Autumn Gathering 2021/How can we refer work fairly through the network

This session was proposed by Outlandish. The motivation was: - Outlandish feels like it passes work to other coops quite a lot, particularly the smaller ones. We've seen this help to grown a few coops. However, it seems there's quite a lot of competition for the projects of £40k+ (which would be Outlandish bread and butter), because the smaller coops want to stretch up to these, and the larger coops also want them. - Also, there's not to much clarity about the process of referring work. When it goes on the CoTech forum, it can create a bit of a first-come-first-served situation. Because we don't compete against one another, this means that some briefs have been left unanswered (e.g. when a coop says on the forum that they'll do it, so others refrain, but then the original coop doesn't pitch after all). Also, easy to refer work to people who you know best, because they come to the gatherings, or work at SPACE4 for example. - Chris Lowis - is this partly because Outlandish is seen as synonymous with CoTech? Perhaps leads are more likely to contact Outlandish when they know they want to work with a coop. - Chris Lowis - it's dangerous to refer work to a coop if you don't 100% know that you trust them and their processes. Perhaps looking to the Bun Protocol would be a good process. - Annie - we refer quite a lot of work, particularly because we don't have developers and designers, so it's a big part of what we do. - Molly - we would consider a £50k website fairly small, so it's important to define what we call big, and what sort of projects we all do. - Billy - there's an interesting tension (?) between doing whats right for the individual coop, vs doing what's right for the coop economy/network. - Polly - how many leads do the coops get per month? Outlandish 10; Animorph 5; Creative 30; Go Free Range 5; - Szczepan - there are a few improvements we can make: track leads that are coming in to each coop and where they're referred to, and how it went; back-end - Leo - it's been really useful to be passed leads, and it's really allowed us to grow - Gemma - also we should consider coops needs - some might be more desperate than others, some might have more capacity than others. This should be considered when creating a protocol - Lucy - lots of work is passed between coops who have a personal relationship, this is because they've built up trust and they know how they work. I don't think we will ever get rid of this, and nor should we. Trust is really important - Abi - want to let people know that we love to collaborate, and we always need leads coming in. We'd love to partner on large projects with other coops. - Molly - yes, big coops should pass work onto smaller coops. However, we shouldn't create a 'race to the bottom'. It's not sustainable for the organisations who are pitching. Larger coops who are passing up the work, should try to tell the small coops why they aren't pitching, and what they would prices it at and why. - Lucy - perhaps a short weekly call for coops to say they have availability or say they have leads / extra work. - Leo - might not be possible to systematise this. It might just come more naturally and chaotically. - Annie - Tech for Good network has a good process. They have a monthly call, and those who can't attend fill in a google doc asynchronously.

- Proposals: do a survey to find out more about what types of work / projects the coops want.