The DC Cooperatives Newsletter is a pilot initiative stemming from the DC Cooperative Stakeholders Group newsletter and outreach effort but relaunched with a more sustainable model that ensures the newsletter creators and editors are paid.
The pilot model for a more sustainable newsletter and community outreach works on a subscription basis that offers organizations sponsorship opportunities that help cover the costs of contract writers, editors and designers to assemble a full newsletter. In this configuration, CrowdWork DC will provide the technical training and digital services support necessary to make the online newsletter, and informed public outreach, a reality. Guilded will provide the necessary backend invoicing and payment collection and processing for interfacing with contract Newsletter Editors and Social Media Content Producers.
This model allows organizations within the cooperative development sphere (financiers, developers, training centers etc) to pay a modest yearly fee for the right to have their events and webinars publicized through the DC Cooperatives Newsletter and social media channels as they grow from pooled investments into this shared public resource.
General Updates:
- The pilot paid out $922.32 to 4 content editors over the year to date, and produced some great newsletters to boot! (Newsletter Archive)
- Under the current model, the remaining funds won’t cover any more full newsletter issues. ($152.93)
- Guilded has since moved away from Open Collective for payments and are waiting for what to do with the remaining funds left from the original contributions. ($152.93)
- CrowdWork.Coop and its members will continue IT support and hosting the web domain (dcstakeholders.coop) required to send the newsletter
In Review:
Through this pilot we have wrestled with the inherent tensions of working in “the commons”.
With $1,150 of financial support, we piloted an approach that paid workers a fair market-rate compensation for their labor at $35/hr. The funding we were able to secure allowed us to sufficiently test the sustainability of a model that put the core focus on the needs of workers.
We sought to address pitfalls of volunteerism culture and the reliance on free labor for the production of public goods/services such as community newsletters, including:
- Worker burnout and negative unintended economic/health outcomes
- Underrepresentation of individuals not able to afford volunteering their time
- Inconsistent quality of service
In Retrospect:
While modestly addressing these shortcomings on the worker side, our sponsorship model approach presented its own shortcomings, including:
- Highly transactional – incentivized a sole focus on technical work tasks, not on nurturing community/team relationship building amongst workers and contributors
- Incentivized less work to stretch available funding. This focus on maximum short-term efficiency comes at the expense of quality, growth, and investment into creating a healthy work culture and environment
- Fully at the whims of financial capital for sustainability
- Overemphasizes the exchange of financial capital for labor versus other potential forms of capital (or value) exchange
- This hinders paths to shared ownership: When work can only be done if exchanged for financial capital (when it is not available), societal norms may deem it almost “immoral” to exchange anything less. This removes potential benefits of offering commensurate forms of value other than financial compensation.
- Often if presented with the opportunity, individuals operating in a more horizontal and cooperative manner will choose to decrease their own compensation in exchange for greater social capital, ownership stake, and responsibility.
Alternative Solutions?
A solution that cuts through all of these shortcomings is definitely possible through a more cooperative model if the capacity of interested and engaged prospective members is present. However, that would require a much larger commitment to build out that community “business model” and structure.
Although the initial volunteer-led approach had its many shortcomings, there may be some ways to make sustainability of a public good/service at least a little more viable by offering a more relational and rewarding experience for participants that could hopefully offset the inability of direct financial compensation.
For future consideration, finding ways to create more space to foster a stronger sense of community, shared vision, and belonging could alleviate the tensions surfaced by this pilot. Although the pandemic and capacity constraints were issues from the very beginning, collective awareness and solidarity is largely missing from the DC co-op ecosystem at large for many reasons. The day to day financial precarity and time commitment demands of working steady (or unsteady) jobs, operating a small business, or fulfilling domestic duties introduce even more challenges to long term cooperative ecosystem building and organizing from the ground up. It also makes it that much more critical if this ecosystem could help provide solutions to these challenges.
For the sake of stewarding a low stakes self-sustaining public or community service such as a newsletter, at least maximizing intangible benefits and internal connections between contributors could help reduce the need for financial capital for sustainability other than to cover hard costs.
To promote financial transparency, all payments related to the management of the DC Cooperatives Newsletter will be made accessible and visible at https://opencollective.com/guilded/projects/open-budget-dc-coop-newsletter
Project Managers:
- Ajoke Williams (formerly Guilded)
- Justin Franks (CrowdWork.Coop)
Content Editors:
- Molly Grover
- Sam Stringer
- Camila Tapia-Guilliams
- Maya James
Managing Organizations: CrowdWork.Coop, Guilded
Fiscal Sponsoring Organizations: Capital Impact Partners, Alliance for Regional Cooperation, Beloved Community Incubator
