By the way all the asterisks and tildes and spaces we use really confuse the Discourse post formatting (things turn bold or struck-through)… I experimentally edited your post with three backticks (`) at the start and the end (it’s the key next to 1) which is usually for marking blocks of code… so now it keeps the punctuation in place but colours some of it weirdly :’( I don’t know if there’s a better way to basically just turn off the formatting… @Lai?
Minutes from online meeting 22/03/20
https://pad.riseup.net/p/4n7pA8OecTAVY15JVD56
Present: Dylan, Kaeden, Sean, Nick, Seb, Sam, Ben, Mani
**AP:** Talk to Leo - Nick
**AP:** Respond to Mags' email - Mani
**AP:** Blog post. Not urgent but soon - Ben, Dylan, Alistair, Nick
**AP:** Research what heat-keeping equipment we have to buy and make proposals - Seb
**-welfare check in**
**-working groups - who do we have in each? where are we lacking?**
Dylan - Warehouse cafe meeting yesterday with Dylan and Sean. Some from cafe have agreed to sit in WGs for now, but some concerns about capacity to do this on top of cafe work. Leo gave me admin rights on website, made a private category on the forum called Working Groups and made everyone they knew level 2 on the forum.
Nick - Probably want to deactivate auto feature of needing lots of posts for level 2. Can set it as people are in particular groups.
Dylan - Each WG has its own thread. Posted on a couple. All of us are on the forum now. Should encourage others to join too. Does it now make sense to separately discuss within WGs or discuss and assign?
Mani - Is there someone from each WG here right now?
Dylan - 2 separate lists now.
Mani - Create a thread which says who's in which WG so people outside can see who is in which.
**-finances**
Ben - No updates we didn't talk about at last meeting
Mani - Nzinga volunteered to be part of finance WG
Sean - On forum, but updated fundraiser so we could take money out. Added beneficiary as Ben because couldn't add an organisation without a US phone number. If anyone has one we could try to update. Now can get money into Red Gym account. Can we agree we want to hold finances as escrow?
Dylan - Have lots of US friends. Or does it need to be someone in the UK with a US phone number?
Sean - Ben and I could have chat separately. But just mentioned to be transparent.
Mani - Could also find a US vounteer.
Sean - Will try to sort with me, Ben and American friend.
Ben - Fundraiser doing well.
Dylan - Will we expand when we get to 5000?
**-**
Ben - Have to leave. Will get something drafted for blog post and will post it on the forum.
Sam - Really simple, easy short tasks. Can post a list on forum or can send to individuals. Otherwise a bit scary or confusing from meetings.
Dylan - Sounds like a task for the volunteer working group. Will get in touch with Mani and Leo. Suggestions from Sam?
**- Logistics of the Sol Kitchen**
* how do people sign up for meals?
* what the meal should look like? one big box for the whole day? warm? cool?
* How we deliver it? keep warm?
* When can we kick off? How many available people are there?
* Seb - At the moment it's just Paul who is able to be out with others as I'm still self-isolating. Not sure when I will be able to go out because flatmate started coughing a lot today. Should I stay at home? Just Paul in the kitchen. We'll see when Ciara gets better, no answer today on how we're doing. Kitchen WG is just me (at home) and Paul as manpower. Are there others who can do stuff in the kitchen? Paul ready to go asap. Need ideas about how the meals should look. One a day? How do people sign up for it?
Sam - Bottleneck. Hygeine process. As well as volunteers one. Could move task away from kitchen WG. Do we need a logistics WG? Is this admin?
Dylan - Thread on forum for health and safeguarding. Continue the conversation there. Logistics would we part of admin. Might end up needing to be separate but don't have enough people yet. Have drafted a very rough form people might use to ask for thing. Posted on forum today. Please look and see if any bits are useful. Should be done through the website. Some kind of form with those questions which gets sent directly to us so we can contact those people to fulfil the order.
Mani - We do have to do something liek that. Friend Tom worked for Domino's delivering for 6 years. Said we have to keep in mind organisation storing data of people. At his start of working there there would be a sticker. But can no longer tell people directly so needs to go through app. Maybe because we are small, grassroots we can get away with it for some time. Think about how GDPR functions.
Seb - To protect data?
Mani - Can't give the deliverer the phone number of the person they are delivering to. Call through the app.
Nick - Need to check, but as long as you get people's explicit consent for people delivering food to see your number.
Dylan - Little check box on website saying I consent to the driver having my number.
Nick - A lot of people we want to support, google forms will not be good for them. Could have a phone call and we fill in their forms, but is it then ok?
Dylan - At work we ask on the phone for their consent. Then we just put verbal consent given. This is a thing.
Sam - Admin WG should do it.
Dylan - Admin WG is Leo, Sean and Riley.
Sean - Loaf are doing leafletting already. Might not be able to find people ourselves but could contact other orgs or deliver them food to establish a relationship. Once we are at a stage for delivering food we will be a lot closer to having people to deliver it to.
Dylan - In form I designed so far, there are time slots.
Mani - Tom says for sol kitchen we should have 3 drivers with different areas of the city rather than one for city which is unrealistic. Plate there rather than at the kitchen. E.g. soup which goes onto doorstep and stays hot for ages. Could get hotplates.
Seb - Also one of points I wrote on agenda. What would the meals look like? Important. Hot stuff and cold stuff. How will we plate if we box in cafe so how will we guarantee hot? Or should we have e.g. curry in the car. How to keep food hygeine standard IN the car when we plate the meal.
Dylan - Use some of the money to get some of the equipment to do this e.g. cool bags. Plating in car sounds like a nightmare. If we can keep individual meals hot good investment.
Seb - Need to research what is more efficient and convenient. Big thermos pot to keep food warm means plating in the car or on arrival
Sean - Food people could microwave. Or salad or sandwiches. If food for money, just tasty and nice ingredients. No need to worry about it being warm or presentation.
Dylan - Have said "hot meals" in all our communications.
Seb - If you say hot there is a legal obligation to deliver above 60C temperature. If we say it's hot it can't be delivered cold because against the law.
Sam - Drop off 2 or a few meals per person. Some would have to be cold. If microwave needed, would still be nice.
Sean - Have a Deliveroo box at Federici which would keep food slightly hot. Could be one element warm one cold.
**AP:** Research what heat-keeping equipment we have to buy and make proposals - Seb
**-AOB**
Seb - Any people from outside on previous meetings? First meeting I have attended.
Dylan - No. All on the inside.
Mani - Getting fb messages on cafe page but it is insufficient to just send them to forum. Can we clearly publish when our meetings would be?
Nick - Use social media. Plan C, cafe should share it. More effective than saying use forum.
Kaeden - Should make simple graphics with meeting dates to share. Up for being involved with social media WG.
Dylan - Next meeting? Every couple of days so far. Tuesday?
Mani - Happy with regular meetings regularly. Better short frequent meeting. Cafe meeting tomorrow where some relevant stuff will come up.
Seb - Haven't discussed how people will sign up for their food?
Dylan - Discussed already in minutes of previous meetings.
Seb - When can we start?
Dylan - Depends on when we all get out of isolation.
Seb - Maybe we should approximate. Next week or another week?
Dylan - Can have a go round to say when they won't be personally self-isolating, and what we think needs to be in place before we start.
Kaeden - Staying self isolated. Need more than 2 people.
Sean - At least another week from my understanding. Need to plan to be ready to go sooner rather than later. Even though might get locked down anyway.
Nick - Same as Sean. Next Saturday but not sure. We need to get new people involved and make them active. Centralised nature of cafe makes it harder to onboard people. Need public timetline so we can be helpfully and functionally transparent.
Seb - Not enough people to start next week because just Paul out there. Also seems like not enough people in this meeting. Too optimistic for next Saturday, we wont' have enough people to cook, deliver, etc. But would be good to have an estimate.
Mani - Next Tuesday not this one, since I haven't yet been since. Might be about to get sick. Some advice says still contagious even after you've had the symptoms so need to wait for 2 weeks. Don't need to rush it. Want to do it properly. Loads to work out. Important we don't get stressed out charging towards a deadline. Wait until as many of us are ready as possible is the right move.
Dylan - Isolate from 2 weeks since exposure to someone with symptoms. If you get symptoms you self isolate for 7 days from when you show symtproms. If anyone experiences symptoms within the 2 week, you have to start your self isolation from when symtpoms started. Might be first to be released from house next Wednesday. Think we need more than one chef as a minimum criteria. 1 or 2 delivery drivers available. Need procedure and order forms all agreed before we start.
Dylan - Create timeline?
Seb - Should communicate an expected start because nobody really knows.
Sean - If assume no lockdown, when Seb, Ciara, Ania, Paul and volunteer in kitchen. Also when Sophie can help do deliveries. That will be the first date so we need to order ingredients and work to that date. If lockdown happens it will put a stop to that but should do anyway. Need to do ordering in advance. Later we leave it, harder ordering will be.
Dylan - Need cleaning equipment, gloves, packagaes and things to order.
Seb - Yesterday we checked ? and Bookers which are regularly open so we can order from them as necessary.
Dylan - No access to money until a certain point.
Seb - Will be at least another week.
Sean - Have got cash so willing to front it if we need to order. Could aim to do something with Paul in this next week. Needs to be discussed in the kitchen and cleaning WG and not a decision we can all make. Maybe just cookies even if we're not delivering it yet.
Seb - Who will do this? Can't say yet.
Dylan - At earliest, next Saturday. The weekend. Not sure if we can say which day specifically. Just what needs to be ready before we start.
Seb - Wanted more vague estimate of timescale. Food already in cafe - if we want to place another order we need storage space. Should use what we have in the cafe then try to restock for the sol kitchen. No point to order if things already in cafe. Can restock as we need when we get money from fundraiser.
Sean - Good to get supplies in while the shops are still working. Not using main space of cafe as normal. What if shit goes down? Want access to the food.
Dylan - Important discussion but we don't need to all be involved right now.
Mani - Got to leave.
Sean - Need to make a list of things we need to have in place, then divvy them up as tasks.
Seb - Should we stockpile because we can still do this, rather than wait in case we can't resupply?
Sean - Might be useful to spend say £1000 to get PPE, delivery equipment and food we know we will use because I worry about supply chain crisis.
Dylan - Can move this discussion to a thread on the forum. People should see if they can take on tasks.
**Next meeting: Tuesday 24th 5pm**```Minutes from meeting 26/03/20: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ELPG34Re9PbUVdHjh2-4
**Cooperation Birmingham meeting Thursday 26th March 2020 5pm**
**Present:** Seb, Kaeden, Nina, Dylan, Ciara, Ben, Sean, Sergio
Action points from this meeting:
**AP:** Not urgent but will sign up to Fareshare and start chatting with them - Dylan
**AP** : Write this article for Pirate Care - Sergio
**AP:** Share Sergio's blog post on social media tonight - Kaeden
**AP:** Start on leaflets - Sean and Ben
**AP:** Create a volunteer list - Dylan
**AP:** Contact CARAG - Sergio
**AP:** Contact woman on FB - Seb
**AP:** Make social media post about trial tomorrow - Ciara
**AP:** Send a picture of reciept to Nina or Sean and to remember we need to pay. Tell Paul to do this - Ciara
* **Check in**
* **sepe** **r** **ate usage/ tenancy agreement to foe**
Ciara - FoE happy for us to use kitchen. Need to write sepearate tenancy agreement with them and sign so we can prove we're not trading as the Warehouse and we won't be implicated re: furlough.
Seb: Is Coop Brum an official body? How can we sign agreement?
Sean: Count ourselves as an Unincorporated Coop. Not official.
* **utility costs**
Ciara: We will be paying utility costs but we haven't paid FoE for a couple of months before because we're behind on rent. Taken photos of meters so we can prove it's from this point on.
Seb: With photos we can easily count gas etc and we can pay FoE for what we've used.
* **Finances**
Ben: Not checked in. Need to chase up. Should have arrived by now. Make sure nothing's gone wrong. Can update from Finance WG after meeting tomorrow with Nzinga. Need to sort out idea of budgeting and cafe-side idea soon in that meeting.
Nina: Looked at FFwd and didn't see useful costs.
Sean: Setting up Stripe account for the cafe which will allow us to use the cycle app. Not relevant because not charging.
Seb: Can we cash out money yet? Paul paid for Bookers shop yesterday.
Nina: This is the first expenditure.
**AP:** Send a picture of reciept to Nina or Sean and to remember we need to pay. Tell Paul to do this - Ciara
* **Soap**
Ciara: Wasn't any soap because people come in in the mornings to buy all soap and gloves. On a low amount of soap in the cafe. Need antibacterial hand soap.
Dylan: We have soap?
Sean: No we don't have much any more.
Ciara: Me and Paul have a plan.
Sean: Could get it from Breaks(?) or Suma if we do an order.
* **start cooking tomorrow 20 portions**
* Ciara: Me and Paul going to the cafe tomorrow at 1 or the food will go off. Pasta bake, sausage and mash, or jacket potato with chili and sour cream. Need to find out who to deliver to - Paul can deliver.
* Dylan: I can help and chop things. Could do a shout-out for a test run on social media. Have X number of meals. Message the page to be part of our trial.
* Sergio: Agree with Dylan ASAP.Ideally tonight. Could also ask our networks who know vulnerable people e.g. Peace House and CARAG. 20 is enough to start with.
* Seb: Already one person on Coop Brum person who needs food.
* **AP:** Make this social media post - Ciara
* **Timeline of when we can start**
Sergio: If we upscale from 2-3 people in the next days will you need volunteers for cleaning and cooking?
Ciara: As we get bigger over time we'll have one chef with lots of volunteers chopping like a festival setup. Someone for potwash/cleaning or maybe this could be a general role. Loads of people who want to do this so think we're OK.
Dylan: Call it a pilot. Use pictures for the 'gram.
Ciara: I've got some good pictures lined up.
Sean: Limit the number of people in the kitchen. One chef as lead works to stop all chefs getting sick. Monday one team, Tues another team, etc.
Ciara: Work better if everyone just has their team. E.g. Ciara has 3 people, Paul, Seb ditto. Those people never meet.
Seb: Details of woman who asked to be contacted are on Signal chat.
**AP:** Contact CARAG - Sergio
**AP:** Contact woman on FB - Seb
Nina: What could impede or limit us if we are starting tomorrow. Will you deliver and how? How long can the food last for?
Ciara: Plan is to use Paul's kinda insulated van. Have paper bags. Will put on doorstop, knock and wave but don't touch people.
Seb: If the food is cooked hot it must be delivered at less than 60C. Better position because vegan food less risky. Need to show we at least tried to do it. Big thermos? Boxes we use don't keep warm.
Ciara: Didn't buy compostable vegware stuff so bought usual microwave containers - plastic. Good because really sealed and will keep it hot rather than getting moist after a while.
Dylan: Can bring the Deliveroo box tomorrow if I come into the cafe. Sounds like the food needs to be delivered on the day.
Ciara: Could store it and heat it up no problem.
Seb: If we portion it into boxes we should not reheat a second time. In one big container it's alright and we can store and reheat.
Sergio: Are you preparing the 20 portions at the same time? Delivering, by the time you get to the 20th it will get cold. When we try to upscale, what's the maximum per delivery driver?
Ciara: Something we will have to find out via trying. Why we need this pilot.
Seb: Agree because we haven't done it before.
Sergio: Try to find other drivers as soon as possible so you can keep cooking. They can come back several times. Makes sense to have different people for delivering and cooking after tomorrow.
**AP:** Create a volunteer list - Dylan
Dylan: Quite a few volunteers already who have a car.
Seb: Also on the facebook people with cars want to be volunteers.
* **Working groups**
Sergio: Do we want a delivery WG? Complex enough. To coordinate with kitchen.
Dylan: Was original proposal. At the time we collapsed it into both volunteers WG and cooking and cleaning WG because related to both. Delivery volunteers would have to be the volunteer WG.
Seb: Agree with Sergio. Should make sure they go through all the procedures from Coop Cycle and safeguarding from QueerCare. Make appointments. Should be a group for delivery drivers.
Sean: Agree. Especially because of air gap between kitchen and delivery. Could set a time meals are cooked by. Cleaning happens after. When meals are ready bring them out and delivery team is ready to take them away. Can also chat about the delivery app which will hopefully be ready in a couple of days. Different roles for kitchen and delivering.
Dylan: Depends what you consider to be a WG. More like a subgroup of volunteers who might have their own chat. There may be people who want to do more than one role.
Sergio: Don't have beneficiary data yet but we should have people in charge of the database of people who want food. This is quite sensitive as there is private data there.
Sean: On the forum Leo suggested using a CRM database, or could use spreadsheet limited to just delivery drivers, not everyone who has access to the forum. Imagining situation where people might want a meal every day for the next 2 weeks or weekdays. Otherwise we'll need to call everyone at the start of each day.
Sergio: Created database for volunteers and shared with Dylan and Mani. Propose something similar for recipients. Can include a lot of data. Different group could be in charge of managing this database.
Nina: Good to divide tasks. Delivery or kitchen volunteers, and who is taking the calls.
* **Delivery**
* Sean: Me and Leo have worked on it today. Met with Ciara 2 days ago. Platform is built for businesses who do deliveries for money so it requires an e-commerce payment system. Setting it up for the cafe, then can use also for the sol kitchen. Also has a tip function so could leave it on or just link to gofundme. Think it will be 2 days. Need to have an idea of how we're going to display what we'll give to people e.g. menu, description, how many people it will feed, dietary requirements, allergens. Could be included online. Ingredients and descriptions should be on there. Could be Monday's meal, Tuesdays's meal, etc. and could order all of them. On the delivery app could assign all of Mondays' orders to the delivery driver on Monday. They would tick off each item as they deliver. I'll share my screen to show. Can change these sub-menus. Asks for delivery address. Then order. Only thing we haven't got yet is Stripe setup. Normal proper delivery service. On the other end there is an admin section and different types of users. Admins who control the menu etc. Give people who are volunteers to deliver can download an app to their phone, don't get access to all information. As a courier would have app on your phone and given jobs. Can create them an account and they would have the addresses but not the data. Even if ordered over phone or social media, we can create the orders manually so couriers don't have to go into the front end. Could link to web app but can do manually if they don't have the internet.
* Sean: Going to flyer, contact people from CARAG.
* Nina: Any updates on leafletting?
* Sean: Me and Ben haven't done but able to.
* Ben: Can start tomorrow, certainly the text.
* **AP:** Start on leaflets - Sean and Ben
* Nina: Any updates on the phone nuymber?
* Sean: Have the number but Leo needs to work on setting it up tomorrow. Could temporarily use cafe phone but might not work for placement.
* Dylan: Need to have the right phone number on the flyer. If the flyers are done by the end of the week I can hand out.
* Kaeden: Tauqueer on forum asking about flyers.
* Dylan: Yes will contact.
* Seb: Protocol different for delivery drivers. Something from Berlin was good. These are for delivery drivers. I am working on procedure for the kitchen. Already quite big because food safety in general and points added on social distancing e.g. coughing in the kitchen.
* Dylan: Should give this to all new kitchen volunteers. Can you give to the volunteer WG when it's done so we can send it. For the delivery one we need to agree which we'll use and pass onto volunteer WG to send to new volunteers.
* Nina: Any other hygeine protocols we are missing?
* **masks**
* Sean: Question of whether we wear masks and how we expect the delivery to work.
* Ciara: Don't think we should be buying asks because of limited supply of PPE in England. Could make them though.
* Sean: Have found good guide for making masks created by a university in China. They say it definitely reduces transmission and would make them feel comfortable. A pizza delivery guy had a mask on. Risk in both directions.
* Nina: Good to show we are taking care of this. In Spain after a while people said masks were totally useless. Going to check with Sean on mask making and specific masks which work to stop transmission.
* Sean: Mask will stop it if people cough at you. Worry is that people will act differently because they have them on. In this case it will be about showing we're not going to cough on them. It may not stop all transmission but in this case maybe is a good idea. If there is documentation saying delivery drivers shouldn't do it we won't do it.
* Seb: Psychologically it works better if delivery drivers have masks, for the other person believing the saliva didn't go onto food. About lowering risk of spreading it around. Doubt we can buy them anywhere.
* Sean: Posted a guide to making basic masks on the forum. Took me 5 minutes to make myself. Uses basic materials most people have at home. Can people look and see if they can do it. Is there anyone who can make lots? Missing holepunch and elastic bands. Could have conversation on the forum. Ben suggested to make the mouth-covering mask element. Other element is visor/waterproof screen as an eye shield. Ask for volunteer for making a whole bunch with clean hands. Will share the video. Not medically approved but better than nothing.
* **Social media and outreach**
Sergio: Wrote blog post on lockdown. Share on social media.
**AP:** Share this tonight - Kaeden
Sergio: Pirate Care connected to Cov Uni but in different countries. Project compiling different projects which compile care without permission. Asked to write short piece 1000 words how to build or reflections from building a sol kitchen. They will publish.
**AP** : Write this article for Pirate Care - Sergio
* **junk food project/ fareshare**
Ciara: I got in contact with TRJFP and got message from Ann saying they still have catering size stuff. Still running and willing to donate food to us.
Dylan: Haven't signed up for Fareshare yet but will do soon. Depends how much and consistently TRJFP can give us free food. Can do both to some degree.
Ciara: Think we can use TRJFP for non-fresh stuff and Fareshare for fresh stuff. Don't need to do a trip for a while because we have a good amount to get through from TRJFP and Cherry Reds already.
**AP:** Not urgent but will sign up to Fareshare and start chatting with them - Dylan
**Next meeting: Saturday 28th 5pm**```Minutes from meeting 28/03/20: https://pad.riseup.net/p/YgRKrnzcHQ_iknKKOZd9
Present: Dylan, Ciara, Kaeden, Nina, Sergio, Bo, Nick, Ben
Action points from this meeting:
AP: Email volunteers for Monday - Sergio
AP: Make social media posts to find more recipients - Kaeden
AP: Join forum, tell Dylan, draft press release and post it on a thread on the forum - Bo
AP: Collect list of papers to send it to - Bo
AP: Get in contact with FoE and print leaflets, get Sean to send file - Ciara
AP: Please look at the template then from tomorrow we can think of orgs to email it to with the flyer attached from the info@ email address if possible - everyone
AP: Write down a more worked out proposal for what we'd do each day - Ciara, Sergio
AP: Post that Operations WG proposal passed on the forum - Dylan
Trial run feedback
Dylan: Me, Ciara, Paul, Sophie did a trial run yesterday
Ciara: Seemed really good. Started too late in the day at 1. Maybe start at 11 or 12 because got to people's houses at 9/10 which is too late. Need someone dedicated to potwash. 2 or even 3 choppers and one chef per session. Delivery good but before we go we need to work out where everyone is because we went across Brum many times.
Dylan: Need more than 2 people. Me and Ciara really tired at end. Basically impossible to do backroom at the same time as chopping because it's super loud in the kitchen. Need 1 person to do the backroom (answering calls, responding to emails, inputting data). Spreadsheet was a bit of a nightmare. That person could work out what area of Brum each address is in and plot out the routes for the drivers a bit. Sophie used google maps to go home via various stops, planning a route with e.g. these 3 stops on. Drivers could use potentially. Assume most people have google maps. Agree we started too late. One person had to cancel because they were too scared to open the door in the dark. Older people tend to go to bed early, and people with kids, so eat early. Delivering much earlier would be better.
Operational wg proposal
@Leo - Working group to include all those involved in delivery operation: kitchen, delivery and backroom (maybe cleaners too). Just a name change and a clearer vision of that group’s purpose. Own chat group to be setup. Signal I guess? (What platform do we use for our chat groups?)
Dylan: This would be clearer. Could vote unless anyone has points.
Vote unanimous agreement. Proposal passed.
AP: Put this on the forum - Dylan
When the service will run, what days, when deliveries will be
Ciara: Think we should cook 3 times a week because have 3 chefs. Mons, Weds, Thurs or Mon, Wed, Fri. But looking at the amount of prep left over yesterday, we could do the majority of cooking for 2 days of delivery. So many things left over.
Nina: Cooking plan should come from chefs. This distributes volunteers and means chefs don't have to come every day.
Sergio: Should have spreadsheet with schedule and resources, eg. on this day we have this person cooking, this chopping, this delivering but should be from the volunteer WG.
Dylan: Agree. Need a volunteer rota. Me and Paul talked about whether we could do more than 1 meal a day. Yesterday we did dinner. Could still to just 1 meal that will be delivered in the evening. Suggest for first week, but maybe it's possible to also deliver lunchtime meal as well.
Ben: Good to do every day yeah.
AP: Write this down as a more worked out proposal for what we'd do each day - Ciara, Sergio
Nina: If there is planning for the week we can link with finances and plan for how much in the future we need to buy ingredients and how long we have left. Won't have food waste so can see how much money we invest in food. Talked yesterday about finances.
Dylan: What day would we start?
Ciara: I'll make a proper rota including what we'll cook each day though Seb may like to change.
Dylan: Hoping we'll get a lot of ingredients free from TRJFP and possibly Fareshare.
Ciara: Small finance thing is that I am sometimes using supplies from the Warehouse cafe which I don't have. I will take a list of all the stuff we use so that we can pay the cafe back.
Nina: Talking about a platform for reciepts so we can manage finances.
Dylan: Would we start Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?
Ciara: Monday works for the chef side.
Nina: We can push to have those platforms ready for Monday.
How to order/ordering mechanisms
@Leo - I won’t update on CoopCycle app progress here. Will just make a thread on forum instead. Progress is being made. We’re just waiting on Stripe now and one bug to be fixed by the developers. Estimated to launch on Friday. It would require quite a bit of training for Operations Working Group. Only me and @sean_f can do that really.
Dylan: Need at least one person on that. Could make a form which then inputs into a database for ordering. That person would work out where the cluster of addresses are and assign them to a certain driver.
Sergio: A bit complex, but if we can do it great. For now, if easier, distribute e.g. north, south, west and sort drivers for each.
Dylan: When they write down the address, find which area it's in. Then all the ones which are in north go to this driver. Kinda did that yesterday, but it was very last minute. If someone is doing the backroom it would be easier to do this going along.
Sergio: What time do we want to finish cooking and stop delivering? Maybe put a limit in order taking.
Dylan: Maybe 5pm. Started too late last time.
Ciara: If we aim to start at 11am and finish by 4 or5pm then it should be ready for delivery at 5:30/6pm or even earlier but we can only know after some runs.
Dylan: Can go with that for now and adapt as necessary. Delivery between 6 and 7 we could say.
Ciara: Say between 6 and 7:30 to give that just in case gap.
Dylan: Can get feedback about lateness or earliness from people and take on board. If a lot of people thought that was late we could consider doing earlier. Hopefully can get the app from Friday.
Outreach
Dylan: Had trouble finding people to get the food to. Will take time.
Ciara: Have got in contact with blind groups who are mostly stuck inside and would like food. This lady is excited about us getting involved in them.
Sergio: Worth posting in all the mutual aid fb groups which have been created. Make a post tomorrow. Probably worth trying to engage people on a regular basis. CARAG will share the posts. Asking if we only serve to Brum which we do.
Bo: Local newspapers are desperate for stuff to fill the pages with.
Dylan: Did think of, but got pushed back on task list. Are you comfortable drafting then putting on the forum.
AP: Join forum, tell Dylan, draft press release and post it on a thread on the forum - Bo
AP: Collect list of papers to send it to - Bo
Dylan: Leaflet made.
AP: Get in contact with FoE and print leaflets, get Sean to send file - Ciara
AP: Please look at the template then from tomorrow we can think of orgs to email it to with the flyer attached from the info@ email address if possible - everyone
Dylan: Adapt the text as suitable.
Nina: Email looks good.
Dylan: Need pdf version of flyer from Sean.
Dylan: Also need people to flyer.
Ben: I volunteer. Going down to 3 days a week. Off Tuesday.
Ciara: Ask Toqueer to flyer.
Dylan: Once we have them printed can get them out.
AP: Make social media posts to find more recipients - Kaeden
Ben: blog post for the pilot run. It is in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bWJ5_U7kiTZaI89vIojTtLqCp8uMPnlGT_lgJOD38mM/edit
Bo: which roles are needed?
Volunteers
Proposal: Creating detailed schedule for operation days, including which volunteers work on what and potential back-ups
Sergio's proposal is already discussed. We need to match that rota into the existing list of volunteers. Keep an eye to potential volunteers and inform them when we will need them/rota is ready.
Bo: I have a car, so I could be one of the delivery person. Evening's preference. High number of ppl saying they wanna do deliveries.
Dylan: Agree with Sergio's proposal. 4 volunteers kitchen + chef, +2/3 delivery drivers; and be based on that for scailing up.
Sergio: we could split volunteer's role: 2 or more taking orders everyday. Maybe someone doing outreach everyday as well.
Dylan: good idea, maybe no everyday though. Also someone doing media promotion pretty often. Try to email people a couple of days in advance.
Ciara: knows people who might be able to help on Monday.
Sergio: agree, probably better to sort out volunteering two days in advance.
Ciara: kitchen volunteers should arrive at 11.30am and drivers around 5pm.
AP: Sergio to email volunteers for Monday.
Ciara: no need of people for cleaning, it´s done along the way. But we need someone specifically for pot washing. And at least two people for backroom, ideally someone already involved at the beginning.
Dylan: needs to work Mon to Weds until 4pm, all other days is available.
Finances
- Ben: will share bank payments details
- Cafe team: Ben will update them about finance payments.
- Other ways of getting donations. For bank transfers, if possible to avoid paypal as it is not working that well for other groups. Maybe Leo can give a hand?
- Fundraising options. Fundraising outreach/
- Meal cost and wages
Nina: How much are we currently spending on food, how much do we have left from donated?
Ciara: Got so much left over, for maybe a week. TRJFP rely on donations. About £200 worth of food and they always say pay half so suggest donate £100.
Ben: Ingredients is one thing we fundraised for so can pay what cafe people think is fair. Also shelved the discussion over whether to donate to BCS - never agreed how much. Proposal to distribute 10% of our monthly income to other groups not just BCS. Would keep this seperate from 'donations' to TRJFP which is more a cost.
Sergio: Not sure if should keep it seperate or within the 10% because seems like we have a lot of money now but we are a non-funded group and may run out at some point. Maybe TRJFP gives to groups which can pay more. I think having a pay half as automatic is good for finances.
Dylan: Tried to make an account with Fareshare but not heard from them which is a bit weird. Will chase up. Fareshare would be free food after initial cost. Might be worth pursuing for that reason because it would bring our costs down significantly but not completely because we will have to supplement with other food, delivery boxes etc. Keeping costs low would be good for us.
- Kitchen forecast for next week
- Bank transfer payments
Nina: Did anyone make a donation for recieving food yesterday? By cash?
Dylan: Yes, by donating to the gofundme.
Nina: Ben raised topic of getting donations, maybe we could forget that and just link to the fundraiser. Keep rolling on that as a big pot rather than setting up a platform for bank payments.
Ben: Agree easier through gofundme but recurring subscriptions not possible on there. Rather keep it going.
- Receipts platform / pending costs
Nina: Money we need to pay to suppliers. The way someone can show this is someone can scan it, add it to the expenses thing.
Ben: Process for now is send to me via emails. Can make more sophisticated going on.
- Social Media
Nina: To show transparency and expand knowledge on mutual aid network could post specific pictures of our finances. In an image. Also as a way to keep fundraising. Could be useful and real and tangible as an encouragment to donate.
Sergio: Should just post on website, not social media.
Dylan: Ben posted pie chart as a basic easily digested proposal. Another thing we talked about in the finance meeting was agreeing to produce proper accounts to be a helfpul reference for other groups down the line.
Dylan: Proposal to do the thing where we say "by donating this much you could give food to like 20 people in your neighbourhood". Can be quite motivating for second wind fundraising effort.
Nina: That could be a really good promotion. In general social media need more.
Extra Notes
Thinking point: Charity vs Solidarity
@Leo queue provocative questions:
Is what we are creating just another charity or service among many?
Where is the organising potential?
How can we link to other food relief based organising efforts?
Are there are area we can be organising in?
My suggestion is media - podcast, video, radio, zine
There isn’t anyone doing that.
Sergio: Leave this for next meeting so Leo can expand a bit more on it because long meeting.
Dylan: Happy to park that for now.
Ben: Something we can discuss on forum instead.
Next meeting: Tuesday 31st 7:30pm```Minutes from meeting 31/03/20: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ZzN2_sx2r0_-M7DckL_s
Action points from this meeting:
AP: Reply to email from Sara and organise a meeting - Ciara
AP: Sort out phoneline - Leo
Present: Sergio, Nina, Kaeden, Dylan, Seb, Nick, Robyn, Ciara, Ben, anonymous
-Well-being check in
-assessment of first day/issues arising
Nina: How was yesterday?
Ciara: Really good. Don't need 3 volunteers - 1 too many. Struggled finding tasks for them. Need better communication with drivers because by the time they've left the food is cold so I don't see the point of heating it up.
Sergio: How can we improve backroom?
Nick: Need to have clearer communication about what capacity the drivers have, eg. yesterday there was 1 car and 1 bike. Need to work out better the routes - possibly need someone making a route from lunchtime, and sorting people by areas, e.g. north, west, etc. Chat for drivers and backroom people earlier in the day. Yesterday one of the meals got left out of the delivery so I got pizza. Wonder if it's viable to have an extra meal just in case it's needed to give us leeway.
Sergio: I already spoke to Nick and some things were sorted. Today we had 3 drivers with only 1 bike. We definitely need to work better on how to plan the routes. Good idea to be in touch with drivers from earlier on. Today we created a chat for backroom people today and I posted the numbers of drivers there so there was access to the backroom people. I think we need someone who'd not the backroom person to do the routes. Maybe a volunteer coordinator?
Ben: Potentially a different person sorting the routes would be a good idea, because adding data late to an already made route can make the whole route extremely un-optimum. Best to leave to last minute plotting the route. Need to have enough drivers and whether they're going e.g. round the city or home. Nightmare today was data friendliness. Should be easy but in practice it could be put in the cell as "Perry Bar (North)" or other ways. Not enough to give waypoints to the driver they also need the names and how many meals and what they are and involves annoying back and forth. Hoping there is functionality in app.
Nick: Agree except if you had someone work on it from lunch you could add the data points and move the route between them. Also need to make lists to give drivers would be very easy for a person not already taking calls.
Sergio: Leo said app creates optimum route.
AP: Speak to Leo about whether we can rely on the app.
Should we have someone working on logistics? And what is the best format of info to give the drivers? E.g. A document with a time-sorted list e.g. "stop 1:...", etc. . Could be easy to make a Word doc or pdf with this during the day.
Ciara: Agree
Dylan: This would be in addition to the mapping as well. Could have both that document and the plotted map.
Sergio: Instead of a map which includes all the points the document could include a link to the next address, or directions to the next address, or something like that.
Ben: Format for drivers today was a link with the route so can open in google maps. And sent a message in Whatsapp with the details. WOuld be much easier if we had logistically possible and data safe way of having them in the same thing. From the POV of the driver he either has to be sent a route on the mapping thing, or copy and paste addresses of each which is onerous. Also have to go to Whatsapp to look at details AND to report each drop off, so there's a lot of changing screen.
Sergio: Maybe a spreadsheet for all this and the route is better than creating a whole new document.
Dylan: Even if we made a diff document with only the people to drop off to that would be the same amount of things to them as looking at the spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has lots of confusing info. The data should be extracted to them.
Sergio: Could copy/pase all the lines in spreadsheet into another spreadsheet they only have access to, but it's not so much work for us as creating a new document.
Dylan: It is a new document.
Sergio: Yes but with copy/paste this takes 30 seconds.
Ben: Difficult and specific discussion, so propose, since I've alrady done the route planning thing, that people try out the process tomorrow that I wrote up today, and then progressively build it by trying it out.
Dylan: We suggested a whole different person for this, differnt to the last person doing the backroom. DO we want this and is anyone willing to do it?
Sergio: I will do it. I will also create a new spot on the rota for logistics.
-health and safety protocol
Nina: In a practical way, how is the hygeine working? Is it easy? Is everyone following?
Ciara: Okay, but had to remind people in the cafe to not hug today. Also the difference between having friends and volunteers. Double bagging seems to be alright, but now on paper bags is that ok? Not letting the drivers come near the kitchen or me. I drop on table, then they come later to put in delivery bags.
Seb: Are we sure they have read the protocols before they start working.
Ciara: First thing I do is get them for kitchen staff is make them read protocol in the cafe and say if anything applies to you go home. With delivery drivers get them to wash hands first then read protocols.
Seb: Can we get them to them early so they have time to remember them?
Sergio: I can make sure.
Nick: Paper bags are basically fine but not cleanable and not waterproof. Fine as long as it's a dry day basically. You know teh bags haven't been touched by someone who hasn't throoughly cleaned. Need to get the plastic bags back from drivers. At least outer bag should be plastic in case it getys wet. Should publish our guidelines so it's easy to find and direct volunteers to.
Ciara: Maybe we could call round our volunteers and get plastic bags. Have been giving drivers gloves and have been using.
Nina: What do they do with the gloves? Can they be cleaned for next time?
Ciara: Wrap them in tin foil to give and treat as disposable.
Seb: Driver locks bike, puts on gloves only to touch food to deliver, then have to get rid of them to make sense. One gloves for one delivery then take off gloves.
Ciara: That's what they're doing. Nobody has hand sanitiser and the cafe can't get any.
Nick: If you wear the gloves at any point other than rolling down the dirty bag it doesn't actually make any difference as you'll be touching the environment around you with them. Though if we don't have hand sanitiser maybe the gloves are better than not. The bags are the most important thing.
Dylan: If we've finshed writing the H&S procedure we should publish on the website and give to anyone who is worried. Don't know if anyone but Leo can edit the website? Never replied to BCS.
-volunteers/tasks for them/rota
Sergio: Will show rota first. Rota is looking good for the next days. ALmost everything covered, except now we have to include logistics. We only cook 3 days per week so only cooking every other day. Sunday? Need at least 3 or maybe 4 people for delivery as we expand. Have about 25 volunteers active but still need more. We need someone on backroom tomorrow morning
Kaeden: I will do.
Dylan: We need a volunteer WG strategy meeting about how we make sure all the slots get filled each week. If we don't do it in an organised way we'll end up calling our mates at the last minute. Sounds like Ciara was saying she didn't want 3 people in the kitchen so maybe it makes more sense to redirect people's energy to different jobs e.g. route planning job, outreach job (something I wanted to bring up anyway). We are gainign traction but a volunteer could use the template email and work through a list. Would be nice to print flyers.
Ciara: Only need 2 people. But maybe on Fridays we could have 3 people so we can make enough for Sunday. We didn't have one potwash person we spread the task.
Sergio: For tomorrow have already called in 3 people so maybe too late but could send them home early.
Ciara: Could deep clean.
-Sunday?
Ciara: Will just try to put leftovers together.
-phone and delivery processes
-getting food
Dylan: Would like to continue having relatively free ingredients because we are providing a free service. TRJFP isn't completely free. Trying to chase up Fareshare. Didn't respond to membership enquiry 5 days ago so sent email from info@ to regional hub. Will give some time then phone them. I'm a bit concerned because getting free ingredients would be huge advantage.
Ciara: We don't have to pay them half. THat's what the cafe used to do. Ann didn't ask for any payment and that was the vibe.lol vibe.
Dylan: Proposal we had was getting dry ingredients and tinned from TRJFP and might be able to get fruit and veg from Fareshare. I want to explore both options ideally because I want to see if it's possible to continue the relationship with Fareshare after this possibly to provide food aid.
Seb: How much food do we have left? ENough for this week? Do we have to contact anyone or order some?
Ciara: We're gonna be ok for this week. No garlic. But have kilo frozen in my freezer so will donate. Havne't been able to get in contact with Paul but maybe we could go to TRJFP on Sunday or Monday morning. Will need more tubs and bags and rinse aid and soap from Bookers anyway.
-finances (email, sipgate)
AP: Sort out phoneline - discuss with Leo
Ben: On finance side, don't know how sipgate works but seems there is a way to get the calls through a voip app rather than forwarding which is expensive. But we do have enough money.
Kaeden: Close to £10 a day
Nina: Will add up to a lot.
Sergio: Not a priority.
Dylan: Might be possible to transfer the phone number. So might be possible to keep the number. Need to make an assessment of how much our costs will be. For example could we afford to keep paying for this based on projections based on paying for more takeway packaging and fuel for drivers and ingredients(?). Could be cheaper but issue of keeping the number is important because it has probably already been spread in lots of different avenues.
Nina: Need more volunteers. Even just need to know how to call on them, in case we need to scale up really quick.
Dylan: Stu suggested a mailing list for all volunteers. COuld easily send rota to everyone at once and potentially they could write themselves down. Disadvantage is someone might write themselves and drop out without telling us. Maybe need to write guidance on that and check, but might be more efficient.
Nina: Seperate email for finances. Any progress?
Ben: Leo will do this. For now can email me. Could if they want to and do in one lot. But it's fine for me to do it in bits every day if they want.
Ben: I will do weekly accounts summaries so hopefuly will answer any finance questions. Does anyone have questions about finances?
Dylan: We've reached the £5000 goal on gofundme. DO we want to entend it another 5000. Do the drivers def know they can claim petrol. My manager suggested we could glaim a grant. Could look into, but might come with strings attached so may decide we don't want and to do it all by fundraising.
Nina: We already talked in the finance WG to keep going on gofundme as long as we see promote it.
Seb: In our cafe meeting today we discussed our project may need insurance because cafe insurance doesn't cover us operating in kitchen. SOme money will be needed for this. Check out the grant. May not be suitable for us but might help us a lot.
Ben: In the last finance meeting we actioned Nzinga at the cafe meeting to sort out the process of budgeting for the meals and see how far we could go. And see how the position is for the wages. Cafe stuff furloughed but is 80% enough to live on?
Ciara: Working on costing out the meals. Once we've done a few different meals can give an average.
Nina: Need that. Tracking meal costs and any kinds of quantities to make forecasts for next month. I can join you after the morning if you need support Ben.
Ben: I won't need any help tomorrow because almost nothing to do but may in future.
-outreach
AP: Reply to email from Sara and organise a meeting - Ciara
Ciara: 28 portions today.
Nina: Is it too many?
Dylan: I have been suggesting sorting out someone (maybe Phil) to email round different groups with an explanation of what we're up to and asking them to share. Lots of different people we could email. A job we could give to a home volunteer. Would really like to do flyering because a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise see it will.
Kae: Reach of 15,000 people on facebook. Lots of shares. Need photos for posts every day.
Seb: Maybe we could ask people who recieve our food to take part in social media and photo of them eating the food and send it to us so we could post it. Nice to have photos of them enjoying it.
Dylan: Already have one such picture which could ask to share. Also got some quotes for people as Bo is writing a press release about how much they enjoyed the food and how helpful. COuld be translated into this. Somevody recced getting in touch with TAWS which is funded by the local govt
Sergio: I called them last Friday and sent an email but they never replied to us. Left message on the phone too.
Kaeden: Sandra from TAWS posted on the forum.
Sergio: Have been in touch with her today about volunteering. Can contact about TAWS.
- blog posts
Ben: Need new blog posts. No updates since the one we sent saying we didn't know was going ahead to the donors.
Sergio: Piece for Pirate Care hopefully finished tomorrow can be maybe posted on our blog.
Seb: Can't see links to facebook or instagram on the gofundme because they could be updated that way.
Ben: Only Sean can update the gofundme.
Dylan: I think we can knock up a blog post saying about how we need even more than 5000. I can write tomorrow.
Setgio: Include what we have reached already. 30 portions per day. 25 volunteers. Expanding. So people can see we're doing something with their money.
Nina: In a meeting someone from a Glasgow mutual aid group have shared with us. We could talk about maybe on social media linking.
Next meeting: Friday 3rd April 7:30pm with drinks and party after the meeting```https://pad.riseup.net/p/k0J6UfNPQnOBdb_UuOm6
Present: Dylan, Ben, Sean, Nina, Sergio, Ciara, Seb, Kaeden, Mani
-review of operations so far
Nina: Just 1 delivery driver left. Yesterday was quite late.
Sergio: Less orders today.
Nina: Managed better in terms of delivery today.
Seb: Today was delicious lasagne and volunteers stayed so 4 people packing and went smoothly. Yesterday wasn't bad. Cleaning takes a bit of time.
Dylan: Might be nice to have a few more people back later on to help clean up.
Seb: Is there a limit for hours volunteers should work?
Dylan: Don't think so, just kitchen work is exhausting.
Mani: Most important for volunteers is motivation to come again. Better to have shorter shifts often rather than shifts which get people exhausted.
Dylan: Maybe second wind of people for serving up and cleaning might work.
Nina: Agree with Mani. Suggest that volunteers coordinator or extra person checks on the volunteers. If they haven't been before, having someone on top of them helps them feel we are well coordinated.
Sergio: A lot of workload has been assigned to volunteer WG which shouldn't be our workload. Burned out or reaching limit. Also doing admin, project management, logistics. All day on top of volunteers. We should call people, organise rota, send docs and send to someone else. SHouldn't be supervising volunteers on anything so WGs need workload redistribution.
Dylan: Suggest go-round where everyone says how they are and what they've been doing, and their capacity, and what would like to do, etc.
Ben: Doing ok. Still excited by project, worried by people having too much to do. Rahter than limit to current capacity, we need to look at what we can do to raise our output. Looking forward to day off tomorrow and not working too much on this.
Seb: I'm alright. Happy to do have done two days in the kitchen. Volunteers were very nice.
Ciara: I'm ok. Struggling with Warehouse and Sol Kitchen and balancing this with time to myself. Just really want to be in the kitchen.
Sergio: Quite tired. A bit frustrated. We are doing a nice job. But mixed feelings. Need a rest.
Nina: Tired and good. We need more people actively on board. We need to plan who we want to reach and how. If we want to sustain or expand. Tired because working on this fully since Weds morning with rotas and volunteer supervising so looking forward to stepping back for hte weekend.
Kae: Okay. Days off resting helped. SOme people need breaks.
Sean: Been working on the Coop Cycle thing and work and other stuff as well. Concerned about scaling properly and because everyone is so busy doing stuff we'll be stuck doing it in a difficult way as we scale.
Mani: Good. A bit worried about the rota. Trying to do for tomorrow but nobody asked me to do that and if I hadn't it wouldn't have been done. Bit worrying. Missing somebody in the kitchen for tomorrow but also doing backroom 3. In general we need more people in volunteer coordination because now that we're operating that is where a lot of the work is. Need volunteers to also do volunteer coordination. Doing amazing work.
Dylan: Took today off and muted the chats and did chill stuff because was stressed. Back at work this week so WFH but also helping a lot with logistics and volunteer stuff. We've identified that there's a lot of work in this project and a small number of people doing a lot of work. Key hting is delegating, need to trust people.
Sergio: No one is effectively doing admin.
-delivery/logistics
Mani: Somebody today asked for a repeat every Weds and we don't have a way of recording that. More broadly, with repeat orders we're cooking for around 80 people every day, which is just the first 80 who got hold of us and nobody else is benefitting. Maybe we should rethink over time. Maybe only repeats up to 5 days in a row and then have to call in again.
Sergio: People are relying on us for their daily cooked meal. Not being so helpful every few days and might give stress someone. More difficult for us to reach different people every day.
Nina: We are not sustainable as we are but on the way and almost there. Needs maybe a while. Managing 100 people after a week. If we could deliver to someone 3 times per week but instead of 1 meal we deliver 2, but then possible issue of not being order to warm up. Needs planning logistics wise.
Sean: How is the protocol going? Masks? Are the leaflets for delivery going out? No drivers in this meeting. Who knows?
Seb: Dylan brought masks and gave these and gloves to drivers and showed them protocol and information so trust they are doing it.
Dylan: Went through protocol with drivers and explained what they needed to do. From yesterday people had masks. Using scarves before. Always been giving them gloves and double bagging and explaining this. In the kitchen, have been washing hands a lot.
Mani: Not ready to do this now, but for the future if you ask to be a repeat person, only ask 5 times before you ask again or whatever, so people have to decide they want to still be on it, to allow more new people. Agree not now.
Dylan: Big influx on Weds and was difficult. Has it been better with routing since then?
Sergio: Yesterday was quite efficient. Today Steph did it well. We have to close the lines early enough because doing under pressure especually first time it's a mess. But if enough time, easy to do. Steph had the list at 1, and 2 hours later she had the routes planned.
Nina: Ben was backroom for Sophie. So far we have tested the guidelines for volunteers when no new orders. We are checking with everyone who said they wanted a meal for that day and checking if they want it today. Not taking new orders so we know at 1. The second volunteer is the one planning the routes. Third volunteer is the one supportign the drivers. We need to improve the order of how we inform drivers. Needs to be really easy to see how many meals, contacts, etc. Needs to be updated on protocol. Some typos in adddresses but in the end we managed to deliber to everyone. Finished an hour and a half earlier so workign better.
Dylan: THe delivery part is the most difficult for us because no experience with this.
-coopcycle app
Dylan: Leo posted on the forum about this, but not in this meeting.
Sean: We have got somewhat further with using the platform but what we're trying to do is not designed for this. But if we set up for the sol kitchen it will be set up for the cafe too. But not like deliveroo, we have bulkj orders at one time. Haven't been able to try having a large batch collected at the same time, but are at stage where we can make the website go live. 3 sides of the operation. Point of platform is to link the customers with the restaus and the restaus with drivers. One side is the orfers, a bottleneck in terms of phone and knowing if want repeats. 100 orders on the phone is a lot, so could migrate to online trasnsactions. Other side is delivery/dispatching. Can create accounts for couriers and assign them tasks which have come in earlier or create additional tasks if someone can't use the website as an admin. This will blend in with the orders for the website. This will be a central place. Relatively complicated but if it works could deliver hundreds of meals. Issue with ordering part is we can't do it without minimum charge on stripe 30p. We were suggesting 50p charge and if people can't afford that the operator can do it manually. Shouldn't be an issue for most people. Will mean a large portion will be online instead of the backroom. People who run the platform won't budge on this because protects drivers because need card details. Not safe to not have some form of security so can see logic. Not what we're doing but the utility of the system is worth that small fee and can donate this money which doesn't go to stripe back to wahtever. On the ordering side we don't know how to do it yet but learning. Definitely not ready to be implemented tomorrow.
Sergio: We need to make sure we can adapt the app to our way of working. A lot of orders at the same time being distributed among drivers. Not convinced by this 30p card detail payment. More admin for volunteers. Don't like breaking the no money and no questions. Not convinced. Maybe good for the cafe but doesn't match what we're doing here.
Ben: Pretty happy with the coopcycle app and is possibility for more worker run deliveries. Emotional response is against the charge. Has a lot of potential to streamline it. Also been anxious about question of ease of working with bulk orders. There is a batch part of the interface from spreadsheets. We have to test the routing side fully. Been used for delivering papers to multiple stops which is quite similar. Even if it didn't work with multuple deliveries it is least labour intensice for the front end. If it doesn't includwe more sophosticated routing we might want to consider paying for better logisitcs planning software. The one I found kind of works but not best.
Leo: Not sure our current system would scale up. This payment issue with coopcycle is major and not happy about that. They're not interested in changing that part of it. It is open source so could fork and put that update in but they are the experts and we wouldn't know how to fix it without significant investment. No backup proposal for scale but could be other options out there.
Mani: This app gives us multiple things which make out lives easier. The driver having their route mapped and see what they're doing. Ads it stands, backroom 3 hopefulyl gets a text each time but this would let us see what drop they're doing. If the payment thing is a problem (do think it is a serious question - changes the way it plays out). If the workaround is they phoen up and admin put it through, could we do that for every order. Would also let us check each order.
Leo: Doens't allow people to order without admin.
Mani: Not a bad thing. Don't want to be a program, want to be a mutual aid project. People need to interface at some level. People talking to us is part of that process and would still streamline the process and allow us all the advantages.
Kae: I feel like most of the people who i talk to probably wouldn't be able to access an app even if it was just on the internet or a broswer or whatever, because they don't have money or they are elderly or they are worried about security etc. So actually the payment thing would create lots of barriers to people who need it most, as well as people who just can't pay by card. I like mani's proposal actually.
Sergio: The general feeling is tha tthe app isn't appropraite for taking orders but as a backroom taking orders and just transcribing those orders into the app that would still make out lives much easier.
Nina: I would like to add to what kaeden said that lots of people don't have a phone relying on neighbours or in shared commodation, and in terms of money and mental health it adds more barriers. I agree with mani that the important part is spreading mutual aid. I was in backroom 1 yesterday morning and i spoke to lots of people who were really nice, valuing what we are doing and really appreciating it. Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense for me to be doing this just to be an extra food back while the council doesn't help us.
Leo: the proposal never suggested that the phone line would stop, that would stay open it would just reduce the burden on the phone line with option to order online. Need a more advanced phone system because our phone system would be super busy and this wouldn't scale up.
Sean: Will hopefully be helpful by combining orders from phone and website for deliveries. For the 50% of people who can access phones it would simplify it a lot. There will be some people that can use phones. SO it would be worth trying but not to supercede the phone lines.
Sergio: Problem with capacity right now is not phone lines. With an app could pass orders easily, but people who don't have to try calling which is not easy, so not convinced. Can be useful if we can managed it but not sure.
Dylan: We could input it all ourselves and not have an outward face of the app. We already ask people to email to make orders so my preference would be adminning all the orders.
Sean: Seems the mutual aid aspect is people helping each other. Nice to speak to people but what we want to be doing is building infrastructure and getting new volunteers involved and where we want to focus. More likely to be a better project if not streamlined. Why not give it a go? Don't think it loses anything if we keep the phonelines open.
Dylan: Didn't say we should use the app. Just should get around the money thing by using the admin feature to make the order instead of the user doing it directly.
Sean: Is the money thing a problem? Only via the app. Is this a problem?
Dylan: I think so.
Mani: Not the end of the world. Depends what the point is. If we're agreed we want to use the app for deliveries anyway we can also leave it open for people to use that and respond to it. Say there's a 50p charge to run the app as long as we're saying please call us, but if you want to use the app you can.
Sergio: Focussing too much on this when the limiting factor is logisics. We can give around 10 orders per driver per day, so 50 orders and 100-120 meals. So unless we can reach 8-10 drivers per day we should be thinking about this and whose orders we'll be taking or not.
Dean: Do we need more drivers?
Dylan: Yes.
Dean: Could go up to 3 or 4 shifts per week.
Nina: How was the road today? Was Ben's version better?
Dean: Good once I got the breakdown but this is the important thing. When it was a screenshot of a spreadsheet it was a faff. What is important for the drivers is the route but also the breakdown for each order, then it's simple to tab out of google maps app and check the next person on the list, copy/paste number to phone. Double-bagging hadn't been done before I got there. Seems to be gaps in terms of knowledge of protocol. Was done.
Sean: Proposal: When me and Leo (and whoever else) are happy with the app, we try it. Just the backroom without front facing as a trial. E.g. one day we could do that. After we could launch the app side afterwards. Could just use as database for passing to drivers. Might be more work that day because need to do it on and off the app that day. If it works could try the order facing side.
Ben: Really good idea. The other thing we haven't spoken much about yet, is that organising things in the spreadsheet is a headache and a source for potential disaster. Accidentally copying into wrong rows. Important to use the app as back office system for a few days at least to see if it works. ANd deal seperately with other question of customer app.
Everyone agrees with this proposal and so it is passed.
Dylan: Need to work with Leo and Sean on this.
Sergio: When are you starting testing and how long woudl it take?
Sean: Think we need a couple more days. Not tomorrow maybe Sunday. Depends how much me and Leo could work on it. We don't want to do loads then have people say we don't want to use it. Not practical yet, so useful to know if people are up for a trial, so now we'll get it ready.
Dylan: Is anyone up for helping Sean and Leo with that?
Ben: Maybe. Can't remember what time I start on the phones on Sunday but could help with the app on Sunday morning if needed.
Soph: Might be useful for me to offer feedback on the app and troubleshoot things which might be useful as a driver.
Seb: I can help with the app.
Sean: Let's discuss it on the forum.
Mani: Is anyone able to take one of those shifts tomorrow? I can do one. 11:30-6 in kitchen or backroom 4-end
Ciara: Dave H could do work tomorrow. Just so everyone knows, volunteers arrive at 11:30.
-capacity/ability to expand: Allocating meals when demand is above capacity
Leo: Covered quite a bit already. Driver safety is somethign to think about.
Ben: Kitchen capacity and other things will be bottlenecks soon, but don't need this discussion now.
Sergio: Proposal which will easily double capacity but will put on forum. About offering people to get one portion of warm food and one they could reheat the day after, delivered at same time.
Ben: ANother idea to increase capacity is doing local leafletting. Just at last step of printing leaflets. This is the last thing which stands in the way of delivering to 50-100 people close by we could deliver to on bikes.
Leo: Delivering cold food something for chefs to look into.
Seb: Capacity of kitchen is aboiut 100 but not too much more with the equipment we have. One enormous pot for 100 portions but could not cook double amount in one go and have it for 2 days.
Dylan: Why we're looking for really big pot and big ass paddle.
-engagement with council (S Morgan, lunch service query)
Seb: All depends on what we discuss with them and what support they will give us. About discussing with them and saying what we want.
Dylan: Danger of council co-opting this project and use us as a way of outsourcing help if they send us some volunteers. Better to ask for financial support.
Leo: Don't have much time to work on our political demands. If we put forward e.g. national food service demand they won't meet it so will differentiate ourselves from state aid.
Sergio: Cannot see their strategy. They are leaving us to deal with the problem and offering a little support. Taking their resources would be legitimising their strategy. We have many referalls e.g. 50 people from agency which works with the council who could use food. The council is referring food needs to us so suggest to refuse joining with them.
Nina: Don't want to be involved wiht the council.
Ben: Agree with Sergio and Nina except . We started this project 2 weeks ago and the council is relying on us to provide these services. Partly because they don't have the resources, partly dual power situation - functions of the state taken over by more legitimate groups. Look at how it shifts the power to us. Take the resources without accpeting strings. We are the ones providing the service and functioning, and they have material resources but aren't offering what is needed. Should take what resources we can.
Dean: Wolves have a big warehouse as the council and doing stuff from there. Inevitable that the council will need to do something. No way our operation with feed everyone who needs to be fed in Brum longterm unless we get so many kitchens. SO either the council is thinking to support us until they get their thing online and the referalls would dry up. Or looking to support lots of little groups locally. Think about what is best for the people of Brum not just our own goals - how we can meet the need for help. Maybe taking money with no strings now. But need to pressure the council to provide what they're not now.
Dylan: The council would put us in their newsletter and seem good for giving us money when they did nothing themselves. Seems their strategy is just to get voluntary sector to organise volunteers in local areas and get councillors in mutual aid groups. Some volunteers who come forward have been involved with councillors and I am not in favour because I have a lot of experience working with the council. There is an unbelievable amount of gatekeeping. We just get people food no questions asked, which is very liberating. You get to decide for yourself whether you need some free food.
Seb: Seems we don't want to engage no matter what is discussed in the meeting with them.
Dylan: Suggesting we take resources from them, but what does that imply?
Seb: Can we know before the meeting what it will mean? Maybe easiest to see consensus in the group. Otherwise no point meeting them.
Leo: Problem is we don't have much public voice because only just started. Wish we had some media infrastructure in place to counteract the narratives. Lots of propaganda around which is working to suggest the council is doing lots. Brum Live and Mail just about crime. Not really any local news.
Dylan: We had a call from them so should we respond?
Dean: Let's wait and see what they have to say, by calling them back. Can reject when it comes if that's what it comes to.
-volunteer rotas
-email box coordination
- phone stolen volunteer
Leo: Today Megan's broken phone was stolen while she made a delivery. Don't know circumstances yet. We need to think about threat models for our drivers. A JustEat driver we know was robbed and beaten so could happen.
Ben: Could drivers go in pairs?
Kae: COuld we compensate Megan?
Seb: Security going home. More petty crime.
Dean: It does feel a lot less safe walking round than normal because fewer people out and about. Some areas are more deprived and potentially more dangerous. Need to think about safety.
Leo: Safety of the driver is more important than the delivery. Maybe a whip around for Megan?
Dean: Most vulnerable going into tower blocks and going into lifts.
Dylan: Worth starting a thread about and coming up with advice.
Leo: Will start one now.
-mask making
-flyer making
Ben: Have files now. All we need is someone to plug their computer into the printer.
Dylan: Have been shown how to do it. If I go in tomorrow I'll do it. Otherwise I'll ask Nick to do it.
Next meeting: Sunday 5th April, 5pm ```Minutes from meeting 05/04/20: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ZVMt7EhIxsdzTe7zI0iS
Present: Dylan, Kaeden, Ben, Sean
Action points from this meeting:
AP: Go through backroom procedure with Dom - Kae
AP: Sol kitchen to email the cafe and ask for a formal agreement, and include Ben's finance questions so we have in writing and they respond -Ben
AP: Ask Megan about her phone - Dylan to get Riley to do
AP: Make sure form gets filled in soon then send reply to fareshare email - Dylan
AP: Chase up custard factory and give my number - Sean
AP: talk to friend and also respond to BCC email -Sean
-Taking new orders
Not clear procedure at the moment. In the morning, backroom 1 calls round everyone on repeat.
Ben has changed the repeat column in the spreadsheet from y/n to date to repeat until.
Ben: Would like to serve more individual people rather than providing all the meals for the same people.
AP: Go through backroom procedure with Dom - Kae
-volunteer meeting proposal / 0121s
Dylan: Proposal from me and Mani (on the forum in the volunteer WG tab) that we have a meeting with everyone already signed up to volunteer so they can meet and chat and feedback if they've already volunteered, and onboarding. Also in that email there's an explanation of different tasks people could do.
Sean: Worried by unresponded-to emails and people who are stressed by workload. Need more onboarding and growing the volunteer WG so it's not just the same cadre. Should also chat on the phone with everyone before Wednesday. Maybe me, Leo and Sam.
Dylan: All the ones in the volunteers folder are on the database but I haven't responded to them all. They would be included in the meeting invite email. Will add more to database today. Got at least 40 people we need to respond to. Don't know how realistic it is to respond to everyone individually by Wednesday. Maybe if a few people were doing it.
Sean: If one of those people responded to gets onboard and starts organising we'll have a load for everyone. Lots of us have done multiple shifts so are a team of about 10 people doing multiple things and 30 people doing occasional shifts but there are more volunteers out there.
Ben: Yes we should be trying to get people in as basic volunteers, as there is a lot of work to be done. But should also be developing volunteers so they're not like workers to the project, they are contributing and organising as well.
Dylan: The meeting should help with that, could be something done every couple of weeks. Also should invite them to the organising meetings if they want to come.
-volunteer rota
Dylan: Not well-done so far, since Ben accidentally had to be on the phone all day. Earlier on in the week, Sergio and Nina were calling people up and putting them on it. Mani did some Thurs and Fri. I've also been doing some. Phoning them and asking if they can do this. Monday now sorted. Great if we could have it 2-3 days in advance.
Sean: When we call round tomorrow we could also fill in the volunteer rota.
Dylan: Some stuff done in advance, but difficult to know who to call and how often. Availability on database not always filled in. Tried not to be 2 days in a row for anyone.
Sean: People might not mind that if they have little else to do.
Dylan: 12 people per day so it's a lot. 2-3 kitchen, 5 drivers, 3 backroom, 1 logistics (supposedly)
Sean: Does it make sense to have longer shifts in the kitchen?
Dylan: 11:30-6 is already quite long.
Sean: Having less people is less risk of spreading.
Dylan: 3 people in the kitchen is the absolute minimum. Me and Ciara on the trial run for just 20 people was knackering. For some people we have got them to leave at like 2:30 and have someone else come in. It would be a shame to say people can't do it if they can't do a full shift.
Sean: This is why the masks are important.
Dylan: Splitting shifts is only occasional.
Sean: When we ring round tomorrow we will be able to help with rota in the short term. But will say we need someone to volunteer to check on the rota and call up volunteers and sign people up so we have a full shift rota.
-blog post approval
Dylan: Drafted a blog post to get people up to date with the project. Ask Leo to put the blog post up. Kae to post link on social media with quote.
Sean: Still need to finish protocols document, which we can publish when it's done as more content.
-masks
Dylan: Seb's proposal for the kitchen didn't say wear masks in the kitchen.
Sean: My general advice said need masks in the kitchen. Think there should be since this is general WHO guidance.
Dylan: Drivers are wearing masks. Not pleasant to wear in teh kitchen.
Sean: What are they made from?
Dylan: Not sure. Taiwanese masks.
Sean: Can get cloth masks made. Don't look reusable. We have a protocol but hasn't been formally agreed. Nobody has firm evidence it's not a good idea. Need to make up our own guidance on the basis of other projects.
Kaeden: Agree but won't be me wearing.
Dylan: Don't agree but can't make a decision without the people in the kitchen here.
Sean: More about following the best guidance. Worth doing.
Ben: Have to decide if it's what we'll do for a while, or stop.
Sean: Have proposed but people are not engaging.
Dylan: We've been reading the protocols to the drivers and kitchen volunteers. They are being followed.
Sean: Post things which are not NHS guidance because no references and there is limited science on both sides.
-media output (bo's post)
Dylan: Bo wrote press release and posted on forum. Gave him some ballpark volunteer and meal numbers that he can add to that.
Sean: Maybe Bo could pull some stuff from your blog post. In the emails there is one from a journo in the netherlands. We should have someone to do press relations. We should be talking to Birmingham Mail and so forth because more shares is more funds.
Dylan: Bo will research where to send it to. Will ask him to put in a bit more about the criteria thing.
Sean: Tell Bo great job. Good to email the news and tell them to come look or send photos. For instance Becky who does this for her job. COuld get her to take a couple of photos. Her partner is a video guy. Even a short video taken with phones and turned into a video would be cool.
Dylan: Becky has already volunteered to do driving. Could ask her.
-finances
Ben: Big change is we have a spreadsheet for working out costs for drivers - drivers input their own mileage. This works out how much we owe them based on cost of petrol, wear and tear, MPG, and miles driven. Drivers need to fill this in every day. Will pay people at the end of the week. Still haven't had much clarification from the cafe about wages, ingredients costs, budgetting for meals.
Sean: Agreement with the cafe about using the space, and that we would pay utilities. Was this agreed at a meeting?
Dylan: Seb mentioned it to me today. There is apparently a contract we need to sign.
AP: Sol kitchen to email the cafe and ask for a formal agreement, and include Ben's finance questions so we have in writing and they respond -Ben
Ben: Bank details should be given to me personally. The calculating cost is the complicated bit.
Sean: Is it easy to get the pie chart for the blog?
Ben: Thinking we should get 2 weeks worth of spending to be respresentative first. But we do have some data so could do. Would just like things on the blog.
Sean: Maybe 2 weeks is easier becuase gives you a bit of a rest.
Ben: Numbers will look more interesting then.
Dylan: Agree in principal helping with the costs.
Sean: Was it an expensive phone? Would want to contribute but not buy a new phone.
Dylan: Don't know what kind of smartphone.
Sean: Maybe we should ask how much it cost, and her financial situation, then we can decide how much to contribute.
AP: Ask Megan about her phone - Dylan to get Riley to do
-fareshare update
Dylan: They did email us back. Asked us to fill out self-assessment form. Seb and Paul are looking at it to try to fill in. Can chase up. Mostly questions for kitchen staff. Better to get this soon. Email says they have a lot of requests and are limited in how many new orgs they can process. Also said do we need delivery or collect from the depot. Think we would struggle to collect but could discuss if it meant more likely to get the food.
Sean: COuld probably find a volunteer with a van. Maybe Russ.
Dylan: Will be a one off cost but think this would be fine for getting weekly free food.
AP: Make sure form gets filled in soon then send reply to fareshare email - Dylan
-founding congress type thing
Sean: Need to do it on Zoom and facilitate properly and make an exciting thing, publicise on social media. There are other projects we could be doing as Coop Brum. We need to scale up our volunteers. Would be good to have someone maybe Mani talk about mutual aid, maybe have someone from Coop Jackson or Kentish Town to jump in.
Dylan: Cool if we could get a few speakers. Love to get someone who knows about food security and logistics themed. Maybe angry workers.
Sean: Talk about the forum and kind of agree principles. Invite Loaf and Artefact etc. and be more formal.
Dylan: I thought we weren't coop specific?
Sean: Coop Jackson has a direction, plan, politics, direction. Worker, housing, land coops are a part of that but also the community should be able to intereact with it.
Dylan: Long term need to think about it more carefully.
Sean: DO we need a group of people to work on event planning for it. Would have to be on Zoom.
Kaeden: Agree. Can help with social media and maybe other event planning.
Ben: Agree. Question of capacity. Need to sort politics.
Dylan: Not sure framing it as a founding meeting works. Could be an ideological event. The event could be around mutual aid and food aid specifically so could have an ideological element. THink more carefully about Coop Brum as a whole when we have more time.
Sean: Could be a welcome to Coop Brum sort of thing. Could be a Plan C event but would be good to have Coop Brum aspect to it. Better to found it in a different more planned out way. Still good to have official pathways for other orgs for us to interface with us. Is there a halfway solution?
Dylan: What would it mean to found an org when we don't know what it will do yet?
Sean: Agree. Will start thread on the forum and go from there. Maybe in the next meeting I could propose a date with a long run-in. Perhaps next Sunday.
Dylan: We haven't answered some fundamental questions yet so can't agree until I know exactly what it will be, though I like the idea.
-responding to:
Sara custard factory,
Ciara was supposed to have a meeting.
Sean: Suggest scrub or mask making factory.
AP: Chase up custard factory and give my number - Sean
BCC,
AP: talk to friend and also respond to BCC email -Sean
Age UK -
Should respond with same info we would send any member of public. Like this is how people should contact us.
Next meeting: Thursday 9th 6:30pm```I’m gonna make a new thread for this because its specifically about volunteers, but here are the minutes from the jitsi meeting with approx 17 volunteers getting feedback and opinions from many of the people working with us.
Minutes for meeting 09/04/20: https://pad.riseup.net/p/j9j7ZdnLvLbyCgpudIgB
Present: Dylan, Ciara, Mani, Kaeden, Cal, Sergio, Sean, Nina
Action points from this meeting:
AP: Sol kitchen to email the cafe and ask for a formal agreement, and include Ben's finance questions so we have in writing and they respond -Ben -> to be carried over, Ciara tell Ben
AP: Chase up custard factory and give my number -> to be carried over by Ciara
AP: Publish protocol on website
AP: Disseminate this information to volunteers and make sure they read it before they carry on
AP: Speak to Seb about protocol since chef tomorrow
AP: Organise next volunteer meeting - Sergio
Next meeting: Tuesday 6:30pm
-round up of progress on APs
-any issues arising in operations
-making the backroom support role rotate
-kitchen coordinator
-feedback from volunteer meeting
-proposal: asking the council to donate food to us via TAWS
-volunteer rota/tasks
-outreach
-finance update/fuel spreadsheet
- key worker letter (paul)
- day for weekly meeting
- round up of progress on APs
AP: Go through backroom procedure with Dom - Kae -> DONE
AP: Sol kitchen to email the cafe and ask for a formal agreement, and include Ben's finance questions so we have in writing and they respond -Ben -> to be carried over, Ciara tell Ben
AP: Ask Megan about her phone - Dylan to get Riley to do -> DONE doesn't want any money for it
AP: Make sure form gets filled in soon then send reply to fareshare email - Dylan -> DONE today
AP: Chase up custard factory and give my number -> to be carried over by Ciara
AP: talk to friend and also respond to BCC email -Sean -> DONE, email reply discussed
-any issues arising in operations
Sergio: Every day we need someone to coordinate 12 volunteers a day, some of them are first time, some don't know how to deal with issues on which they won't know. No formal role. So far Sergio and Dylan in whatsapp group and pay attention all day. Really time consuming, and invisible. Cannot deal with it going forward.
Nina: Problem is volunteers haven't done before so don't know what's expected. Experience grown after first week. Have graphic of timeline and who does what when, what do you need, where does it happen, what are the tasks you can do? Within the backroom should be a volunteer supporter which we need to work on describing the role of.
Dylan: Really good and we should send to all volunteers when it's finished.
Nina: Expect to have it done by tomorrow. Also need to manage and quantify what data we hold and we haven't talked about that. The spreadsheet also is a bit messy and we could organise it in different ways.
Dylan: Today we used Routific which is this new system to give the drivers the routes. Good, a bit easier, but lots of ways you can fuck it up. Basically we might need to explain it more to the drivers, as some have intuitively understood about ticking it off and some haven't, so know where some are but not others. Because new.
Another issue is that they can't see the allergens properly when the data is transferred to them. Trying to think how to solve that. Uploading order spreadsheet onto that app, and so there's a way it manages to fuck up. Plotted all the routes fine, and only took into account some of the columns arbitrarily. Couldn't check allergens easily which caused an issue today. Almost impossible to get a driver to do a specific delivery you want them to do. Just assigns them in the most logistically efficeient way. For example cyclist wanted for SA because of access but no way to do that.
Mani: Could we do all the drivers together in lists. Organise it by regions first, and take out all the central ones, then do central after as its own list for the cyclist.
Dylan: Hard to explain to someone who hasn't done it yet.
Nina: Regarding the document on current protocol, it's under construction and will be updated tomorrow.
Sergio: Don't know if this could make sense, instead of names we could do driver 1, 2, 3 and assign later.
Dylan: Not hwo it works. Create a driver profile with their details, start and end address, and phone number (so can send at the end). It just does it for you so no way to customise it that's figured out.
Kaeden: Could put allergens in the name.
Dylan: Could put in the notes as these appear somehow. Just got to mess around with it. Ella FD on middle shift tomorrow, so will talk to her about it and come up with something. Could try in name tomorrow and see how it works.
Dylan: Had some feedback about kitchen volunteers shouldn't be making tea for other people or sitting close during lunch. Could just be added to the protocols somehow, if anyone is up for doing that.
-making the backroom support role rotate
Dylan: Touched on already. Could be put on the volunteer rota.
Sergio: Every day the volunteer WG is filling in the rota and talking to 80 people, 12 per day, making sure they can do that, coordinating whatsapp group the night before and sending things. From 9 in the morning supporting newer volunteers until 8 or 9pm when deliveries end because volunteers are not part of the organising team. Need more help. Not healthy.
Cal: Not involved in this organising but heard about this issue yesterday and would be happy to be involved in a role sorting out rotas.
Dylan: Me and Sergio have built up an expertise in deciding what to do. People want reassurance. A lot of the problem is not having time to induct people because difficult. Stressful day yesterday. Role needs to rotate more.
Nina: Agree. Needs to be really open role. Suggest at least this role should have 3 or 4 people rotating within a week. Fixed team and create a WG for that. Feedback that backroom vol 3 was not working on the past few days, skipping roles. So drivers were directed to the organisers.
Sergio: Related to confidence. Didn't have knowledge to decide and kept calling. One person each day. 3 or 4 people distributed.
Nina: We are both working (less) and our decision to prioritise, but stressful. Will burn out.
Kae: Have some knowledge and happy to do this role on some days.
Cal: Less experience. Could just do the rota thing. Contacting people on the start. Maybe also break up the day. Being on the phone all day is really shit.
Mani: Whole rota done until Monday. Rota is job of checking emails, adding people to the volunteer sheet, then going through the list and calling people. Works better for one person to do it at once. In terms of the other role, someone else needs to do it as don't have smartphone. Happy to break the role up so me and Cal do the rota bit.
Sergio: Mani's idea is good. No more than 1 person should be doing rota at the same time, but could for example be in the rota, and I could work on the protocol with more details and they understand better what they have to do.
Dylan: Currently 3 people with the capability for support for backroom: Me, Sergio, Kae, maybe Nina. Would feel happier if I knew I was only doing it on certain days. Share between the 3/4 of us for now, and think about how we can upskill people to do that as well.
Mani: Can do it once a week if I can borrow someone's phone.
Nina: Can also do once per week.
Sergio: COuld add another rota slot for this. Who will do it this week for the days that are left. Dylan Friday, Kae Saturday, Sergio Sunday.
Mani: Can we put uncomfirmed ones in orange on the rota and recurring ones in green, and leave everything the same. Rather than filling the box with random shit.
-kitchen coordinator
Ciara:
Volunteers need to be sent health and safety protocol beforehand/ not turning up with a change of clothes
Also worried about kitchen spending are we spending too much on food? - 2 Breaks(?) orders so far
Problem when drivers come in trying to talk to them and get their orders and then also trying to work out everyone's allergens. Running in and out of the kitchen not good. Created a sheet for them to write all their orders, how many and allergends etc But it would be useful if I could get that beforehand with specific drivers to texted to me as well.
Also seems bad that i'm running back and forth and getting them to read the protocol on my phone which i then take back to kitchen
Also with giving them masks and gloves there is no protocol and feel like im doing it wrong. Just giving the drivers masks and gloves wrapped in cling film.
Mani: Didn't know or missed the clothes thing. Now tell everyone to bring a change of clothes. Hopefully will be better now.
Dylan: SOmetimes add drivers to backroom chat, which means they can see how many portions they need and have allergens. Didn't do today but needs to be done all the time. They should have that information but doesn't always get communicated.
Sergio: Reason I haven't been adding hte drivers is preference not to stress all the other people with the drivers, as drivers will probably use the chat for communicating with backroom 3.
Ciara: Don't think they should be added to the chat. The chefs just need to know beforehand who's taking how much food and what. Even just a text because can be pre-prepared, rather than waiting for everyone to arrive, get their texts, write on sheet of paper.
Nina: This informati0on is already being sent, but can be solved.
Dylan: We always post that in the backroom chat. Maybe we need to tag you in that. Been difficult to communicate with all volunteers to the extend we need to. Ideally when we induct a new person we send them the protocols to read before they get there. Need to find a way to do that.
Nina: This is why I worked on this scheme I worked on before, so people know from the beginning what's expected.
Sergio: Can work with Nina and prepare a folder which everyone knows what to send and everything is covered, as the first thing a volunteer should read.
Sean: Driver-specific protocol? In theory the point of what we've been talking about for weeks would be that. Didn't know people weren't being shown this element of the riseup pad.
Dylan: Have been going through it when they get there but not best.
Cal: When working with Ciara, the protocols are there but really stressful when trying to get hte meals out. Ciara is doing 2 jobs at once. Could do with having another person there to sort out the drivers.
Dylan: DOn't know how to solve that because already 3 people in the kitchen.
Ciara: When we have 3 people it's a lot easier. Maybe don't need another coordinator at this point. Maybe more about the chefs coming together and saying this is what we do and have a system in place, as there isn't atm.
Sean: SOme elements make sense to be included in the H&S protocol like bringing a change of clothes. COuld also make a flowchart or short video or audio recording saying how it will work. These are things you should think about before. 2 things: practical daily operations, H&S protocol (finished but coudl do with an audio guide accompinament so people get it).
Nina: Specific protocol for H&S, but also what we do for volunteers which also includes protocols. This has been worked on.
Ciara: Still unclear about the procedure for giving masks and gloves to drivers. Need to talk about now.
Sean: Can add a bit to protocol, but best to do is wash hands, get things, give it to them.
Mani: Box of gloves, 5 drivers. Have to know how many gloves to give for every drop, and masks and so on. Want to do that while touching as little as possible. Annoying and complicated.
Sean: If there is enough time between the routes being planned and the drivers arriving, could put each into bags for each driver with everything in, in a more calm environment.
- Agreeing protocols
Sean: I've finished writing after spending a lot of time on this. Could maybe have a look at what's there and agree it. Has anyone had a chance to read the riseup pad or the document I sent around earlier. Key points seperate to normal recc protocol: Length of isolation period and usage of masks. I feel these are very important and have been remote so idea is once we have this agreed protocol, we publish and just do it. No other guidelines I can find as comprehensive for solidarity projects. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19ff1LJFPSMdXb4rHTjQ2PwDyO_ObaaZn Everyone who volunteers should read it really.
Dylan: We don't have seperate teams for cooking and cleaning right now. Seperate kitchen and delivery teams ok.
Mani: Key is to communicate this to people. Really glad we have this. Good if on the main website so I can direct them to coopbrum/protocol. Better than being texted or joining forum. Worry about protocols isn't any specific point, but during deliveries what will happen is random and depends on the address. No disagreement but it has to be clear that you have to do whatever you can do and it won't always work out as nicely as we want it to.
Sergio: Were you doing this with Nick and Seb? Losing people but operations are increasing. This project cannot work if we were only 8 people in the organising team. Should be telling people to get back in, or getting new volunteers into the organising project.
Sean: Feels weird because enforcing things. Some guidance says 2 weeks after symptoms so there is a reason many govts haven't adopted that as guidance so they've had to make decisions. Had to look at what differnt govts are doing, and looking at disagreements, so was drawn out. Sam helped as well. Even though boring, has become quite emotive so was stressed. Quite confident with what I've got and nobody has provided anything different. Haven't had any conservations with people yet. Making notes on what needs to be added or removed at the moment.
Dylan: I recind my objections about the masks from the other meeting.
Sean: Masks will now be worn during food preparation and packaging. Happy to talk about it if you want reasoning. Lots of Eastern countries have adopted this, Western countries have not done. Maybe need a read-through to agree to it so people know what the reasons are. Have to hold ourselves to account. Is important thing.
Dylan: We only have a set number of masks, so should try to get people to bring their own as lots of people have them.
Sean: Masks is an important thing which will not go away. We will need to keep using them as lockdowns are stopped. Could also wear bandana or snood, because the main thing is stopping you breathing on stuff, or stopping other stuff getting on your face. Face covering or homemade masks is ok for kitchen. Better to give delivery drivers better more surgical masks.
Mani: Lots of people coming in over the next few days which don't have this info. Will mention it to every kitchen volunteer after that. How will we get through this lag?
Ciara: Don't have enough masks for chopping, packaging etc. But do agree should use when doing spooning out.
Sean: Don't need to be changed. Just a cloth mask is fine. Could use this throughout the cooking and prep process. Take off for lunch etc. then put on the same one. Could talk to you, Paul and Seb about it.
Ciara: Will read it over and we can chat about htis over Signal first thing in the morning so I can feed back to Paul and Seb
AP: Publish protocol on website
AP: Disseminate this information to volunteers and make sure they read it before they carry on
AP: Speak to Seb about protocol since chef tomorrow
- How much money we're spending on paid for food
Ciara: Breaks (big food wholesaler) - 2 orders so far and another one coming in tomorrow. Are we spending too much?
Sergio: SHould have Ben here to discuss.
Nina: I am part of finance WG.
Sean: Haven't done any pushing of fundraiser and got 6k in it. SO if there isn't any donated food, we just want to keep the project going. We can do a more public appeal if we run out of money. Wouldn't worry too much. Maybe there is a role for someone to focus on getting donations a bit more.
Mani: Me and Kae have been plugging it a lot on social media. We need a whole meeting about fundraising. Maybe should get a Patreon and have people fund it that way. Or monthly donate thing. Will take some work to make something which says this is how much it costs to run.
Nina: Need to talk about it some time.
Sergio: If you need food, spend the money. Push forward Fareshare thing.
-feedback from volunteer meeting
Mani: Made a post on the forum so you can read the summary I wrote. Questions about driver safety - some drops made them feel unsafe. Driver should have ability to say I don't want to go in there. Suggestion that first step should be return to vehivle, call backroom, have backroom call recipient. If driver doens't want to do delivery just don't do it. Useful point about doing deliveries in pairs. Mentioning it to drivers. Lots of points about expanding the project.
Sergio: Regarding expansion, we hsould be a bit more careful since we have a clear political direction. Should rely on people in organising team but should be careful when trying to engage with other people.
Dylan: Meeting went well and should do it again sometime. Maybe in 2 weeks time.
Nina: Good way to engage, and interesting discussions. Cannot expand without this.
Sergio: Could try to do it once per week as we get good feedback and try to improve processes. Could do it Weds or Thurs next week.
Proposal: We go through the H&S protocol with them in that meeting
AP: Organise next volunteer meeting - Sergio
Sean: Going to ask Leo to do it in audio form.
Sergio: Sean could explain protocol with video.
-proposal: asking the council to donate food to us via TAWS
Dylan: Asked people what BCC are doing. They are going to buy food and give it to TAWS to distribute to foodbanks. This is their whole strategy. Maybe we could ask for some of this food.
Sergio: Thought that 2 meetings ago we said we didn't want to engage. Are we reconsidering?
Dylan: Doing it on our terms.
Sergio: See the point that proposing something is differnt, if we can lead and get what we need without conditions. Still issues with legitimising their non-strategy.
Mani: Depends. If they're gonna give us all the food we want and help loads more people then fine. If only small amount of food, they will take credit so not worth it. Need to worry about direction what volunteers want to take us in. Depends on what they will give us.
Sean: Agree with Mani. The reason we're struggling is that we don't have a direction in what we want. Do we want the council to be giving everyone food? Do we want mutual aid networks doing it all? Do we want all waste food? Where do we see it as a wider food ecosystem? 2 million people in Brum and feeding 100 of them so lots of other stuff we need to interact this.
Sergio: Need a political discussion. Will be important if we want to go beyond mutual aid during this crisis. Will be economic depression and work to restore wellbeing. If we want to expand, what we do now will affect our future possibilities.
Ciara: At the moment we're sorted in where we're getting our food from. TRJFP have enough food. Good idea to find out how much the council is willing to offer.
Mani: Agree. Good to bring some politics into the discussion with the volunteers. Need enough of us in meetings. Will attract people who are into our politics. Should start heading towards what the project will be afterwards. Do more of that.
Cal: Not so much political education, more keeping the process in alignment wiht the political aims of the project. When problems come up, it's how volunteer level people respond - is it in alignment, and what do we do when that's moved away from. Uncomfortable when people were discussing gatekeeping, which is an attidude people are used to. How to address that. Volunteers may be used to doing stuff as services. COmmunicating a language makes sense to people without alienating them.
Sean: Agree with Caleb. Not at this stage yet, but think about what will happen at the end of the lockdown. Look at FNB, but also history, and questions we need to have answers to. Think about how we are different from charities. Think we need to clarify this daily with the volunteers and the recipients.
Mani: Agree. Good that you were able to respond in the meeting. Not a bad thing to talk to people with reactionary views. We need more nuance in our answer. Keep coming back to it and it will happen. There should be 4/5 of us in volunteers meetings.
Kae: Not all backroom volunteers will explain the nature on the phone.
Cal: Pushing the idea that the recipients of the food may want to volunteer. Not a binary split. WHole point of mutual aid. Language of volunteering - make it clear that people who ask for food may want to volunteer and vice versa.
Sergio: REcipients meeting or telling them to join the forum.
Next meeting: Tuesday 6:30pm```Minutes for meeting 14/04/20: https://pad.riseup.net/p/_HyaAiaduPDN9o8lhlEU
How do you make the pad visible?
Cooperation Birmingham organising meeting 14/04/20
Present: Kaeden, Paul, Dylan, Sergio, Nina, Sean
APs from this meeting:
AP: Publish protocol on social media - Kaeden
AP: Send protocol & Nina’s document email to all volunteers about Thurs - Sergio
AP: Discuss this conversation and write a brief document about how to respond to volunteers - Dylan & Mani
AP: Create a waiting list on the orders spreadsheet, including all voicemails, emails and lost calls - ?
AP: creating a doodle poll for next organising meeting and posting it on the forum, and sending it to volunteers. - Sergio.
-round up of progress on APs from previous meeting:
AP: Sol kitchen to email the cafe and ask for a formal agreement, and include Ben’s finance questions so we have in writing and they respond -Ben -> to be carried over, Ciara tell Ben Still waiting for a response
AP: Chase up custard factory and give my number -> to be carried over by Ciara - sean to keep following up
AP: Publish protocol on website Done by sam/leo/sean. also finishing off podcast
AP: Disseminate this information to volunteers and make sure they read it before they carry on
AP: Speak to Seb about protocol since chef tomorrow
AP: Organise next volunteer meeting - Sergio
-any issues arising in operations (Holiday Inn delivery, routing app traceability)
Need someone specifically in charge of sorting the rota. Cal, Arron, Ella, Mani going through emails and slotting in, but needs an admin position for emails and sorting the rota.
AP: Create clear organisational structure with roles - Sergio
Volunteers shouldn’t be added to rota if not 100% confirmed
Drivers can tick off deliveries in list view - press confirm on signature type page.
-email management
1 finance, 1 general, maybe have different email addresses - is it too late?
Need clearer instructions of categorising emails once dealt with.
Need someone or admin WG in charge of email for 1 day or 2-3 days who knows who to send emails to and how to sort.
-volunteer rota/tasks (kitchen part time roles, cleaning part time roles)
Some people struggling to stay too long, wanting to come for short cleaning shift - is it useful? Split morning/afternoon?
People seem to enjoy going through the whole process, but affirm they can just give how long they can. Minimum 3, ideal 4, maximum 5 in the kitchen for 11-5. Working well at the moment.
Cleaning is done throughout, and one cleanup at the end.
Avoid splitting shifts too often for H&S reasons - want to minimise total number in the kitchen.
Already agreed to split shifts if they can organise who to split it with.
Should not encourage but can be split in case of access needs.
Need protocol for people in the volunteer WG so they have clear priorities, e.g. rota first then emails.
AP: Discuss this conversation and write a brief document about how to respond to volunteers - Dylan & Mani
-outreach
AP: Create a waiting list on the orders spreadsheet, including all voicemails, emails and lost calls - ?
Kae: waiting list can be filled the evening before, going through the voicemails and emails that we received during the whole day and we couldn’t respond.
-finance update/fuel spreadsheet
Paul: RJF have been suggesting that we make some contribution to chefs. Didn’t give any figure but Seb said that in the past they had been giving about half the value of the food. It has been mentioned twice but in a gentle way. They also encouraged us to include their name in our social media. We’re receiving a lot of food, so half of that value would be a lot of money to give.
Sergio: this was discussed in the past and we decided we were not going to pay half or a third of the value.
Dylan: we should probably compromise to give them something.
Paul: tomorrow we need to buy new food, and whatever we don’t get from them we will have to buy at market price.
Sergio: we are a solidarity project, and RJFP also provide food to market projects like Warehouse cafe, so it’s fine for us not to give money, as it compensates with other funded projects.
-decision-making process and transparency
Sergio: so far, we don’t have clear decision-making structures and processes. We are mostly led by procedural decisions, not following a clear line of action. We should have a discussion about these issues, however there’s only 5 people in this meeting… There’s a discussion going on at the forum, but only 4 people have contributed there… So probably best way to go is to encourage attendance to meetings, and discuss it when we are more people. Agree that general SK signal group is not very democratic, as it works like a ruling group in the shadows, and we should delete it. So we only have specific wgs chats, and main discussions happen at the forum.
Dylan: create a decisions section on the forum, and update it after every meeting including decisions that were made.
Sergio: create a doodle poll to decide when the next meeting is happening.
Kae: agree, as if we decide the time of the next meeting in this meeting it’s a biased decision.
Nina: core team is very small and she’s burning out. She won’t be able to volunteer for coordination again, as she felt vere alone today. We need to take care of each other. This project is a priority only for some of us. Attendance of meetings has decreased a lot.
Dylan: they feel pretty much the same. People is really enthusiastic at the beginning of these projects, but when work needs to be done, it’s hard to keep them engaged. We should be disseminating work, but that’s also work in itself. It’s actually even more work. We need to get to a situation where it’s not on such a few people. It’s related to decision making, because as very few people are actually working, they end up taking all the decisions.
Sergio: it’s actually a feedback loop. As we are so few people, most of the procedural decisions fall on our shoulders and we end up controlling the project. So we need ways of engaging more people in organising and increase attendance to meetings. Measures: creating organisational structure to have a clear picture of roles needed, and encourage participation in meetings.
Paul: will share with volunteers the need for help at the background. Some of those people have the skills for being very useful in organising. Maybe some of the new volunteers that we’re getting are also interested, we should keep telling them to join get involved in organising.
AP: creating a doodle poll for next organising meeting and posting it on the forum, and sending it to volunteers. - Sergio.
Meeting Minutes 19.4.20
Done- Volunteer shifts management - Carlos
- Spacing up drivers shifts - Carlos
- Avoiding burnout for volunteers. Where do we need more capacity? Where do we need volunteers? - Leo
- Code of conduct is being worked on here: Code of conduct for coop brum activites - Leo - quick announcement
- Put minutes of meetings in same thread as meeting announcement - Leo - quick request
- Decisions category on forum for decisions - Leo
- Mask update : where next - Sean
- Proposal to make a regular payment to The Junk Food Project. £50 per week? A gesture of exchange for the considerable food items that have been directed to Solidarity Kitchen. - Paul
- Fareshare update and agreement on whether to go forward - Dylan
- On-going expenses and new ways to fundraise (e.g. membership, patreon) -Dylan
- Cherries - ciara
- Update on petrol spreadsheet - Ben
- Social media / gofundme - Nina
- Podcast - Sean
ToDo
Present: Leo, Nina, Sergio, Ben, Carlos, Ciara, Dylan, Kae, Paul, Sean, Dean
no
Check in
1.Volunteer shifts management
Carlos- Would like to Leaving a 7 day gap between driver shifts
Sergio - we dont have a protocol written down yet. any new points raised are useful. It's better to contact a member rather than emailing.
sergio offered to make an organisational structure and will work on it tomorrow.
Dylan- points out the existance of volunteer working group.
Leo- maybe a tech solution for rotaing, but please suggest other ideas.
2.Spacing up drivers shifts
requires seperate discussion
3.Avoiding burnout for volunteers. Where do we need more capacity? Where do we need volunteers?
Sergio- Everything happened so fast that we didn't get to properly create working groups.
Leo- tell leo and sean. theyre thinking about coop development
Carlos- having the same driver rotas means theres less disengagement and it is safer.
Nina- agreement
Leo- things to do with driver technicalities can be discussed in a different meeting.
4.Code of conduct is being worked on here: Code of conduct for coop brum activites
announcement that leo and sean are working on a code of conduct
5.Put minutes of meetings in same thread as meeting announcement
Leo- It's odd having seperate threads. Just wanted to ask if there was any preference.
Sergio- It's good having a seperate thread for minutes. Perhaps we should have both
6.Decisions category on forum for decisions
Leo-internal procedures for decision making. one thing that might be good is if we make decisions. We need a place for documenting decisions.The content can take any form appropriate for that decision.
Carlos- in agreement. For more critical decisions we should have certain people who have to be involved
Leo- there is always going to be a compromise due to the pandemic. We don't want beurocrasy but actually we want transparancy.
Sergio- We should have a meeting solely to discuss this or present a proposal beforehand.
Nina- If the decision making process/ code of conduct is general and can be expanded to other Coop Brum activities or is it specific to the SK?
leo proposal- maybe we could make a template. all important decisions are accountable in these meetings and minutes are posted publicly.
Sean- ninas issue was, our official decision making thing is a meeting. Leo wants to have them on the forum. We shouldnt have decisions being made on signal. the decision to have them on hte forum or meeting is seperate to signal.
sergio- Leos point is not that. we need to make all our decisions to be more transparent. people who just joined the forum cannot see working groups.
Leo- there is a thread on the forum describing how this works.
the proposal is- always documenting who has made important descisions on the forum.
https://testing.forum.cooperationbirmingham.org.uk/t/understanding-the-forum-working-group-catergories-access/222
Carlos- to add the that. We should always document who is responsible for making descisions. We should have a form to fill out for people who want to be involved in descision making.
Leo- IM GONNA MAKE THE TEMPLATE.
Kae- all volunteers should be allowed to make descisions we don't need a form.
CARLOS- I didnt know how to get involved, maybe this form will help with onboarding people.
Proposal passes. with addition of making template.
https://testing.forum.cooperationbirmingham.org.uk/t/about-the-decisions-category/288
This post is an wiki.
7.Mask update : where next
Sean- we had a meeting on friday, we had 5 ppl show up. MASK MAKING :) They are all actively making masks. In the health and safety protocol we reccomend masks so we should probably be giving people masks. maybe we should give out ppe packages also containing info about us and safety. Basing this off cooperation jackson protocol. made 50 masks. we could use delivery drivers to pick up masks.
issue- could be whole wing of project thats almost as big as the kitchen. We don't just need volunteers who can make masks, we need volunteers who can source materials. a lot to do with packaging and producing them. does solidaity project want to buy the masks off ppl? etc etc
Sergio-worth thinking about expanding health and saftey ppl to encompass the mask making ppl.
sergio- when we get the masks we bung them in the machine at the warehouse immedietly.
Carlos- you should be responsible for washing your own mask. Regarding materials, do we have any contacts who can provide materials? has a friend in material industry contact the person. the email address is masks@cooperationbirmingham.co.uk
12.Fareshare update and agreement on whether to go forward
fareshare want to deliver food to us. one of the things is that this agreement is only for the duration of the lockdown. we'll have to go trhough their membership process again. They do charge for deliveries, what they said in the email is that how much food we get is determined by weight. £30 A week for the amount of food we need.
Paul- £30 doesnt sound like a lot, depends on what theyll be providing. trjfp already gets their food from fareshare. I've been picking it up in my van.
Dylan- 80kg of food for £30 would cover quite a lot of what we need.
Dylan- we need to think about how to get a more regular income. for ppl who are still working from home, they might be up for giving a certain amount per week etc. if we can do this quickly that will help quite a lot.
Leo- next open meeting on finances and spending.
Sean- from the gofundme, if we do updates it emails all the ppl who have donated so far. if we announce the masks as a new project and setting up gocardless would be a good way of introducing it. it looks odd to do a fundraiser without a stretched goal and talking about future plans.
paul- we have spent £500 in the past two weeks. not including utilities, so our costs will be around £700 a week
dean- petrol cost is about £200 a week.
Ben- we dont have a projection of about how much meals cost.
ciara- ah! i was meant to do that sorry
ben- I dont know what more we need to do to get an accurate impression of how much things are costing.
Leo- maybe we cant do costing until we have a full finance meeting.
8.podcast - Sean
sean- done the first mini podcast. hasnt gone down super well- podcast is a great idea, maybe we should have a thread on the forum or a little group to discuss etc. has lots of ideas but no capacity
carlos- for the podcast for the future we could do some video instead of a podcast. when recording the podcast then maybe pop on the webcam.
nina- someone said they could do a video of the solidarity kitchen. shes super willing to go to the kitchen and film everything.
sergio- to wrap up the meeting, if everyone is okay i will create a poll and we can see when
9.Cherries (also stirchley baths)
cherries wants to bake for us, dave hampson specifically.
theyre very lovely people. they wanna make dessert for us
everyone in favour
paul- if we want to scale up the kitchen instead maybe we could start doubling up shifts in the kitchen, 2 shifts starting early in the morning and one starting in the afternoon
ciara- we can do 200 portions per shift possibly.
nina- in relationsh to delivery, we should see how many meals are actually delivered.
sean- gonna find out tomorrow if we could use stirchley baths and scale up to stirchley. the problem we have is do we have enough chefs we could trust. if we were gonna have a second kitchen doing meal.
ciara- worrying sbout chefs not having the same politics if they come in.
leo- that links to the code of conduct definitely
10.Proposal to make a regular payment to The Junk Food Project. £50 per week? A gesture of exchange for the considerable food items that
havebeen directed to Solidarity Kitchen.
13.On-going expenses and new ways to fundraise (e.g. membership, patreon)
Test GoCardless form: https://pay.gocardless.com/flow/RE000ZW1CW91TGE4K2KMH78YESTWJVC6
BEN PETROL SPREADSHEET POINT-
it turns out that backroom havent done the pretol spreadsheet for the next few days. ben has had to take all of this on last minute. it IS in the backroom protocol but people have NOT been doing it. disapointing that it hasnt been done.
leo- thinks the drivers should have to submit their own miliage- perhaps a form.
sophie- its better if we do it, its literally a five minute job but we just need to make sure we do it
nina- also thinks backroom three should do it
a lot of technical chats about the spreadsheet and the calculations.
social media/gofundme
nina- suggests to push the gofundme more on social media as less people are donating to the gofundme
sergio- we should push after we've gone cardles
kae- no pushing of it on socials
nina- let's promote it again! <3 also how long do we want to keep this project going for?
leo- it would only take a few days to get the gocardless up and running.
I withdraw my annoyance, today I realised this was because I have been editing the old version of the protocol so it wasn’t in the new one! This is all fixed now
Finance Meeting Minutes 24.04.20
Present: Ben, Kaeden, Nina, Dean, Paul
Action points from this meeting:
AP: Contact Ann to get their bank details and pass onto Ben - Paul
AP: Put labels on income/expenditure charts - Ben
AP: Put together some summary for public - Nina, Dean and Kaeden
Work distribution
I need to do all tasks involving the bank account, ie. setting up and paying expenses, updating the account spreadsheet. So I’m super grateful for all the work done on analysis / communications / admin that can be handled by other people
Accurate variable meal costs
Need input of cafe eg @Paul here, plus @insideout’s analysis (most accurate reading i have is 93p)
Dean: Assumes people will claim their petrol. There are people who aren't claiming. Used averages from last week to make cost/fuel for petrol. Different for just using reciepts or assuming people are claiming back. Utilities should be done, found out supplier Bulb, used business rates to work out standing charge plus usage. Very low. Gas isn't on all day any more, not using coffee machine. Other cost is waste cost. Everything else, food and consumables are average over the time, so round about the £1 mark is right.
Paul: Changeable factor is now getting more supplies from Small Heath foodbank and TRJFP so it could go down more. But because this is only week 4 we're just starting out. Fareshare definitely cheaper than Bookers. At the moment checking week on week whether there will be enough donations for 150 meals a day.
Paul: Need to figure out the waste charge. Hope not a massive charge and will know soon.
Fareshare: Band 1 80 Kg £30.00, Band 2 120 Kg £45.00 = 15p/meal
Ben: Based on the estimate that 140g is a meal that would be 15p/meal which sounds like it makes financial sense. Imagine this will mostly be perishable stuff rather than staples which we'd have to get elsewhere. But sounds like a more reliable source of veg basically.
Paul: Need to check whether it's majority fresh or useable. Remember 10% or so of weight will come off veg during processing e.g. feeling.
Ben: Will talk to Dylan about this.
Dean: Currently ingredients is costing 42p/meal so this is a potential saving. 15p sounds much better, but has to be right stuff.
Ben: Agree. Close the Fareshare thing for now. Need more details from Dylan about it's going to be. But do we know how much weight we need on a week by week basis? 120kg doesn't sound enough - not even half right? Can we have an estimate? How much should we ask them for?
Paul: Could go with 120kg if it's flexible. Usually about 250kg. Would need to be able to freeze week by week if we were overloaded with one product.
TRJFP - £50/wk?
Nina: NOt clear on TRJFP what's coming in.
Paul: TRJFP has given us a lot of food in terms of financial value. Very inconsistent in terms of what you get. Would be happy if there is some kind of exchange happening. Can define it over a longer period once we know where the costs are. So far there is a fair amount of range from TRJFP. Until know what Fareshare are offering hard to choose.
Dean: Doesn't have to be either/or. Feel we should be giving something to them. Gaining money over the last 14 days, so fair to compensate. Could be more, but can look at it on week by week basis. Start with £50.
Ben: Anxiety is that our cash flow is not entirely assured yet. Can go upwards later when we have more cash in the bank.
Proposal: Give TRJFP £50 initially per week. Proposal passed by consensus.
Paul: I can ask Ann how to make that payment.
Ben: If you get their bank details and send it to me.
AP: Contact Ann to get their bank details and pass onto Ben - Paul
Fixed costs
Utilities (@Insideout I have entered the data for this and come back with a suprisingly low estimate)
Mostly covered already.
Labour?
Ben: Cafe staff who are giving time to the project - is your furlough money enough without you worrying about money?
Paul: At the moment we are all furloughed on 80%. Fine for me. I can check with the other two?
Ben: We don't have tonnes of money and although this is supported by voluntary donations we want workers to get the value of their labour.
Petrol
How to square the circle of wanting the mileage spreadsheet to be a useful record of miles done, and the fact that the majority of drivers either actively don’t want to claim back money, or don’t reply to requests for bank info
Ben: More than 30 drivers last week and only had bank details for 3 or 4. Just horrible bit of work getting those and setting them up. In the end no more than 10 drivers asked for their expenses back. Good to get people's bank details as part of the driver onboarding process.
Ben: We log all the mileage in the spreadsheet. Good to have full record of miles done for stats. But majority of drivers don't claim the value. So how do we mark that so our weekly totals mean soemthing. For now have marked in red drivers not to pay. Could have a drop down thing - does this driver claim miles?
Nina: Since backroom 3 inputs the miles into the spreadsheet, and since they also contact each driver, they could ask each driver if they want to get their costs back. Could add those details. But wondering who has access to this spreadsheet right now? Have asked for postcodes. Is it secure? Can we make a secure way to give bank details? Could be a task of volunteer coordinator to report at end of day.
Ben: Backroom 3 could help with petrol stuff a bit more. Addresses and bank details will not go in a spreadsheet. Currently their address isn't stored it's the distance to their house. Been getting individually or via finance email which is more secure. COuld be standing task for backroom 3 that if the drivers wants to claim they must send their details to the finance email address. Objections?
Nina: Should provide 2 options. Struggle with checking emails. Need to be aware that all are being paid. I can update that.
Public presentation of finances
Ben: Had help from Julia who is a Gym member. Has been helping with other spreadhset stuff and made the initial public presentation things. We have all the data on the accounts spreadsheet so no point in seperate sheet to make the charts. One makes a simple pie chart. Weekly finance summary to go on website. Trying not to write this because I have enough to do. Nice job for someone else to do. Leo and Sean will put something together based on this chart. Anything else we should be presenting to the public?
Nina: Sophie was quite keen on the graphics but is gone now.
Ben: Do speak to them about it. They have a clear knack, maybe make a bit less technical.
Dean: The totals of spending and paid out are not the same.
Ben: The idea is that this would be on a weekly basis. Number should reflect that for last week, but since then have made more payments.
Dean: Doesn't say which is which in pie chart. Needs a label.
AP: Put labels on income/expenditure charts - Ben
Masks ( how can we budget for these into the kitchen, how much is available for the project to use. do we need to increase fundraiser or create secondary fundraiser)
Ben: Spun off with a flying start. These will be distributed far and wide but need to ensure enough for kitchen. How many of these reusable cloth masks do we think the project should request? I'd say 2 for every in-person physical volunteer (chef, kitchen volunteer, driver) so 1 to use and 1 in wash.
Paul: That sounds good. Had a bag gifted to us this week and doing a wash each day. At the moment 5 in the kitchen max.
Ben: Could have 10-20 masks for everyone at the cafe.
Dean: Can we send out masks to food recipients?
Kae: Already says will do in blog post.
Ben: How much should spend for fabric etc? Somewhere around the £500 mark would get the supplies thing off to a great start. Hoping next week the gofundme issues will be sorted. So would suggest £500 but not yet.
Ben: I don't think we should have a new fundraiser for the masks. But nice to have more flexibility. Prefer to keep the one gofundme but internally we budget for the mask making.
Dean: How much do we have access to?
Ben: Around £2200 cash but already around 500 has been spent by kitchen. So not nothing but around £1500/week costs.
Finance admin issues
Gofundme - we have about 2wks cash on hand (£2,200 at time of writing) but currently an issue getting more of the donated funds out of Gofundme because of their payment partner’s verification process… still waiting for final confirmation that this is all resolved which is a bit anxious-making
Ben: Because set up with org bank account it has tripped sirens. In pretty frequent contact to resolve this. But they don't process the payments themselves so everything is slow as has to go through bank support as well. Last heard I've given them all the paperwork they've asked for and they need to sign it off any day now. Haven't had any new money out for 3 weeks now. Our first lump has tided us over. Estimated next payment of 2 May would be fine if it is guaranteed. If there isn't a valid withdrawal method set up for 30 days, the campaign pauses to stop dormant campaigns. Coming up on that at the end of next week. I just have to keep nagging them. If need to I could change it to mine but don't want to go there if it will take longer.
Other points raised from analysis by @Insideout
Dean showed their screen and explained the spreadsheet and projections.
Paul: What about meals per drivers?
Dean: Not currently included. Would lower cost. Think the without is more genuine. Important to hold 142 as max
Nina: How did you do automate this?
Dean: Lots of formulas you can use.
Nina: Thank you for doing this. How to do something for social media? Happy to do it with you.
AP: Put together some summary for public - Nina, Dean and Kaeden
Ben: Good to get more volunteers engaged in finance. Easier with these cool charts and spreadsheets.
Gocardless - all sorted! We can take subscriptions now -> Report back as item for next agenda
Grant applications
Sean talked about grant to sponsor us for fabric for mask making.
Paul said there are loads of grants we could apply for and he could get them during work.
We are doing okay do far, would prefer to be less from establishment.
Fundraising
Keep up circulation on social media.
Do we need to top up from £8000 to £15000?
New kitchen could be springboard for upping donationsMinutes of Cooperation Birmingham organising meeting 26/04/2020 at 6.30pm
Present: Seb, Ben, Sergio, Nina, Cal, Steph, Dylan, Carlos, Sean, Kaeden
Action points from this meeting:
AP: Start discussion on organisational structure/ participate on the forum - Sergio and all
AP: Talk to Sam and share cafe code of conduct on the thread - Seb
Agenda:
Quick updates from working groups, kitchen and mask making project
Kitchen
Seb: Kitchen is going really good. 140 (or 150 with drivers) is maximum at the moment including time to prepare. This is optimum. Works well. Almost always on time with food. Well organised. Best with more volunteers in the kitchen as less stressed.
Dylan: We're going ahead with Fareshare. Sent them form and our questions today, hopefully soon we'll be able to get the food, but not sure what the price will be.
Seb: Are you able to choose things?
Dylan: You can say what kind of thing but not e.g. broccoli. Surplus food.
Finance
Nina: Making a publication about finance. Went through spreadsheets checking projections at finance meeting. £800 in one day made the projection go up. Went through expenses from the kitchen. Doing good for now. Some issues with recieving money from Gofundme platform. Not that many expenses at the moment, so ok, but we don't have the full £8k in our bank account. Matter of bureaucracy.
Ben: Other thing that came up was we looked through all the graphs. If there's anyone who isn't up to speed with what finances are like, if you click on the finance spreadsheet, linked through a thread on the forum, it's a good place to understand because there are nice graphs which are easy to interpret.
Dylan: Asked Soph if would make a blog post talking through the graphs and stuff?
Nina: Yes, was working with them this morning on that. Suggested as a facebook post but could be converted into something bigger. Describing our approach finance wise and explaining how we are getting funding, how it is being distributed, how many meals, what is the projection. Could also be blog post.
Ben: This or next week I'll speak to Paul B about grant money. That will obviously come back to a full meeting before decisions are made.
Sean: Applied for a £500 grant from Outkit foundation, and asked for material to make masks with.
Volunteer coordination
Cal: This week I met with Arron and Ella and Sean and talked about making the processes for rotas and onboarding people more systematic. I know Carlos and Leo have been making this app to automate this process. At the moment some are trying to get up to speed, but it is very labour intensive right now. Chat about checking in with volunteers more and keeping track of and updating records. New email for volunteers now, and a lot (about 60 people) people who haven't been onboarded but are waiting to be assigned roles, but not had time yet.
Nina: Issue with drivers with issues going to backroom 2 rather than backroom 3. More a rota thing.
Mask making
Sean: Still quite rocky. 2 days ago 30 masks were collected. I'm struggling as am only point person so haven't onboarded everyone. Trying to get a sewing machine or two distributed and speaking to people at Fiz Pop or from a school to loan to some people. Blog post is up. Went to Labout party meeing today and mentioned it there. Would be good to have the masks in packs with info about them, the guidelines, and Coop Brum, rather than just masks. Getting there. Trying to rely on new people who are engaged and excited about that.
Seb: Would maybe like sewing machine, but true we're all doing a lot.
Dylan: Wondering if some kitchen volunteers might like to make masks too.
Sean: Would be good to update about podcast if we had more going on, which we don't right now.
Working in collaboration with smaller groups and looking at the idae of cell network kitchens opening up in the community - Toqueer
Dylan: Came up in volunteer meeting. We've been saying this for a while. Sean has been talking to Stirchley Baths so maybe it is worth talking about.
Cal: The MIX is active right now, Hassain cooking for young asylum seekers who normally cook at the mix. Worth knowing that this is existing.
Sergio: After a few weeks we are starting to consolidate a nice structure. Possible for us to support other smaller kitchens with our WGs if they wish to integrate so we could offer support e.g. with logistics or admin or finance. Planned a bit in the structure I will show later.
Seb: Are there other kitchens? Custard factory? Are we able to choose who we cooperate with? Are there guidelines?
Sean: At the moment, Stirchley Baths is empty so it would be us expanding, which is a different case to the mix. SOunds like not all the equipment is there, but industrial kitchen which was used by changekitchen. Person who runs that now working for TAWS - they are not going to do that anymore. We have permission from council and stirchley baths to use that, but would need to provide proof of risk assessment and other things. Olly said his wife has cheffing experience and would be up for working in that kitchen. That led onto conversation about Northfield YMCA which current houses homeless people. Have delivered to a couple of people there already. The YMCA are saying they don't have a kitchen in their building but are housing all these vulnerable adults. Would we like to provide them hot meals? Would be goodwill towards council and Olly. But want to be sure we're providing a service that the YMCA should be providing - probably responsibility of council. SOudns like 60 people who currrenely aren't getting regular food. Not a worry of not enough people to provide food for.
Seb: Is the Stirchley Bath kitchen something we can use soon?
Sean: Yes, we can use as soon as we provide the info they want.
Dylan: Plenty of demand on waiting list. Not a concern. My concern would be that it doesn't just add work for more chefs and volunteers, but also adds more logistical work, so would need a whole seperate rota. How would you do the backroom? How would you decide which one goes where? Cookign different things? Where would the Fareshare go?
Sergio: Also suggest we have a seperate logistics WG. Is it possible with our capacity? We will see and then try to decide.
Sean: Think there's probably a lot of capacity to get more volunteers if we get the kitchen. In Stirchley so many people. Need a whole meeting about how the council.
Seb: Make sure anyone who takes on organising knows how labour intensive it is.
Sergio. Agree with Sean. Proposal that we ask for something.
Dylan: Could stand to be more outwardly political. Could be less chill vibes. Worth coming up with simple principles of the project e.g. mutual aid over charity, sustainability, etc. which would give us some basis on which we'd say yes or no to people and what would guide us in decisions. Get people to buy into this or not, so we don't lose sight of the political ideas of the project. Can people do some logistics feasability work and think about the council.
Seb: Would be good to be more political.
Sean: Suggest we organise a meeting with Olly and his wife to talk about it. Needs other chefs to step up. If anyone wants to be in this meeting, please say and I'll make a DM group on the forum so it actually happens.
Seb, Dylan, Ben also want to be involved.
10th of May electrical shutdown - Ciara
Seb: Usually happened on Mondays when the cafe was closed. If we want to serve food that day it will need to be another kitchen. Otherwise a day of rest.
Carlos: Would be a problem with drivers to be from south birmingham.
Dylan: Need a plan for if we don't have second kitchen e.g. publicity.
Sean: Could prepare and have additional drivers to make it easier.
Seb: Other solution is that the day before there would be two shifts. One in the morning cooking 150 portions then evening cooking 150 portions if anyone is up for this.
Ben: Does this mean we can't go in the building at all? Can we still use the building for distribution?
Cal: Should set a deadline for when we'll know e.g. a week to sort this out, otherwise it's shit to let people know they won't have food at short notice.
Dylan: By this time next week we need to have discussed this amongst ourselves and review it at the next meeting.
Email from Digbeth Arts Space - Ciara (read out email)
Sergio: Really cool that they and D who is organising pub quiz, are raising funds for us.
Organisational structure and expansion plan (inc stirchley baths)- Sergio
Sergio shared his screen. Need admin and outreach WG, logistics and processes WG. Include mailing list in comms and SM group.
Stirchley SK, community allotment, emotional support, and more could be supported. If we agree with this, should talk about defining roles for each WG.
Dylan: Looks good to me and agree with it. Does anyone disagree?
Seb: Looks really nice.
Sergio: Suggest I make a post on the forum with this diagram and see if we can get some feedback. After that we restructure the WGs and recruit so they can all work semi-autonomously.
AP: Start that discussion/ participate on the forum - Sergio and all.
Seb: Are all of these operating at the moment?
Sergio: Logistics and processes is new.
Dylan: You are operations of SK.
Adopting a code of conduct/welfare provision - Dylan
Dylan: There is already a thread discussing this on the forum, but want to adopt a code of conduct - ties in but is separate from principles. About how people behave within the project. Wondered if there was some welfare support, if people have a difficult situation. Have a little process we can have a look if there are interpersonal issues. Worth thinking about these things in advance.
Seb: Is this proposal about who would like to start writing it down?
Dylan: To let people know that we're thinking about it and can be involved.
Seb: Could base this on our code of conduct from HR group of cafe.
AP: Talk to Sam and share cafe code of conduct on the thread - Seb
Update on the organisation app being developed - Carlos
Carlos shared his screen. Leo and I are developing an app for the rota and maybe anything else we want to automate. It will have several roles. Would create new password. Mainly 2 roles at the moment. "shift managers" and people who just want to see their shifts. Can see upcoming shifts, can create new shifts. Can create rota and calendar. Now a matter of adding more forms. Idea is that we create shift and assign people to it. System will send email with link so they can confirm so no need to call. Some bugs but just need more time. Couldn't find anything that was already out there.
Sergio: Would we be able to see a calendar with all shifts? Would people be able to apply for shifts? Rota showing taken/free and can apply from it and confirmed by someone then that shift is automatically assigned.
Carlos: Will start releasing next week. Calendar will take more time. At the moment there is not volunteers applying for shift but can be done. Could be min and max and ideal numbers of volunteers. If it was not complete people could sign up to it.
Cal: This is amazing. Today I've been phoning and getting people who've done shifts and ask whether they want to do repeating shifts. Quite a lot of people who want to do the same every week. How would they do that if they wanted to do kitchen every Tuesday? How would the system fit people who already have that agreement? The interface looks just like the screen for UC.
Carlos: Can even make a tick box for repeating. Think it is still a good idea for volunteers to confirm every week.
Cal: Automated emails are great. People have such particular situations. Good to have lots of confirmation. Easy way for app to transfer to real person to person conversation. How do you bridge the gap if someone needs to get hold of someone? Trying to minimise work but good to talk to people.
Carlos: Could have contact details and database and notes for each volunteer. Created Coop Brum github group with Leo, Carlos, Stu, and others who want to contribute. Open source. Talked with Leo on how to host this? Calculations would be £20-30 pcm. For future.
Seb: Did we decide on any press releases? How do we make this happen?
Dylan: Bo wrote a press release, will need to be updated now. Needs some work put in and put their phone number down to talk to the press.
Sean: Me and Kae have been talking about social media. I was trying to do my AP of onboarding people so they can be added to a Whatsapp group. Also some people talking about film. Would like to talk to those people soon. At the moment only Kae and Seb doing SM stuff and there are lots of people who want to volunteer here.
Dylan: Could ask Bo if he could carry on with that job. People could take blog content for press releases?
Seb: Do we have any contacts in newspapers? How do we do it? Do we ask them to print?
Cal: I've done a press release once. You write a condensed summary of the situation. Make it quite snappy. The journalist writes the article but you write an invitation to talk to you.
Dylan: There is a contact for differnt things on most news websites. Did have old list. But quite easy to contact people we need to . If people want to take this on it's cool.
Seb: Good to have contacts and friendly journalists.
Dylan: Can discuss this on Bo's thread about the press release on the forum.
Action points from last meeting:
None recorded
Action Points:
Next meeting: Sunday 3rd May 6:30pm
Minutes 3rd May
Facilitation (Sean)
Minutes (Ben)
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Go-round.
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Discussion on organisational structure
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Sergio & Nina have worked on structure and redefined WGs (with specific tasks for each group), can all be found on the forum now. Proposal is still open. AP - PLEASE ALL LOOK ON FORUM AND COMMENT. Political meeting on Friday (? - poll on forum) to decide our opinions more clearly and decide on proposal.
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Sean - At the moment the proposed structure hasn’t been applied to the volunteer database.
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Dylan - It’s currently not clear what WG the average volunteer would be in [Sergio responds: Operations]. It would be good to have a list of who’s in what WG
- Forum participation
- Sean is encouraging volunteers to get involved and this is somewhat working
- Code of conduct
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Dylan has been working on, initial draft is on the forum. Based on Common Ground CoC. Has started developing a process for dealing with conflicts / grievances etc. This needs people to be responsible for it, it would be a very small job initially but could become a big job. The CoC makes reference to this support group but it doesn’t yet exist. AP - THREAD TO BE CREATED ABOUT THIS - DYLAN
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Ben - we should try to adopt a CoC at the Friday meeting
- Working group updates
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Kitchen: Ciara - the ‘special meals’ all add up and we don’t know whether people have actual allergies or just preferences - this impacts on what gets prepared. Don’t know the medical needs of kitchen volunteers, or if they can only work a part shift. Dylan - the Fareshare supply is getting underway. We can get a limited amount with free delivery (150kg) but the rest we have to pay delivery for. Kitchen need to decide the extra quantity we need to sign up for (previously we settled on ~240kg / wk). It will be £87-107 a week depending on the exact qty.
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Seb - Cherry Reds could produce another ~70 meals a day, the people working there are on board
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Sergio - we would need another 4-5 drivers and perhaps more from Fareshare
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Sean - it was an AP from previous meeting to discuss Stirchley Baths. This is on the forum but in a private chat; Dylan made a list of things we would need to sort out for a new venue. Sean has emailed SB to check the next step. The council own the baths so using it might give them cover for their failure of provision. As Cooperation Birmingham we might need to scope out how things would work with CR if they wanted to go back to work.
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Carlos - for big decisions we should try to be as quorate as possible. It seems like some discussions are private on an arbitrary basis. Sean - it was an AP to organise a meeting with Olly (councillor) and we have to navigate sensitively the question of how we deal with the council on a public forum.
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Seb - SB would be a bigger project because we would need more people to prep/chef, but at CR we have the people working there already; all we would have to do is provide supplies and drivers. Not sure if they would be able to do it every day.
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AP: MAKE FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR CHERRY REDS - DYLAN
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Sean - we still need to have an understanding regarding publicity, what it would mean long term, etc. Need to have a conversation with the owner and understand the grounds on which we are doing it with them, what the exit strategy is. We had an advantageous start because we began in a worker co-op kitchen but it might be different in a place with their own priorities.
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Carlos - identified two groups of issues with scaling up: operational, and relationships with other agents/entities who may not align
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Volunteer coordination: Sean - been working on the database. It now has everyone in one big database. If you’re not on it, just fill yourself in. It should make it easier to search for people for specific shifts. Demonstrated how the database works. People can be assigned to certain roles. If not marked active or inactive then they are prospects who need to be contacted and processed. If a volunteer is needed we can just search for (eg) active kitchen volunteers active on a Wednesday. We can also deactivate and reactivate people according to availability / illness etc. Sean is the only one working on this currently. There is a to-do list with a volunteer coordination guide for onboarding people. AP - COOKING, TECH, DELIVERY WG PEOPLE TO FILL OUT GUIDE TO FILL IN GAPS.
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AP - SERGIO TO GIVE CARLOS DB ACCESS TO LOOK INTO APP INTEGRATION.
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AP - LOOK INTO GDPR COMPLIANCE
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Nina - what criteria do we use regarding recipients that we can’t contact for multiple days? Will create a forum thread to discuss.
- Tubs
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Ciara - we are spending a lot of money on single use plastic, can we get them back
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Dean - has taken some back from recipients. All we need to do is clean them and make them fit for use
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Carlos - there are H&S implications for getting tubs back off recipients. Zero contact is preferable; we can make a safe protocol (similar to our delivery protocol) to reduce risk but it will always be there.
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Sean - it does feature in our hygiene guide
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Carlos - as a driver it’s not clear how it would work, carry bags with him?
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Ciara - we can give drivers a bin bag to leave in car, then take packaging with a gloved hand and bring the bag to the kitchen. Just need to make the process and add to onboarding guide.
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Archiving process - AP: BEN TO RAISE ON FORUM
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Refreshments / fruit for volunteers. Nina - this has been requested by volunteers. There are food handling implications of course.
Ciara - we don’t know what we’re going to get every day so can’t necessarily provide fruit. People drink water.
Seb - it could be quite a high cost if we have to buy it
- Certificate
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Ciara - we should write a certificate for volunteers in case they get stopped by the police.
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Carlos - has an NHS volunteer certificate, it is easy to get and has no requirements (they have too many volunteers!). Can be useful for parking too. AP - CARLOS TO SHARE DETAILS OF WHERE TO GET IT. AP - PROVIDE VOLUNTEERS WITH A CERTIFICATE. Sean to add to the to do list
- Routific
- Amelia - we are coming to the end of the free tool. It is a useful tool but is very expensive. They seem to be offering 3 months free now. AP - AMELIA TO CONTACT THEM THROUGH THE CHAT TO MAKE SURE THEY DON’T CUT US OFF
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BVSC/NN voicemail. AP - BEN TO CALL THEM BACK TO GET ADDED TO THE MAP
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BBC contact.
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Dylan - Ciara is going to do the BBC interview. Seb took minutes from the press meeting immediately prior to this full meeting.
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Ben - wasn’t necesarily proposing that we have a single press contact role but that’s not a bad idea
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Dylan - have some materials to empower people to take the intiative with press contacts
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Sean - there is our social media and press group, which will be having a meeting at some point
- App update
- Carlos - is starting a new job so will have less time to work on it.
- Electical shutdown 10th May
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Ciara - we don’t know the exact details but we will work out a way to get all the meals cooked
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Seb - Cherry Reds may help
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Ciara - will find out what people need food on Sunday as well, and all the food will go out on Saturday (ie. 2 portions each)
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Kae - not everyone will have a microwave so it should be food that can be eaten cool.
- Free conversation
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Dean - we have a lot of money, we have only spent a third of it so far. Are there other things we can spend it on or expand into.
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Sergio - what to call people rather than volunteers [suggestions: comrades, participants…]
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Sean - can spend money on a physical thing, posters, shirts etc.
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Sergio - agrees it would be good to give shirts to members and also to sell to the public for fundraising
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Ciara - how do you actually become a member …
Update on my action point:
good news - Routific have now extended our account for free till 4 August.
I don’t know to what extent we think that the Solidarity Kitchen will still be going past 4 August, but if it is, it would be worth thinking about how we fund further use either of Routific or a similar service. I can’t see us operating - especially if we are aiming to grow our reach - without something like this ongoing. I’m happy to do some research and set out the options, but obviously no use my doing that if we won’t be operating a delivery project past 4 August! So can you please let me know your thoughts.
5 Likes
Great, thanks for taking care of that. It doesn’t seem that likely to me that we’ll still be delivering food in August but really who knows. (of course we will still be doing something, which might still have a delivery element)
Earlier on we were planning to shift to coopcycle, which is an app designed for delivery cooperatives… it would take a lot of the need for Routific away and would also streamline the ordering process (allowing those who could to place orders online / on the app) rather than calling. I think this has fallen by the wayside at the moment but I think if it gets to June and we’re still delivering, then building our own more permanent delivery tech infrastructure should be a priority, rather than relying on Routific’s goodwill for too much longer
Minutes for Cooperation Birmingham “Let’s talk politics!” meeting, Friday 8th of May 2020 6.30pm
Attendees: Sean, Sergio, Nina, Dylan, Mani, Ben, Leo, Kaeden, Nick
Agenda:
Aims and principles of Coop Brum (what are we?)
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Dylan: Principles I proposed to start:
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- We sure resources equally.
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- Anyone can join and participate acc principles. No discrimination.
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3)Transparency.
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4)Eliminate hierarchies.
Mani: Doesn’t seem big enough. Needs a statement of intent as well as how we operate.
Sergio: Like them, but not enough. Principles could be integrated with code of conduct. Should work harder on our goals organising in 2 directions: mutual aid/ material relief & base-building.
Nick: Some principles don’t belong in code of conduct but are an extension of the aims. Recognition of how it doesn’t affect people equally.
Dylan: Could say “make own assessment of what their need is”. Response to gatekeeping and having to tell your life story before you get given anything you need. Not same thing as code of conduct. Creating criteria by which we could decide whether to work with someone or not. How we should behave in general not just as individuals.
Mani: Think code of conduct and principles are different things. Need to decide now what we want. Can have aims and code of conduct, or use principles to merge how Dylan’s saying. Either could work. Agree better to be specific about what we mean. We can inform people with it. The way foodbanks stop people getting food is bullshit classism and we’re here to do differently. Think this is different from a code of conduct which is less political.
Sergio: Shouldn’t merge with code of conduct. But could have Aims, and Principles, not exactly the same.
Dylan: Aims and principles follow on from one another. I think code of conduct is quite political as well, because how you respond to behaviour is political. If it’s clear it’s more reassuring to have something like that.
Proposal from Sergio: One code of conduct already done. Aims and Principles. Two documents put on forum for work.
Nick: We should write them up, not so anyone can edit but comment. Have a deadline, and a version we’re OK to show to people actively asking for feedback. Should have a process of building a shared viewpoint around it. Should have another meeting to finalise.
Sergio: Say these will be our foundational documents and share an advanced draft, share as much as possible e.g. email to all volunteers, plenty of time for people to amend. Say we will have one more meeting and deadline and if nothing big comes up it will be approved then.
Leo: Code of conduct has a mission statement so should be seperate.
Sergio: Ensure there is not excessive overlap with code of conduct and principles. Happy to help you actually.
AP : Everyone should look on the thread and comment - everyone
AP: Work on the draft from comments - Dylan, Sergio, Leo, Nick
Organisational structure, shall we adopt it?
Sergio: Made amends from Dylan’s suggestions. Been on forum for 10 days or more. I think it’s quite urgent because it makes changes to our structure, seperating working groups and operations, with idea for expansion, so could we approve it now? Operations could include emotional support group, community allotment.
Nick: Does it have anything in the structure for any built-in accountability and responsibility?
Sergio: Not specified yet, but should be something along that line.
How should working groups be organised internally? Compromise between autonomy and responsibility
Sergio: Should we set a coordinator for each WG so someone is accountable. Trying to avoid what’s happening with volunteer coordination. Cool that so many people helping, but nobody coordinating. Could be a rotating role, and that person would be responsible for the tasks of that WG.
Nick: Think that’s a good plan, maybe not perfect and can come back to it, but good to be getting on with. Consider how many people who are not in this are engaged. Maybe elect people.
Dylan: Like idea of coordinators for each WG. Could thin out that volunteer coord chat a bit. Needs to be a more active process with people looking at what they want to be responsible for. Should make more of an effort to recruit people specifically for the WGs. For some of us it will mean less work but more clear what we can do. Be better for me to not have ambiguity. Happy to sort out logistics & process WG and not think about the volunteer stuff.
Sergio: Think about how to transition, need certain people in each WG and a coordinator. Not super easy, so how do we transition? Forum should include new WG, and somewhere have description of tasks. On Sunday we elect a coordinator for each WG.
Dylan: Agree.
Leo: easy to do
Sergio: Leo to implement changes to the forum about working groups
Nina: coordinator should be someone who knows the work
Ben: we have process backwards.[I propose we first say who is in which WG, then give some time before those people who elect a coordinator, more democratic.
Sergio: Working group descriptions are too vauge.
Challenging volunteering narrative
Sergio: Think we change and challenge the label, suggests charity, so should find better way of referring to people working on this project.
Mani: Participant sounds good. Think we should move to a membership model. Unclear whether we can have participants who are not members.
Nina: Carlos suggested members and comrades.
Sergio: I like members. Can we vote?
Sean: Don’t think it’s that simple. If we move to a membership model we need to define what Coop Brum is. For co-ops there are benefits for members: wage, access to housing. But what we’re trying to do is a co-op not operating in capitalism. The economic side doesn’t make sense. We need some overarching structure. At the moment there are aspects similar to charity, but want to deepen its benefits.
Mani: 2 different questions. E.g. half price veg box, 10% discount on food, priority booking for being members. Free meal, etc.
Sergio: We can be transformative as we have no gatekeeping. If we try to implement membership there is soft gatekeeping.
Dylan: Tension between this and sense of responsibility. This and gatekeeping seem different to me. Asking someone to be a member and have mutuality feels different.
Nick: Having an expectation or responsibility based on someone’s ability is different from beauracratic gatekeeping. Commons weren’t just a free for all.
Sergio: Yes of course not the same. But should consider how to make the boundaries easier to penetrate.
Mani: Should be a membership organisation because we need money and it buys people in. Can be used to buy things and do more things. Not saying you’ll only be able to get benefits if you’re a member.
Sean: On the discounts thing, we could do things which are genuinely helpful to people in the city. Would need to do those things before we persuade people to do discounts. Might need to think outside of the box in terms of benefits. Don’t think mambership model is scaleable. Solidarity fund would be used up straight away. We could have something like they have in Rojava or Jackson like a political union or body which can create more commons.
Sergio: Like it more now. Think we’re not in that phase yet. Still a crisis response, so should be as open as possible now, and discussion for future can be transition to membership org
Kaeden: Cooperators?
Sean: Suggestive of particular sorts of co-ops and don’t like.
Dylan: Fellow Brummies?
Vote: Participants (5) or cooperators (4)?
Participants decided, including recipients of meals.
Funding criteria
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Sergio: Should establish this in line with our principles. Said we don’t want to recieve money from public institutions, but some exceptions depending on circumstance. When is it OK?
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Nick: Think we should take money from anyone as long as the strings don’t conflate with our principles. Just be transparent.
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Sean: Agree but need to make sure we are organising with our aims. Already selling ourselves short, see wage calculation. They are offsetting the costs of our time and the cafe to us. Should only get funding if we see a directional gain for our volunteers.
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Sergio: Agree with Sean, but hard to establish criteria right now, so can work on a case by case basis. Make sure there is something in it for us.
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Dylan: Strings attached are my main concern. A lot of grants say you need to do XYZ or prove things for charities. Not happy accepting money when you have to do monitoring forms and such. Check on what the terms are. Wrote prefer not to say on many forms.
Infrastructure project
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Dylan: Now in chat between mutual aid groups. Happy to send link.
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Nina: Was on international call 3 weeks ago and a lot from London, someone from Glasgow. If these people are not in the call tomorrow, would be good to contact them.
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Sergio: SUper interesting and exciting, would like to be in group.