Sudo Mesh BylawsReposted from #disasterradio on Patchwork, originally published on Sep 28th:
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\o/ back on patchwork, and very happy to be here!
I said I would share some of sudoroom / sudomesh's governance docs, so here's a breakdown of the basic agreements / governance structure we could adopt. Based on feedback to this post, I can turn these into some draft documents up for consensus.
Here's a current draft of Sudo Mesh's bylaws, based on bylaws of the Omni Commons:
I'm thinking that formally, Disaster Radio would be a fiscally-sponsored project of the Sudo Mesh 501c3 with a designated committee of all those who participated in our first call. I can draft a fiscal sponsorship agreement based on those we've written for Omni's fiscally-sponsored projects [1].
That committee would have full control of any funds designated as "Disaster Radio, a Project of Sudo Mesh" in a subaccount of Sudo Mesh's bank account. Initially transferring funds into a subaccount of Sudo Mesh's bank account is necessary if we're using Sudo Mesh's 501c3 org status, because those funds need to be allocated and tracked by the 501c3 and documented in the annual 990 federal tax forms. Typically, a sponsoring nonprofit charges 5-15% of money raised by the project because of the administrative overhead necessary (tracking expenses, writing receipts, annual accounting & taxes). I would suggest the minimum 5%, which will in all likelihood end up going to recurring server / bandwidth costs anyway [2], or perhaps that reserve could go toward paying an accountant or lawyer.
New potential members of the project would be agreed upon by consensus of the full committee, so long as a quorum of members (2/3?) are able to weigh in. Decisions can be made electronically (see Sec. 16: Action by Unanimous Written Consent Without Meeting) - perhaps we could implement a Loom.io instance or some such for consensus proposals?
Financial decisions could be made by consensus of the whole committee - however, it may be prudent to designate a sub-committee that focuses on budgeting, accounting, and handling financial proposals / budget requests. To that end, other subcommittees / working groups might include hardware design, software development, community outreach, etc - with each working group empowered to make certain kinds of decisions, rather than requiring full committee consensus at each step, twist and turn :). Working Groups would be required to be fully transparent and open to any committee members to join [3]
The following is probably more proposals for Sudo Mesh the umbrella org, which informs the overarching values and policies of its projects:
This is probably enough for one post... thoughts / feedback welcome!!
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REFERENCES:
[1] Sudo Room's Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement w/ Omni Commons (set $2000/month contribution toward rent/mortgage):
[2] Real Vegan Cheese's Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement w/ Omni Commons (similar model Disaster Radio would have, 5% of income paid out to sponsor):
[3] Omni's Protocols re: Working Groups: https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Working_Groups
[4] Conflict Resolution Process for Omni, adopted from Sudo Room's: https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Conflict_Resolution_Policy
[5] A visual schematic of decision-making processes: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/File:SudoRoom.png
[6] Omni's Statement of Solidarity: https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Founding_Document#Statement_of_Solidarity
[7] Omni's Safer Space Policy: https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Safer_Space_Policy
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