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2023 Participatory Budgeting Jam!

The Cooperative is kicking off a month-long strategic planning process open to all members! You are invited to share your input and perspectives!

Overview

To consolidate the cooperative’s current conversations and divergent planning work streams we are kicking off a formal planning process. We will engage in a co-operative wide planning exercise meant to align each team within the organization towards a shared set of goals and meant to produce a few tangible deliverable outcomes. These activities will produce a set of plans to be presented at the November Board meeting.

Financial Goals

  1. Grow our topline revenue to $100M within 12 Months

  2. Hit break even co-op wide within 24 months

  3. Hit debt to equity co-op wide of 50% in 24 months

  4. Return $1/hr worker in patronage per member by April 2025

  5. Members Net Discretionary Income above 5% by 24 Months

Deliverable List

  1. 2 year co-op wide pro forma financial statements. This will include Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements along with a debt capacity analysis.

  2. 2 year co-op wide pro forma narrative. A plain language document that outlines the assumptions driving the Pro Forma modeling & strategies we will deploy to achieve goals.

  3. Organizational Design Diagram. A visual representation of the interplay between people and roles.

  4. Organization Design Narrative. A written synopsis of the Organizational Design Diagram explaining the principles assumptions and tradeoffs of the design.

Kick-Off

September 7, 2023 - September 29, 2023

We are going to take some time at the beginning of this process to kick-off by gaining buy in by all parties. Folks’ plates are full. Too full you might say to really be able to have a Participatory Budgeting Process. Let’s come together to change that.

We first need all Group and Team Lead buy in. And then the Group and Team Leads will turn around to gather the Business Lead buy in.

This will require:

  1. Re-prioritizing and deprioritizing competing deadlines. We will put these in a shared document so that folks know the changes to their KPIs and Deliverables have been agreed upon and recorded.

  2. Clearing calendars for Workshops, and helping folks who report to you to do so as well.

  3. Goal-Setting. At the business unit level, we will craft 3-5 annual goals and add them side-by-side with the cooperative’s annual goals in a public document. We will share those goals out in a few forums (all hands, email out to all members, 1-1 conversations, team budgeting kick-offs, etc). Any chance we get we will reference and reinforce those co-op wide goals with our teammates!

  4. Building Business Unit Bottoms Up Tool: Stephen Barnes will be working directly with each Lead prior to Workshop to build out a tool for each unit.

  5. Training: Leads need to be trained on what is expected of them in these workshops. How to complete their bottoms up tool, how to follow the style guide, how to use the governance matrix, how to push/pull their unit to right set between unrealistic goals and under-ambitious goals. Reading assignment from Democratic Management PDF, Open Book Management Section. All Hands on 9/29/23 will be an open forum to discuss.

Workshopping

October 2, 2023 - October 20, 2023

Businesses & Central Teams will break out into their own workshopping sessions to complete their deliverables, with support from Group Leads and Cooperative Executive Team (Obran Central team leads). These will work off of the following templates:

  • Business Unit Bottoms Up Tool

  • Narratives Style Guide

  • Organizations Style Guide

For those groups that have rough budgets already outlined, this process will be meant to bring more people into alignment with the goals through sharing the budget, building out the narrative and refining the org design.

Build out opportunities for teams to readout budgets to all teams prior to final draft submission.

For this process, we will use our governance matrix process. This year we will try out the prescribed process and document what works and what might need to change.

Review

October 23, 2023 - November 29, 2023

  1. Stakeholder Review. We will give all patron and investor members a chance to weigh in on the final drafts for 5 days. Stakeholders will be notified 1 month, 2 weeks and 1 week in advance of the window allotted for their stakeholder review.

  2. Board & Finance Committee Review. The final draft will be shared with the board and its finance committee for review and approval at the next board meeting on November 15, 2023..

Implementation

January 2024 - Onward

We will put each business unit budget into quickbooks and review the budget to actuals of each company on a monthly basis within an all hands call (similar to what we have done for CCH over the past 6 months).

  • Product to work on reusable systems to improve this process year over year

  • Institute to work on learnings for the nonprofit for next round

  • Follow up will include comparing budget to actuals

FAQ

What does “Participatory Budget Process” mean?

Participatory budgeting is a democratic budgeting process in which people at all levels of any kind of governing body are involved in the budget preparation process. Unlike the imposed budgeting process, participative budgeting shares the responsibility with every stakeholder.

Participatory budgeting has been practiced in many different ways all over the world. It started in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989, as an anti-poverty measure that helped reduce child mortality by nearly 20%. Since then participatory budgeting has spread to over 7,000 cities around the world, and has been used to decide budgets from states, counties, cities, housing authorities, schools, and other institutions.

The New York Times calls participatory budgeting “revolutionary civics in action”— it deepens democracy, builds stronger communities, and creates a more equitable distribution of resources.

What does “Participatory Budget Process” mean at Obran?

At Obran Cooperative, participatory budgeting will be used as a way of including all cooperative members in the budgeting process. We will utilize Leads in each Business Unit and Obran Central Team to guide members in that respective unit/team through the process. There will be open workshops for all members to attend, and these workshops will be recorded for folks who are not able to attend.

We also have a wide array of interdependent units and teams, so the schedule will ensure that leads can attend one another’s workshops to avoid siloing, duplication and miscommunication. There will be an extensive Review and Comment period, during which all Members will have a chance to provide feedback.

At the end of this process, all comments will be processed, with public responses, and the Board will vote on the final approved budget.

Why are we doing this?

Everyone understands that workers in all levels and business units at Obran are critical participants in reaching our goals, so it stands to reason that you are all critical participants in setting those goals. Together, we can build a budget that understands exactly what it takes to achieve our shared goals. We can be realistic together and we can be ambitious together.

What role do I play?

Everyone’s role is critical! Below is a basic layout of the 2023 process, and you should be able to find the Business Unit, Central Team and/or Review body that includes you.

Who do I go to with questions or concerns?

Your Leads are the best resource for questions or concerns:

In addition, Joseph Cureton is the Lead and Susie Marks is the Project Manager for the entire Participatory Budgeting Process. Each of them are good resources, reach out!!

Stakeholders Table

Unit

Leads

Accountable for Budget Completion

Stakeholders

Workshop Participants

Obran Central

Obran Central

Joseph Cureton

All Team Leads

Business Services

Celia Daly

Hank Teran, Susie Marks, Adam Milgrom, Shavon Prophet

Money Ops

Casey McKeel

Sam Kankalil, Crystal Waldorf

Product

Ethan Winn

Charles Duong, Juwon Ogunseye, Annette Jebastina, Adil Bhat

Legal

Clark Arrington

Rachel Ott

People Ops

Jared Lin

Caitlin Rodriguez, Tazeen Fatima, McKenzie Jones, Hendrix Berry

Obran Institute

Strategic Partnerships

Iueh Soh

Camille Kerr, Liz Schasel

Obran Staffing

Obran Staffing

Joseph Cureton

Obran Health

Obran Health

Adam Rose, Aliza Gazek, Celia Atkinson, Patty West, Subsidiary Leadership

Subsidiary Leadership & Members

Apollo

PCHH

Obran Logistics

CCH

Nick Smallwood, Hank Teran, Peggy D’urso

Members

Obran Common Group

Tribeworks

Maggie Villegas, McKenzie Jones,

Members

8x5

Ethan Winn, Joseph Cureton

Charles Duong, Hank Teran, Annette Jebastina

Obran Capital

Capital Advisers

Leo Freeman, Hendrix Berry

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