For many people, going to work involves a lot of doing what the boss says. Worker cooperatives provide an alternative to this top-down model by extending ownership of a company to the employees, but there are ways to bring democracy into your workplace or organization without formally structuring yourself as a cooperative.
Our friends at the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) are Jedis when it comes to workplace democracy and putting the new economy into practice in a nonprofit setting. They’ve adopted policies that distribute ownership of projects, enhance the quality of life of the staff, expand community access to legal services, and empower grassroots legal experts.
SELC integrates Holacracy into its model through its weekly meeting structure and the way the organization is divided into overlapping “Circles” made up of smaller groups of staff who have discretion to make certain decisions about that Circle without bringing a full proposal to the whole staff. This gives clarity to staff roles, creates distributed authority, and contributes to the democratic structure of the organization. SELC’s policies can be modified to bring organizational democracy to any organization.
SELC published their policies with a Creative Commons license so we can all benefit and learn from the (incredibly detailed) work they’ve put into them. Here are seven of our favorite ways to help create a more democratic nonprofit.
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