Inside Catalyst, April 29: one month old
Catalyst has changed its structure and mission. This blog shares what we’ve been thinking about this last week. It’s written by me but the input comes from:
- Ellie Hale: co-director at Catalyst — weaving and bringing coherence
- Megan Gray: co-director at Catalyst — currently focused on transitioning operations.
I used this form to get their input.
Feeling the fullness of being independent
This is our first month operating as an independent CIC! It’s a huge milestone.
The conversations we’re now having feel qualitatively different to before. This is exciting and energising. Although we enjoyed a lot of freedom and benefits under our CAST incubation, having direct responsibility for things like our banking, insurance, tech stack and policies means we can be really intentional about designing what’s right for Catalyst specifically. So we’re appreciating the ownership of those decisions.
Trying to consciously shape a culture
We are committed to working in a values-led way that shares the power to shape culture. The 3 directors are taking part in a course on White Supremacy traits and this week we joined a session exploring the ‘sense of urgency’ that is so prevalent in everyone’s workplaces. The course is giving us a chance to reflect and make tangible steps to doing things in different and better ways.
Testing new financial processes
Megan is still deep into the set up of the new organisation. This week was our first experience of running payroll and making payments from our new bank account. Everything like this feels scary and difficult the first thing you do it, and it didn’t go off entirely perfectly, but we managed it. We’re also testing our new financial procedures for the first time, making sure we share understanding and that they feel right for us. We made some decisions around key things in our procedures and agreed how long to test them for before reviewing (for example, regularity of payment runs).
Making ethical tech choices
Migrating and setting up our tech tools isn’t necessarily the most fun thing in the world. But even the un-sexiest decisions are opportunities for us to live our values and practice walking the talk of our new vision. For instance, our virtual assistant Anita did a thorough piece of due diligence research into which e-signing tool we should use.
Researching ethical records
They researched cost, usability and alignment with our needs. Then they researched the ethical records of the providers, including environmental impact and animal welfare, worker rights (e.g. cross-referencing company statements with media stories and employee reviews on Glassdoor), tax conduct and company ethos (e.g. commitments to community, EDI and radical business/operating models).
Using Ethical Consumer magazine’s rating system
We’ve borrowed these categories from the wonderful Ethical Consumer magazine’s rating system, which sadly doesn’t cover much digital software currently, hence needing a DIY approach. We intend to iterate and refine this approach for our whole tech stack. It won’t be perfect, but dedicating attention and resource to ethical procurement means it’ll be a bit more ‘liberatory’ than it would have been otherwise. We’d love to know what categories other organisations consider important and review against!
We chose Dropbox Sign as our contract signing tool.
Supporting conversations about risk
We’re creating a lean but effective structure for recording risks. We’re trying to do this in a way that supports and inspires people to engage with ‘risk’ as a living conversation rather than as a document produced to satisfy particular stakeholders.
Huge thanks to Anders Wulff, a member of our recently disbanded steering group, who helped me research and select the right insurance provider and cover.
Hello from Spain
A note from Ellie: I’m currently working from Spain, cat-sitting for Tori Ellaway of CAST. The sun, and being immersed in a different culture with subtly different priorities, are making me happy.
