Collaborating with SPEC

[gusaus]

The Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective (SPEC) is an open learning organization that helps individuals and communities become catalysts for positive change. SPEC's mission is to empower individuals to become globally-minded change agents by helping them learn the essential skills required to build sustainable careers and make a positive impact in their communities.

They aim to shape the next generation of leaders who will need to tackle the complex challenges facing society. SPEC achieves this aim through research, mentorship, training, work experience, service-learning, and events for people from underrepresented backgrounds, underserved communities, non-traditional backgrounds, and allies to the causes of environmental sustainability and social justice.

More info can be found here -
https://docs.specollective.org/
https://opencollective.com/spec
https://github.com/specollective

Collaboration ideas and discussions

We've been talking to @jtorreggiani about collaborating with SPEC after coming across these notes from Open Collective Foundation's monthly community forum last November.

Since that time we've discussed a variety of collaborations (see specollective/collaboratory#1 (comment)) but I'd like to use 'this' discussion to solidify the collaboration with OpenProducer.

We can start by reviewing this thread on collaboration from #openproducer (Open Collective's Slack) and surfacing some of that discussion here.

[gusaus]

Here's the detailed overview that @jtorreggiani provided in our related Slack discussion. I'll follow up with my reply in the next comment.

Here is a breakdown of our current contributors, research associates (RA), and mentors that I imagine would collaborate with OpenProducer on projects.

SPEC Core Team (currently on our payroll)

1 full-time operations lead (available to support coordination and project management)
2 part-time web developers (RA - recent bootcamp graduates)
1 part-time UX design research (RA - recent bootcamp graduate)
1 part-time data analyst (RA - actively learning data science)

SPEC Network (currently volunteering as mentors and may be available for contract work)

3 senior software engineers
1 senior designer
1 senior UX researcher
1 senior project manager
1 senior electrical/computer engineer

SPEC Partners

Currently, our core team is working on variety of projects with support from our extended network. We have contract with RAND Corp in which the core team is currently allocated most of its time. We are in early stages of working with BuildJustly, which is an OCF sponsored collective, in Q1 2022. We are also in talks with having SPEC contributors working on the OC platform. Lastly, we are also in talks with Public Invention and Open Food Network about having SPEC contributors working on open source.
We foresee having 2 - 3 of our part-time RAs going to full-time in Q1 2022 to support these initiatives. I imagine we will be hiring more part-time RAs as we continue to grow out our mentorship and paid internship programs.

Funding

Right now, we pay our RAs $20 USD per hour and our leads ~$24/hour. We settled on these rates based on our available funding and our attempt, given our budget, to pay people as equitably as possible. As many of our contributors are career changers, early in their careers, or volunteering their time, we've so far been able to strike a balance that is mutually beneficial for SPEC and its contributors.

At SPEC, we are hoping as our capabilities and funding streams increase to be able to raise our base rates for all contributors. We imagine achieve this through a combination of donations, grants, securing service contracts, and partnering collectives paying for their time / matching SPEC's rates.

If SPEC were to provide education/training or other services like web development or design in collaboration with OpenProducer, I imagine there will be some project management overhead that would need to be distributed between SPEC and OpenProducer.

SPEC would be able to pay for some of our contributors time to initially coordinate with OpenProducer. If OpenProducer was open to covering expenses for SPEC contributors working on OpenProducer projects, that would immediately create more availability for their time. If an initial collaboration with OpenProducer was successful, I could see SPEC hiring more contributors to be able to take on more projects.

[gusaus]

Here is a breakdown of our current contributors, research associates (RA), and mentors that I imagine would collaborating with OpenProducer on projects....

I think the operations lead and project manager will be the biggest shared need across projects. That said, we could ask projects to reassess needs in this discussion and match them with SPEC contributors (after working through this issue/discussion).

If SPEC were to provide education/training or other services like web development or design in collaboration with OpenProducer, I imagine there will be some project management overhead that would need to be distributed between SPEC and OpenProducer.

SPEC would be able to pay for some of our contributors time to initially coordinate with OpenProducer

So I'm assuming the operations lead and project manager time mentioned above would be part of the overhead that SPEC could partially fund?

Honestly, it seems like SPEC could really help define our sustainability programs and services. Not only our breadth of services (see #24) but policies like our rates and how funds are allocated. I'm hoping @tonyzeoli with agency experience can help define and manage the platform service; on the project learning side, it seems like we could incorporate or repurpose what SPEC has already drafted or is defining here.

We imagine achieve this through a combination of donations, grants, securing service contracts, and partnering collectives paying for their time / matching SPEC's rates.

So OpenProducer would do the latter for projects / services where SPEC is involved.

If SPEC is involved with aspects of shaping and running OpenProducer itself, we could look at funding through donations, sponsorships, and grants. Offhand it seems like directing donor and sponsor funds to the SPEC collective would be best. OpenProducer's collective could be customized to provide services.

[gusaus]

@jtorreggiani Assuming your summary and assessment would be different compared to a few months ago when we had this discussion... can you bring us up to speed in terms of how we can collaborate now? Note the wiki pages, issues, and discussions I've been linking to on the OpenProducer side have been updated.

We have a few paid projects and programs on the table - just need to put all the pieces together and hit go!