Governance
Bread Cooperative is a worker-owned organisation. There is no CEO and no outside shareholders. The people who do the work are the people who make the decisions. This section documents the principles we operate by and the processes we use to govern ourselves.
How we make decisions
Section titled “How we make decisions”Decisions are made collectively rather than by any single person. Everyday work is coordinated in weekly standups and an open community call, while larger choices about strategy, budgets, membership, and the direction of our tools are deliberated and made together. Our aim is simple: the people affected by a decision should have a say in it.
Two documents set out how this works in practice:
- Bread Constitution: our shared purpose and guiding principles
- Operational Annex: membership, responsibilities, and financial governance
Starting as a contributor
Section titled “Starting as a contributor”Governance sits with the core team: the contributors who take on ongoing responsibility for the cooperative’s work and become signers on the shared treasury. Nobody starts there. Everyone begins by contributing.
New contributors get involved on specific pieces of work, paid or volunteer, continuous or one-off. Once you have contributed for a while and shown that you work well in a cooperative setting, an existing core team member can nominate you to join the core team. That is the point at which you take part in the decisions that govern the cooperative.
To see how to take that first step, read the Contributors page.