Guiding Principles/Spirit of this Policy: We believe that all of the work needed to run our organization is valuable and is part of our roles as co-stewards, including those that make the operational wheels run to keep our programmatic work flowing, and that by having all staff participate in operations/administrative work deepens our collective appreciation of that work. We also believe that having all staff supporting our "operational and administrative work" helps cultivate a more resilient, dynamic, and accountable worker self-directed organization. We also believe all staff should have the opportunity to develop their skills through training in new operations roles.

Sharing Our Operations Work Policy: All core staff shall join at least one Operations Circle following their onboarding period and shall take on at least two operations roles in their first year. Staff shall strive to equitably fill in operations roles as needed by the collective by taking on roles in our annual operations audits.

What Counts as an Operations Circle?: Operations Circles and roles support the management of personnel and resources who carry out the core functioning of our organization as well as the development of our internal systems related to workplace democracy within the nonprofit sector. The following Circles and Roles are considered "Operations" as it relates to our Sharing our Operations Work policy:

1. Abundance CIRCLE

2. Admin CIRCLE

3. Communications CIRCLE

4. Financial CIRCLE

5. Grants CIRCLE

6. Internal Resilience CIRCLE

7. Legal Cafe Volunteer Coordinator:

8. Volunteer and Intern Management Circle

Fellows Exemption: Fellows (that is, those staff members whose positions are being funded by a post-law school "fellowship" grant (like Skadden or Equal Justice Works) may be exempted from this requirement if their fellowship requires them to spend all or substantially all of their time on programmatic work and their programmatic work for which they are funded doesn't include workplace democracy, nonprofit leadership skills, or their fellowship proposal does not include learning or practicing democratic leadership and management.

06-04-2025: Added per "PROPOSAL: Operations Requirement" (SC)