MakeSense Governance : A SenseRocket to reach the stars!

The need for a more inclusive form of governance

In 2014, a reflection on the governance of MakeSense started for three main reasons.

Firstly, MakeSense, the community (made of those who organise MakeSense events and develop MakeSense in their city), the fulltime team and all of the activities, had been growing very fast. The decisions we were making were increasingly impactful and the issues we were facing were more and more complex. We needed a governance body with the legitimacy to make important decisions in such a context.

Secondly, we were aware that we needed to find a way for the community and the fulltime team to have a say when these important decisions were being made.

Thirdly, we needed to create a governance body that was efficient in the long run and independent from individuals. No strategic decision should indeed be done by one single person and alldecisions need to be more transparent.

There isn’t any “copy paste” option neither for a governance model, nor for a legal or economic model and hence we had to ask ourselves the right questions, look for inspirations and prototype!

A 1st prototype was done in 2014 with the objective to create and experiment a new decision tool for the MakeSense community to build key orientations : The SenseRocket was born! A key inspiration for us was Disco Soupe and their Discotheque.

We launched it with this video.

There was a call for application and the SenseRocket started with 32 people in a closed Facebook Group. Several discussions took place during that first year, but few decisions were made and we noticed that not all members were committing the same amount of time to the group.

From v1 to v2

Learning from this first version, we worked with the members of the V1 to iterate and design a V2 of the SenseRocket. One of the practical improvements that we had to make was to adopt a tool to help us make decisions collectively. We started using Loomio to takedecisions about the V2 of the SenseRocket. To know more about Loomio, here is a great article published on the Ouishare Magazine.

We also wanted to give a more official and important strategic role to the SenseRocket.

The purpose of the SenseRocket is to make the MakeSense strategy open and accessible to members of the community and to strengthen international cooperation.

Concretely, the SenseRocket (SR) is the legal representative of the MakeSense association (french legal status) — representing MakeSense’s international community. This involves a large amount of responsibility and a number of rights and duties.

How does the SenseRocket fit into the MakeSense ecosystem and what is its scope?

• MakeSense, the non profit in France that also plays the role of global Headquarters, is an organisation with no CEO. There is still a legal president (myself), a treasurer (Lea Zasvlasky) and a general secretary (Alizee Lozach’meur) but they have no strategic decision making right or role; these are more administrative roles. The strategy decided by the SenseRocket is implemented by an executive team.
• The businesses affiliated to MakeSense (see the article on the legal and business model) are legally bound with MakeSense non profit with a partnership and licensing system. Our existing and potential new financial sponsors have challenged us, saying that there should be more safeguards to prevent any individual owning one of these businesses today from deciding one day to stop paying the license fee to MakeSense despite having benefited from the MakeSense brand to launch business activities.
• We are now creating MakeSense legal entities abroad. MakeSense has a role in these new legal entities, therefore extending the scope of action of the SenseRocket.

Having MakeSense as a board member of all the legal entities (in France or abroad) with a veto right on some key decisions like the change or removal of the licensing system or the modification of the social mission secures the link between MakeSense and the businesses in the very long term. This change is currently in progress, we will tell more about it when it is done. Such a move has only been possible thanks to the dedication, commitment and boldness of the entrepreneurs who created these businesses! When these legal changes will be complete the SenseRocket will also have rights and duties regarding these entities.

So here is how the SenseRocket V2 works!

1. Who is part of the SenseRocket?

There are 17 seats. Seats are assigned for a one year term. 8 seats are for volunteers from the MakeSense community, 4 seats for the 4 Social Businesses affiliated to MakeSense, 4 seats for people from the fulltime team, and 1 seat for 1 one of the co-founders (Christian or myself). Why 17? We need an odd number, we need enough seats to represent the different groups and we tried to be less than in the v1 as it seems like we were too many to make it work.

Please meet the members of the current SenseRocket!

Here is the list of the selection criteria weighted :

• Knowledge of MakeSense and contribution to the MakeSense community (30%)
• Level of activity & contribution in the past 6 months (25%)
• Location in a key region for MakeSense (20%)
• Having kickstarted something new that has been replicated in other hotspots / is still active (15%)
• Contribution to MakeSense’s powered by (10%)

An application process is launched once a year and the applications are reviewed by the members of the current SenseRocket.

3. What are the duties of the members?

• Have some time (6 to 8 hours/month) to dedicate to this new mission
• Ensure confidentiality of any information disclosed in the SenseRocket except when the members themselves agree on sharing information externally.
• Attend monthly hangouts to follow up on key topics and vote on decisions
• Not only talk in the SenseRocket group but also embody MakeSense in their hotspot, in the community and within the society
• Respect the SenseRocket manifesto
• Respect the decision making rules

The members sign a contract with MakeSense stating all this!

4. How does the SenseRocket operate?

• Roles

Two members are named to be the barmen each month for a 1-month term. The responsibilities of the barmen are to prepare and facilitate the monthly Hangout, make sure everyone is aware of the ongoing discussions and decisions, and share the outputs to the community every 3 months.

• Tools

o A 1-hour hangout meeting every month

o Emergency hangouts if needed for urgent topics.

o Ongoing discussions and decision making on Loomio following certain rules (among them: a proposal needs 60% of vote to pass and needs at least 51 % of people to vote)

o A Facebook group to communicate about hangouts and meetings

5. What does the SenseRocket talk about?

The members discuss strategic topics leading to decisions (yes/no) or new frameworks. Those topics are related to local and global development of MakeSense, the platform and the tools, strategies to involve people all around the world, global partnerships, funding strategies, etc …

Some decisions are linked to some legal requirements like validating the strategy and budget once a year, voting for the President of all the legal entities, and so on.

Why frameworks?

Typically, when an international organisation is facing a challenging situation, the solutions will be complex and will depend on local context. Frameworks provide some guidelines, historical facts and key constraints to keep in mind when facing a specific situation (Partnering with the public administration of a city/country for example). They help an organisation make the right decisions autonomously while taking into account the specificities of the local context.

Here are some of the discussions, frameworks and decisions that have taken place within the SenseRocket V2 :

• Do we create a MakeSense non profit in Senegal? Yes and we have decided who will be the members of the board of MakeSense Senegal
• Validation of the 2016 Strategy
• Creation and validation of the MakeSense Partnership Manifesto
• Do we seize a potential opportunity to have a fulltime Community Developer in new country? -> Yes to explore the opportunity with some key requirements to verify
• Discussion about the visual identity of MakeSense and validation of a process to work on it

What are the next challenges?

Our main challenge today is probably to avoid a disconnection between the SenseRocket and the community. It is the duty of the members of the SenseRocket to maintain a continuous connection with the community in the following two ways : listen and bring up the topics that need to be discussed in the SenseRocket and share what is being discussed and decided in the SenseRocket.

Until now, we have published the decisions taken and discussions every quarter in the community (Facebook group).

There are probably more dynamics to imagine and definitely something to work on in the coming months!

Hope this can help other organisations design their own governance model and help improve ours! See you at the next iteration!