Best practices for group decesion making in community projects
March 13, 2021 10:51 AM Subscribe
When working on community projects in groups of volunteers, what are your best practices for making decisions and getting things done?
Currently working with a group of 5 other volunteers to get a community project off the ground. Going to be bringing in more volunteers soon.
Overall things have been going well, but we're getting to the point where we're really going to start making bigger decisions and so far we haven't really put any intentional structures in place to make sure that goes smoothly. I can see some issues on the horizon, and I think others do as well.
The project will be structured as a cooperative and we have written up bylaws, but as written they're not really anything we can use at this stage.
So. I'm looking for best practices/tactics/structures for decision making while raising opinions, making sure everyone is heard, and not alienating anyone. What's worked for you all? What *hasn't* worked? Thanks!
Currently working with a group of 5 other volunteers to get a community project off the ground. Going to be bringing in more volunteers soon.
Overall things have been going well, but we're getting to the point where we're really going to start making bigger decisions and so far we haven't really put any intentional structures in place to make sure that goes smoothly. I can see some issues on the horizon, and I think others do as well.
The project will be structured as a cooperative and we have written up bylaws, but as written they're not really anything we can use at this stage.
So. I'm looking for best practices/tactics/structures for decision making while raising opinions, making sure everyone is heard, and not alienating anyone. What's worked for you all? What *hasn't* worked? Thanks!
If you insist on 100% consensus, you'll doom yourself to never getting anything done, particularly as the number of people involved increases.
posted by Candleman at 11:39 AM on March 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 11:39 AM on March 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
It depends if you want to focus on the goal or the process.
20+ years ago, we were founder members of what became the Home Education Network HEN. One Sunday every month through 1999 we packed our two small children into the car and drove 110km to a Scout Hut near Dublin to thrash out a coherent response to the Government's plans to regulate and control {truancy |Home Education}. HEN was, and is, a broad church. There were some very floaty skirts in the room, lots of Birkenstocks; children called Aragorn; it was my first encounter with rice-cakes. There was A Lot to do setting up an organisation, starting a newsletter, recruiting members, drafting policy, encouraging our children to play nicely, identifying sympathetic politicians, raising a bit of money, setting a date for the first annual meeting and sourcing a venue. It was quite different from my professional experience: where there was a Chair and Secretary and the Chair could ask questions expecting the answer no, as in "Anyone got any questions?" as he gathers up his papers. We were rather to have a Facilitator and a Scribe. That was okay in a, like whatevs, folksie way if it helped the optics. I often found myself sitting beside the only other bloke in the room who worked in a professional capacity in biomedicine because there was comfortable [cof]patriarchy[/cof] common ground there.
After we'd swallowed Facilitator and Scribe it was proposed that we adopt Consensus Decision Making as the modus operandi for our group. [Bob thinks: whoa! Woo-Wah alert]. But it sounds okay:
"Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with." What's not to like about that?? But it's like ethics, invisible racism, unconsidered sexism . . . it's hard to achieve those clearly desirable outcomes. The advocate of CDM assured us that it would be easy: "I propose that we devote the next three monthly meetings to sorting out the group dynamics through CDM . . .".
Nooooooo! We have tasks, we have things To Do, an Express Train of potentially adverse legislation is rushing down the tracks at our little homely caboose. We can't be fannying about here. In the end we adopted Facilitator and Scribe but we parked what they actually represented and got on with Business. Footnote: all out meetings, all our lobbying changed the draft legislation by not so much as a comma.
Footnote: although we decided the big decisions by vote rather than consensus and delegated tasks to indivs or sub-groups we made life-long friends and learned a lot about people, and ourselves.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:47 AM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
20+ years ago, we were founder members of what became the Home Education Network HEN. One Sunday every month through 1999 we packed our two small children into the car and drove 110km to a Scout Hut near Dublin to thrash out a coherent response to the Government's plans to regulate and control {truancy |Home Education}. HEN was, and is, a broad church. There were some very floaty skirts in the room, lots of Birkenstocks; children called Aragorn; it was my first encounter with rice-cakes. There was A Lot to do setting up an organisation, starting a newsletter, recruiting members, drafting policy, encouraging our children to play nicely, identifying sympathetic politicians, raising a bit of money, setting a date for the first annual meeting and sourcing a venue. It was quite different from my professional experience: where there was a Chair and Secretary and the Chair could ask questions expecting the answer no, as in "Anyone got any questions?" as he gathers up his papers. We were rather to have a Facilitator and a Scribe. That was okay in a, like whatevs, folksie way if it helped the optics. I often found myself sitting beside the only other bloke in the room who worked in a professional capacity in biomedicine because there was comfortable [cof]patriarchy[/cof] common ground there.
After we'd swallowed Facilitator and Scribe it was proposed that we adopt Consensus Decision Making as the modus operandi for our group. [Bob thinks: whoa! Woo-Wah alert]. But it sounds okay:
"Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with." What's not to like about that?? But it's like ethics, invisible racism, unconsidered sexism . . . it's hard to achieve those clearly desirable outcomes. The advocate of CDM assured us that it would be easy: "I propose that we devote the next three monthly meetings to sorting out the group dynamics through CDM . . .".
Nooooooo! We have tasks, we have things To Do, an Express Train of potentially adverse legislation is rushing down the tracks at our little homely caboose. We can't be fannying about here. In the end we adopted Facilitator and Scribe but we parked what they actually represented and got on with Business. Footnote: all out meetings, all our lobbying changed the draft legislation by not so much as a comma.
Footnote: although we decided the big decisions by vote rather than consensus and delegated tasks to indivs or sub-groups we made life-long friends and learned a lot about people, and ourselves.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:47 AM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
I cannot recommend highly enough Dean Spade's book Mutual Aid for really clear and accessible discussions around organisation and decision making. Even if its not a mutual aid project you're involved with, there is just SO much incredibly useful and practical information in this book for anyone in activism, politics, community work, charity/non-profits.
I'm speaking from a UK perspective here but I imagine elsewhere too there are often national or regional volunteer centres which can be really helpful with the organisational structure stuff - they will have template policies you can use for setting up a Board or whatever. Also often you can access free training on volunteer management, data protection etc. For co-ops there is usually a specific body to support people starting up or moving into that kind of structure and they're also super helpful for exploring different options.
From personal experience I would say that putting measures in place to ensure that no single person is able to exert too much control within the project is a Good Idea.
I also think that it's definitely worth devoting a good amount of time and effort into the work of understanding and discussing the different organisational structures/policies/norms around communication and decision making. It's not necessarily the most thrilling material but it is so much easier when you have structures that work well for both the project overall and also the people involved.
posted by Lluvia at 12:17 PM on March 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm speaking from a UK perspective here but I imagine elsewhere too there are often national or regional volunteer centres which can be really helpful with the organisational structure stuff - they will have template policies you can use for setting up a Board or whatever. Also often you can access free training on volunteer management, data protection etc. For co-ops there is usually a specific body to support people starting up or moving into that kind of structure and they're also super helpful for exploring different options.
From personal experience I would say that putting measures in place to ensure that no single person is able to exert too much control within the project is a Good Idea.
I also think that it's definitely worth devoting a good amount of time and effort into the work of understanding and discussing the different organisational structures/policies/norms around communication and decision making. It's not necessarily the most thrilling material but it is so much easier when you have structures that work well for both the project overall and also the people involved.
posted by Lluvia at 12:17 PM on March 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
I cannot recommend highly enough Dean Spade's book Mutual Aid for really clear and accessible discussions around organisation and decision making.
Strongly second this
posted by Mavri at 12:52 PM on March 13, 2021
Strongly second this
posted by Mavri at 12:52 PM on March 13, 2021
Another tip from the pre-pandemic era. Get a roll of pennies. Evenly distribute the pennies. Each penny is worth a turn speaking. Throw a penny into a bowl in the center of the group for each turn you take talking. Everyone has a goal of using all their pennies and no more.
posted by aniola at 1:33 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by aniola at 1:33 PM on March 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
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- Learn about mission/vision/values. Have mission/vision/values.
- Group decisions are guided by mission/vision/values.
- Not every last detail needs to be a group decision.
- Talk about the big picture and then leave unimportant details to individuals who have been assigned the task.
- The founders may have an outsized influence on the group culture.
- There should always be food available. There should always be childcare available.
- Make expectations clear. Even basic expectations should be explicit.
- Be willing to fire volunteers.
- If you have any budget at all, decide as a group what the undesirable tasks are, and then pay a stipend to people to do those tasks.
- Look for a mediator now so that when tough issues inevitably come up, you're ready for them at the drop of a hat.
- (Keep the people on the bank account current at all times. Did your board change? Update the bank account.)
- aorta.coop resources
posted by aniola at 11:19 AM on March 13, 2021 [12 favorites]