.
* Mike: Advised that we are shifting from Privacy to Stripe which will open up several new features.
* Ben: Did not get a response when a request to open a virtual card is submitted. Nathan offered to follow-up.
* Sebastian: Budgets being raised in events through tickets and wants to direct them to fiscal host campaign which needs to be manually moved by Support.
* Nathan: Advised that there is an [open issue on GitHub](https://github.com/opencollective/opencollective/issues/3981) where Sebastian can comment
* Joe: Biggest blocker from SPEC is the need for additional support on project management, leadership, and strategic planning to manage project finances and burn rate which will help them achieve financial stability. Highlighted stock donation he has provided to SPEC to help give the project a runway as partnerships develop. May be giving another donation in the future to highlight this option for other projects. Looking for help organizing the strategic funding plan and help support other organizations with hiring or staffing options.
* Mike: Highlighted the possibility of cross-staff collaboration between projects who might want to hire someone, but may not be able to support either full-time or even a robust part-time role.
* Nathan: Thinks it is possible and provided the example of North Chicago warehouse leasing among different groups. We just move line items within the OCF budget.
* Joe: SPEC is incubating an organization which rehabbing camper vans as carbon neutral recreation and sustainable housing. May need a warehouse in the future and seeking to build research around the project.

**Offers and Needs Market**
* No space for OANM this week.

**Closing**
* Ended forum