Do you want feedback on the aim you’ve written to invite to your founding meeting?
Post it here and you’ll get feedback!
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Thanks for the space! I just asked my group to attend the first founding meeting by mail and wrote this aim (in spanish):
“Promote a collaborative work model through the creation of a cooperative platform that allows us to mutualize the costs of professional support and organize ourselves remotely and independently.”
I read that the first part of the sentence usually refers to the mission and the second to the purpose, so ‘thought’ serves as a bridge for both parts. What do you all think? Concrete enough? 
I agree, it does combine both. I do think it’s clear enough if “cooperative platform to mutualize costs of professional support” is concrete in people’s minds. Depends on how well people are versed in it I guess.
Good luck!!
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I hope so. Before calling the meeting I had one-on-one sessions to present a formal proposal of what that means (for me). I think it may be a good step-zero (to get aligned to the first meeting). Thanks!
Yes, I agree! The more intentional the beginning can be, the better!
Some local friends squatted an abandoned lot in Toledo, and over the course of several years they turned it into a garden called the Collingwood Garden. They’ve been wanting to more intentionally organize the folks who maintain and utilize that space. We had the first of the WDWD meetings on February 22nd: the meeting went well, but we didn’t have a statement of our aims written out at that meeting so we did proposal shaping around the aim and consented to have one of our members synthesize that work into a draft for review at the second meeting (which is going to happen soon).
Here’s their current draft, and we would all be happy for some feedback:
Vision: We envision a world powered by mutual aid wherein humans and nature thrive symbiotically.
Mission: Our mission is to promote the vitality of the Collingwood Garden as a biodiverse food forest and space for community engagement, intertwined with a larger movement toward a society wherein people have equal access to collective decision-making power and abundant resources.
Aims:
- Empower people to work cooperatively to nurture a food forest with a biodiverse ecosystem and an abundant harvest of healthy food for free enjoyment by all.
- Maintain the garden as a space to gather for education, political action, play, & to hold space for communication and conflict engagement practices.
- Organize horizontally.
- Display art that reflects our vision for a new world.
- Allow space for people to return their organic waste to the land through composting.
- Create a model space that is replicable in other communities.
- Intertwine our aims and practices with the work of other anarchist projects with shared values, such as Food Not Bombs Toledo.
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My only feedback would be to condense/cluster the aims down a little. If you don’t go with one overarching aim and make a list instead, at least let it be a short list (that can then translate directly into the department circle’s aims).
Also, organizing horizonally is a how, not a what. And it its an aim, I’d name what lies underneath - that could be “organizing an inclusive space for members”… is there more about the “service” or experience for members it wants to provide?
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Hello all! I am pretty new to sociocracy, but have been taken under the wing of a few Sociocracy enthusiasts (and SOFA employees!) who are helping some of the community groups I have worked with for a long time get our collective sh*t together.
I am currently trying to re-work the mission and aims for our local Food Not Bombs chapter. One thing I am specifically struggling with is what exactly should go in the mission versus the aims. I get the idea generally, but feel a bit stumped! Seeking feedback on that, and any other constructive criticism. Really looking forward to seeing what folks have to say!
Our mission is to challenge the systems that allow people to go hungry while food rots in landfills. We do this by cooking and serving vegetarian meals with food rescued from the waste stream or grown and donated by the community. We also engage in collaboration with other groups that are fighting for collective liberation through mutual aid.
Aims:
To create abundant access to healthy food for our neighbors and ourselves by serving free meals without barriers such as money or documentation.
To rescue food from the waste stream by any means available, and create long term collective food security by engaging the community in growing our own food.
To work symbiotically with other groups and community projects that support liberation from capitalism and other modes of oppression.
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Hey there, and welcome @Monika419!
The mission and the aims look clear and compelling to me.
The only on thing I want to highlight is that
can be challenging as an aim. It’s hard to determine whether one is doing it because “working symbiotically” is very relative. Another aspect of collaboration as an aim is that, while collaboration of course is great, it’s not inherently clear what you are collaboration for. Collaboration in itself isn’t a raison dêtre (I assume?), it’s a means to an end. So that’s the end that you’re talking about here? Is it to build/strengthen the liberation and anti-oppression movement?
Do the great-auntie test: if you tell someone who’s not in the co-creation bubble about your aims, will they understand it? Giving access to food - understood! Rescuing food - understood! Working symbiotically - unclear.
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We’ll have our founders meeting some time in April, so i thought i’d run this by y’all now to see if i understand how to create an aim. Thanks!
“We want to maintain a ‘brick and mortar’ natural food store by buying food in bulk and repackaging it. We want to maintain it as a egalitarian co-op, where the community involved is respected, and feels proud of their involvement.”
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I think that looks good!
Do you know where it will be? That can be a source of tension so better define that.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll add that caveat when i present this to the others.
Ted Millich
My big idea
Charlottesville, Virginia
Is this too complicated for an aim:
- To source locally and sustainably produced food products that reflect the cultural diversity of our community.
- To educate and empower our members and customers to make informed and ethical food choices.
- To promote food access and affordability through our cooperative business model.
- To minimize our environmental impact through sustainable practices.
- To operate democratically, with member-owners having an equal say in decision-making processes.
Aim:
“Kicking off the process of creating an intentional community in France or Italy. The community will be run sociocratically and be based on the values of agroecology and solidarity.
The group (a.k.a. the core founding group for the future community) will work on making significant progress in the next six months on three fronts: (a) start searching for potential places, (b) write all the founding agreements (vision/mission/aims, key policies such as economy/financing, membership process etc…) and (c) recruiting new potential community members”
The invitation goes to friends who share similar values, my main concern is that the aim at the moment is quite daunting(!!!).
Thanks for your feedbacks!
Hey there
Will you update it when the group is “kicked off”? How will you know it’s “kicked off”?
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I guess if we manage to form a group of at least 3 people working for 6 months on (a),(b),(c)…that’s kicked off! Does it sound all right as a measure?
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As we have been developing our Mission circle aim, it wasn’t clear in MVOS book how to approach this. We have a mission “We create and foster patters for generative local communities”. As we think of the mission circle as a governance group, We settled on this aim for the general circle: “We ensure that the Generative Local Community Institute is kept true to the mission of creating and fostering patterns for generative local communities” Are we thinking about this in the right way? Thanks for any feedback on this.
Hey there
It’s not trivial to figure out aims and domains for the GC and MC because some groups conflate the organizational aim and the MC or GC aim. Same for the domain. And that can also change over time, as the first circle has the org aim as the aim and then it differentiates.
One way to do it is to say this:
| Aim | Domain | |
|---|---|---|
| Organization | org aim | - |
| MC | holding the org true to its mission and aim | (governance, budget, legal, other - depending on how it’s distributed) |
| GC | supporting circles in carrying out the organizational aim | (governance, budget, depending on what it is |
Note that this is a full-fledged organization where all basically all domains are distributed. Some of this can also be held by GC.
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