How to work as a part of HATCH

This is a provisional procedure that has yet to be approved by the steering committee.

This procedure lays out the general rules for how people in HATCH will work together.

There are three types of people involved in HATCH:

Volunteers

Volunteers run the day-to-day business of HATCH, such as:

Volunteers will act according to any relevant procedure, where it exists.

If there is no procedure for something that needs to be done, and time allows, one or more volunteers should draft a procedure and consult with the steering committee before then putting that procedure into practice.

Volunteers can act without following adopted procedure: * If time is short, and procedure will be drafted after the fact * If the steering committee is unavailable, and the relevant procedure has been drafted but not adopted * If the thing that needs to be done is likely to be a one-off

Procedure is meant to be read as a guideline, rather than a hard-and-fast protocol. We use procedure to ensure that knowledge of how to do things is shared amongst volunteers, and to avoid replicating oppression in our work.

How volunteers communicate

Volunteers will communicate with one another via a secure text chat that all volunteers can see. The secure text chat can be split into several channels, but all volunteers must be able to see all channels.

Any conversations between HATCH volunteers about general HATCH business that happen outside of the volunteer chat should be summarised in the volunteer chat.

Personal information collected by HATCH must not be shared in the volunteer chat. If volunteers in HATCH need to share personal information with one another, they must message each other directly using secure, “self-deleting” messages that last no longer than a week.

Decision-making

There is no formal decision-making procedure.

Urgent decisions might sometimes be made by a smaller group than normal.

There is no formal definition of “minor”, “medium” or “major”, except that “minor” decisions should generally be those with few long-term consequences. Be reasonable.

Organisational norms

The following are guidelines on how we can work together sustainably. They are not hard-and-fast rules.

Officers

Officers are members of HATCH collective Ltd., a company limited by guarantee that exists to support the activities of HATCH collective. It is the duty of officers to notify the government of any changes to how HATCH collective Ltd. functions, and to file regular accounts with Companies House and/or HMRC.

Officers will follow legal procedures, which are procedures that strictly relate to the legal obligations of HATCH collective Ltd. and do not have to be approved by steering.

Steering Committee

The steering committee is consulted on new procedure, and can also be consulted on any other business relating to HATCH.