Define members & studios
Goal: name relationships with people enough to show who and how people and groups affect decisions and coordinate or cooperate in a system.
We want to make it clear with whom we actively share power and how. MJN organizes areas of work into studios and community groups.
Studios
Our studio model embodies circular leadership, where collective members are bonded over our commitments to our values, not treated as “staff” working for an organization that categorically controls IP or labor.
The studio structure designs to stay bonded over our values and governance, not control what all members do. What this means is that members often create projects on their own or in small groups based on their passions and capacities. The structure and purpose of those project are thus shaped by the group members involved. But the values — and their implication for system design — stay the same.
Community Groups
We currently use the term “member” to group all of the people who receive a voting role that reflects their level of participation in various activities. We use terms like “family” and “partner” to describe more flexible relationships (see below). As most of our programs are in their early stages, we look forward to learning as we go.
Embodied Characteristics
Studios
MJN avoids centralized hierarchy, which tends to consolidate power — and thus consolidates wealth. MJN will never have a “CEO” or “director” that makes global decisions affecting all collective members.
But decentralization doesn’t mean that leadership isn't meaningful and worth recognizing. The Studio model allows us to structure leadership in clearly the defined projects, which are typically tied to specific workplans. There is no individual or group that oversees all projects. There are two studio types described below.
System Studio
System projects centralize the development of governance models, policies, procedures, and contracts designed to make justice normal. This is MJN's mission. Example: Power Project, values research.
System studios define values, policies, procedures, governance processes, and cross-program funding. In most organizations, this kind of work is allocated as “overhead,” “culture,” or “operations.” Instead, we are asking what the justice-guided version of “B-certification” looks like and seek to build methodologies in which values can become systemic norms.
Unfortunately, the traditional overhead paradigm leaves very little funding for this system work — which is the entirety of MJN's mission. Currently, MJN’s system projects involve extensive volunteer work, deep collective thinking, and work-in-progress management structures that limit the ability to scale participation. We hope system studios can grow over time.
Venture Studio
Practicing system innovations in services, products, creations, or unique research led by collective members in their own way. Examples: Into the Record and Street Works.
Any individual collective member or members willing to engage with our values can imagine a venture to make justice normal, build a team according to the roles below, and receive support from system studio members with capacity. A venture can also have formed elsewhere and move into relationship.
Ventures are our way of protecting space for creativity, many wisdoms, and individuality — while keeping values consistent and intact. We are all leaders, creators, free agents, and followers. But values ideally follow us wherever we go. We can only design just systems through practice, and ventures are how we learn by doing. We are here because we want to test the policies, contracts, and structures and want to help improve them together.
Until MJN has funding to support the venture studio model, creators are responsible for funding for their ideas independently. They are supported by MJN's system studio team when possible. Any venture can operate with entire independence, benefit from MJN’s institutional structures, or spin out, such as if an alternative operational structure is necessary to serve justice. However, we pride ourselves on developing a community in which collective support systems will be what make us better together.
Community Groups
We currently have three groups identified. Together, we would describe these as the collection of close community. But there are many others with whom we hold affinity and care that don't need a defined role.
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MJN names members, for now, as individuals who have the option to accept any one of 5 voting rights.
In order to leave voting frameworks in the hands of ventures — while guided by common principles — no 2 people are likely to have the exact same voting rights at this time. Members must be individuals, not organizations.
System studio members: In it for the long haul, these members are dedicated to designing MJN’s just system frameworks, including living by our commitments to make just normal and developing the processes and philosophies that could be scaled— in our organization or elsewhere. They have voting roles in all system studio projects. We currently have no term limits for system studio members.
Venture studio members: These members, as a whole, work on various ventures. They have voting roles in one or more ventures. Voting in ventures may be time bound, because a project completes or its scope and structure change.
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There are many individual and organizations that we support and love in their work to make justice normal but don't necessarily assign specific voting rights in decisions. We mutually and proactively support one another however we can and are grateful for their brightness in the world.
Family can be individuals or organizations, but we generally avoid describing organizations as family unless we can know every member.
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Partner is the term we currently use for organizations with whom we work on specific projects. For now, we see partners as always organizations, represented by delegates. It is possible that a delegate can also be an MJN member; we're working on a partner framework to help us structure strong partnerships built on shared power and values.
How We’re Evolving
What is a “member”? When we first came together, our impulse to lead with loving care and solidarity was strong. Everyone that served justice could be part of a collective! Why would we not want to name everyone we believed in as a member?
But the truth is, a system — including an organizational system — cannot be just without voting processes that we can operationalize to distribute power among specified individuals in a consistent way. And when MJN formed, we had neither a method for voting nor a system for operationalizing it. Beta philosophies to practice at small scales will hopefully allow us to refine and expand our definitions in new ways.
