Civics Ecosystem Cooperative

1.1 Name

The organisation shall be known as the Civics Ecosystem Cooperative (the Cooperative, or CEC). The name reflects both the scope — the civic ecosystem as a whole — and the mode of work: building the infrastructure, formal and informal, that the ecosystem runs on.

1.2 What “civic infrastructure” means

The Cooperative uses “infrastructure” to mean any foundational resource that civic organisations share a need for but should not have to build independently. Two kinds:

• Formal infrastructure — technical tools, open-source software, data standards, APIs, and interoperability specifications. The hard layer that democratic operations run on. Examples: membership CRMs, internal voting platforms, electoral registration toolkits, donation processing systems, volunteer coordination software.
• Informal infrastructure — facilitation knowledge, citizens jury methodologies, community organising patterns, training materials, shared institutional practice, and documentation. The soft layer that democratic participation depends on. Examples: participatory budgeting facilitation guides, deliberation frameworks, onboarding resources for new parties or independent candidates, post-election retrospectives.

Both kinds are equally within scope. Both are currently duplicated at enormous collective cost. Both are the Cooperative’s legitimate concern.

1.3 Purpose

• To build, maintain, and freely distribute open-source tools and infrastructure — formal and informal — that serve civic organisations and individuals across the political and community spectrum.
• To reduce the technical, financial, and knowledge barriers facing political parties, community groups, neighbourhood councils, independent candidates, unions, mutual aid networks, and advocacy organisations.
• To demonstrate and promote participatory democratic practices through the Cooperative’s own operation — while remaining open to the plurality of democratic and civic governance traditions that exist across cultures.
• To function as a sustainable worker cooperative in which contribution — financial or labour — is the basis of membership and governance.
• To persist as a shared commons through periods of political disagreement, serving the ecosystem’s infrastructure needs regardless of the political relationships between its member organisations’ affiliates.
• To ensure that the tools and knowledge built by the Cooperative are accessible — in terms of language, technical literacy, and cost — to the broadest possible range of civic actors.

1.4 Founding Principles

• Ecosystem stewardship. The Cooperative serves the health of the civic ecosystem as a whole. Its outputs must be available to all eligible organisations regardless of political affiliation. No tool or resource may be designed to advantage any single party or movement.
• Infrastructure before product. The Cooperative prioritises foundational, shared, pre-competitive resources over bespoke solutions. What can be built once and used by all should be.
• Open by default. All outputs are open source under licences permitting free use, modification, and redistribution. Proprietary exceptions require a supermajority member vote.
• One member, one vote. Governance is individual. No organisation holds votes. Contribution level does not alter voting weight.
• Labour and capital are equal entry points. Contributing code, facilitation, documentation, design, community outreach, translation, accessibility review, or other recognised labour is equivalent to financial contribution as a basis for membership. Technical skills are not a prerequisite for participation.
• Non-discrimination. Membership and participation in the Cooperative are open to all individuals regardless of nationality, language, cultural background, economic status, political tradition, or form of civic engagement. The Cooperative does not privilege one democratic tradition over another as a condition of participation.
• Democratic pluralism. The Cooperative builds tools for electoral party democracy because that is the context it was born from. It acknowledges that this is one form of democratic participation among many — including consensus governance, deliberative assemblies, community self-governance, mutual aid, and cooperative organisation. Its tools and knowledge should be adaptable across these traditions, not locked to one.
• Mutual aid as democratic practice. Mutual aid — communities organising to meet each other’s needs directly — is a legitimate and historically significant form of civic and democratic participation, not merely a charitable activity. The Cooperative treats it as such.
• Accessible by design. Tools and knowledge produced by the Cooperative should meet recognised accessibility standards, support multiple languages where resources allow, and be usable by people with varying levels of technical literacy.
• Transparent affiliation. Members may declare organisational affiliation. Affiliations are visible to all members. They confer no additional rights.
• Demonstrate what we build. The Cooperative itself operates by participatory budgeting and deliberative process, serving as a live proof of concept for the practices and tools it develops.
• Structural persistence. The Cooperative is designed to outlast any particular political configuration. Its governance, funding, and infrastructure must be resilient to changes in the political relationships between parties whose members participate in it.

2.1 Individuals only

The Cooperative has individual members, not organisational members. Political parties, unions, NGOs, and community groups are not members of the Cooperative. They may fund it, use its outputs, and send their people to join as individuals — but the organisation itself holds no seat, no vote, and no governance role.

2.2 Entry pathways

2.3 Organisational affiliation and transparency

Contributing Members may declare an organisational affiliation. Declarations are voluntary but strongly encouraged. All affiliation data is visible to all members. The Cooperative publishes an aggregate affiliation summary before each governance vote. Affiliation is a transparency mechanism — not a disqualification mechanism and not a source of additional rights.

2.4 Conflict of interest

2.5 Membership maintenance

• Contributing Member status is renewed each cycle by maintaining the minimum contribution threshold — financial, labour, or combined.
• Members who do not meet the threshold revert to Observer status and may re-enter via either pathway.
• There is no penalty for lapsing. The Cooperative recognises that civic contribution is often episodic.

3.1 Governing principle

The Cooperative uses three complementary governance mechanisms, each operating at a different frequency and scale. The goal is democratic legitimacy without participation fatigue — members are asked to engage meaningfully but not constantly.

The governance model is designed to be respectful of members’ mental bandwidth. Democratic legitimacy does not require constant voting. The mechanisms here distribute participation across the membership over time rather than demanding universal engagement with every decision. This principle should guide any future evolution of the governance model: if a proposed mechanism increases the burden on members without a clear democratic benefit, it should be reconsidered.

3.2 Tier 1 — Strategic Assembly

The Strategic Assembly convenes every two years and is the Cooperative’s primary expression of collective member will. All Contributing Members participate. It is the one occasion on which the full membership votes together — kept infrequent to preserve its weight and encourage genuine engagement rather than routine approval.

• Sets the Cooperative’s overall direction and priorities for the coming two-year period.
• Approves the budget parameters, eligibility criteria, and individual-mode thresholds within which Sortition Panels will operate during the coming period.
• Elects the Standing Committee.
• Reviews and ratifies any Charter amendments proposed since the previous Assembly. Charter changes require a two-thirds supermajority with a 30% participation quorum.
• Receives the Standing Committee’s report on the preceding period, including financial audit results and project outcomes.
• Direction decisions require a simple majority.
• Advisory dissent. Any Contributing Member or group of Contributing Members who voted against a direction decision may submit a written dissent within 14 days of the Assembly. Dissents are published to all members and appended to the Assembly record. Dissent does not override the decision but creates a formal record of minority views that Sortition Panels must acknowledge when their deliberations touch on the dissented direction.

3.2.1 Governance hierarchy

The following hierarchy resolves conflicts between governance tiers. Higher tiers take precedence over lower tiers. Within a tier, later decisions take precedence over earlier ones.

• Tier 1 — Charter. The founding Charter and any subsequent amendments ratified by the Strategic Assembly. Supersedes all other instruments.
• Tier 2 — Strategic Assembly directions. Budget parameters, eligibility criteria, and direction decisions set at the most recent Strategic Assembly. Sortition Panels operate within these parameters and may not override them.
• Tier 3 — Sortition Panel recommendations. Project funding decisions made by Sortition Panels within the parameters set by the Strategic Assembly. Once the ratification window closes without a successful objection, panel recommendations are binding on the Standing Committee for disbursement purposes.
• Tier 4 — Standing Committee decisions. Administrative decisions made by the Standing Committee within the scope of its role. Cannot override Sortition Panel recommendations or Strategic Assembly directions.

Where a Sortition Panel’s recommendation would require exceeding a budget parameter set by the Strategic Assembly, the panel must seek Standing Committee confirmation before finalising its recommendation. The Standing Committee may approve a minor variance (up to 10% of the parameter) without returning to the Strategic Assembly; larger variances require an extraordinary Assembly motion.

3.3 Tier 2 — Sortition Panels

Project-level decisions are made by randomly selected panels of Contributing Members — a form of sortition, the same democratic mechanism used by citizens assemblies globally. Random selection distributes the governance burden, avoids the capture risk of self-selected committees, and produces more considered decisions through deliberation rather than instant voting.

3.3.1 Panel composition

• Each project cycle, a panel of 7 to 12 Contributing Members is selected by random draw from the full Contributing Member pool. Panel size scales with membership — the Standing Committee sets the exact number each cycle within this range.
• No member may serve on consecutive panels. Members who served in the previous cycle are excluded from the draw and return to the pool after one cycle’s rest.
• No more than two panel members may share an organisational affiliation. If the random draw produces a panel that violates this, affected members are redrawn until the constraint is met.
• Panel service is expected but not compulsory. A member drawn who cannot serve may decline; the Standing Committee redraws for that position. Repeated declines without cause may be noted in the member’s record.
• Minimum membership threshold. Sortition panels require a minimum of 50 Contributing Members to function meaningfully. Below this threshold, the Cooperative operates under open deliberation — all Contributing Members participate in project decisions directly, with the same ratification window applying. The Standing Committee monitors membership levels each cycle. When the 50-member threshold is first reached and sustained for one full cycle, the transition to sortition is confirmed by the Standing Committee and announced to all members before the next proposal window opens. The transition does not require a Strategic Assembly vote. If membership subsequently falls below 50, the Standing Committee may revert to open deliberation for that cycle with notice to all members.

3.3.2 Panel process

• Proposal window (8 weeks). Any Contributing Member — or external team with a member sponsor — may submit a project proposal. All proposals are public from submission. Observer Members may comment but not propose.
• Eligibility review (2 weeks). The Standing Committee checks proposals against Article IV criteria. Process gate only — cannot reject on political or ideological grounds. Rejections published with reasons, subject to member challenge within 7 days.
• Panel deliberation (4 weeks). The selected panel receives all eligible proposals. Proposers present their case. Panel members ask questions publicly — the deliberation record is visible to all members. The panel may request additional evidence, invite expert input, and ask proposers to refine submissions. Observer and Contributing Members may submit written questions to the panel but do not direct its deliberations.
• Panel recommendation. The panel produces a funded project list with reasoned recommendations — explaining why each project was funded or not. Recommendations are expressed as proportional allocations across the available cycle budget. The reasoning is published to all members.
• Ratification window (14 days). The full Contributing Membership reviews the panel’s recommendations and reasoning. If fewer than one-third of Contributing Members formally object, the recommendation stands and disbursement begins. If one-third or more object, the recommendation returns to the panel for reconsideration with the objections recorded. The panel may revise or reaffirm; the revised recommendation is final.
• Milestone disbursement. Funded projects receive tranches against published milestones. Milestone reports are public. Undelivered milestones trigger Standing Committee review before further tranches are released. Unused funds return to the next cycle pool.

3.3.3 Individual mode — unchanged

Any Contributing Member may independently back a specific eligible project outside the panel process. Individual-mode allocations activate when a threshold of members or total pledged amount — set by the Strategic Assembly — is met within the cycle window. Contributions pledged to a project that does not reach threshold are returned to contributing members. Individual mode operates in parallel with the sortition process and is not subject to panel ratification.

3.4 Tier 3 — Standing Committee

• Five Contributing Members elected at each Strategic Assembly for a two-year term.
• No more than two members may share an organisational affiliation.
• Responsibilities: administers eligibility reviews; manages the fund account with dual-signatory requirements above a threshold set by the Strategic Assembly; coordinates the annual audit; manages the sortition draw process; and publishes cycle retrospectives.
• Holds no power over project funding decisions. Its administrative role is explicitly separate from the substantive governance exercised by Sortition Panels and the Strategic Assembly.
• Standing Committee decisions may be challenged by any Contributing Member and overturned by simple majority vote of Contributing Members.
• The Standing Committee publishes an annual report to all members regardless of whether a Strategic Assembly is convening that year.

3.5 Audit and financial controls

• An independent financial audit is conducted annually and published to all members.
• The audit is tabled at the Strategic Assembly for member review.
• No revenue may flow back to any founding organisation, political party, or Standing Committee member in their organisational capacity.

Eligible projects fall across two categories of civic infrastructure. Both are equally within scope and equally legitimate uses of the Cooperative’s resources.

4.1 Ineligibility criteria

• Projects that primarily benefit a single political party’s electoral position, candidate selection, or fundraising capacity.
• Projects that are primarily commercial in nature, where the Cooperative’s resources would substitute for commercial investment.
• Projects whose outputs would be proprietary or restricted from free use by other civic organisations.
• Projects that would restrict or disadvantage political participation by any legal party, movement, or candidate.

• Individual member contributions — financial contributions from Contributing Members, whether arriving directly or via a party’s Member-Directed Community Fund.
• Organisational funding — grants, donations, or sponsorships from organisations. All organisational funding publicly disclosed. Organisational funders receive no governance rights.
• Grant income — applications to public or philanthropic grant programmes aligned with the Cooperative’s purpose.
• Service agreements — where the Cooperative provides maintenance or support services for tools it has built, on terms approved by the membership.

The Cooperative maintains a ring-fenced project fund account separate from any operational account, with independent co-signatories required for disbursements above a threshold set by the membership. An independent financial audit is conducted annually and published to all members before the next cycle opens. No revenue may flow back to any founding organisation, political party, or Standing Committee member in their organisational capacity.

6.1 Relationship to the Party Members Fund

Some parties may establish a Member-Directed Community Fund (Party Members Fund) through which their members can direct contributions to the Cooperative among other eligible destinations. This is one of several possible funding mechanisms — not the primary or defining one. The party’s administrative role gives it no governance standing. If a party dissolves its Fund or its members choose to direct contributions elsewhere, the Cooperative continues unaffected.

This separation means the Cooperative persists through changes in party priorities, political relationships between parties, and electoral cycles. The infrastructure it maintains continues regardless of which parties trust each other or choose to participate.

6.2 Incorporation pathway

6.3 Dissolution

• Dissolution requires a two-thirds supermajority of Contributing Members with a 50% participation quorum.
• A minimum six-month wind-down period is required to honour existing project commitments.
• On dissolution, all assets and intellectual property are transferred to a compatible open-source civic organisation as determined by member vote. No assets may be distributed to any political party or commercial entity.

This Charter was written within the Australian civic context. The problems it addresses — duplicated party infrastructure costs, NationBuilder dependency, barriers to new political entrants, knowledge loss — are real and immediate in that context. The governance mechanisms it proposes — participatory budgeting, citizens juries, individual membership, one member one vote — reflect democratic practices with currency in Australian civil society.

If the Cooperative or its tools are adopted in other jurisdictions, or if its membership expands to include people from different civic traditions, the following questions would need to be revisited by the membership of that time. This note does not answer them. It flags them honestly so they are not overlooked.

7.1 Different electoral and party frameworks — and other member organizations

The Party Members Fund amendment is explicitly designed for the Australian registered party system and references AEC compliance requirements. In other jurisdictions, the equivalent instrument would need to reflect different electoral laws, party registration frameworks, and disclosure obligations. The CEC Charter itself is written to be jurisdiction-neutral, but the PMF amendment is not and should not pretend to be.

Beyond jurisdictional adaptation, the PMF principles — members contribute, members govern, the organization designs but cannot control outcomes — apply naturally to unions, cooperatives, professional associations, and other democratically-structured membership organizations. A union could adopt a "Union Members Fund" with the same architecture: the union designs the governance policy, members operate it, mid-cycle protection prevents interference from either side. The eligible purposes would differ (a union fund might support worker solidarity projects, community organizing, or shared infrastructure rather than party-adjacent civic work), but the structural principles remain sound. This adaptation would require organization-specific legal drafting but no fundamental redesign of the model.

7.2 Plurality of democratic traditions

Electoral multi-party competition is one democratic tradition. Others — consensus governance common in many Pacific and Indigenous traditions, deliberative assemblies, sortition, village and neighbourhood governance, cooperative self-governance — are equally legitimate expressions of the right to participate in community decisions. If the Cooperative’s membership expands to include people from these traditions, the governance model itself — currently built on majority-vote participatory budgeting — may need to be revisited or made more flexible. A supermajority requirement for structural change is a partial concession to consensus principles; it may not be sufficient.

7.3 Contexts where civic participation carries personal risk

In some countries and contexts, membership of political organisations, participation in civic databases, or association with political parties carries personal risk — including state surveillance, legal jeopardy, or social harm. Tools built by the Cooperative that handle membership data, voting records, or political affiliation must be designed with these risks in mind if they are to be used internationally. Privacy by design, data minimisation, and user control over personal data are not optional features in these contexts — they are safety requirements. Any international deployment of CEC-built tools should include an explicit privacy and digital rights review.

7.4 Language and accessibility

The Cooperative’s founding documents are in English. Its tools, at launch, will likely be built in English. This is a practical constraint, not a values statement. If the Cooperative grows beyond English-speaking contexts, meaningful participation requires translation — of documents, interfaces, and facilitation processes — not merely token multilingual support. The accessibility principle in Article 1.4 commits the Cooperative to this aspiration. Delivering on it will require deliberate resource allocation by the membership.

7.5 Cooperative legal structures

Worker cooperative incorporation varies significantly across jurisdictions. The legal structure available in Australia may not be available, recognised, or appropriate elsewhere. Any international expansion would require local legal advice on the most appropriate equivalent entity structure in the relevant jurisdiction.

7.6 Mutual aid and non-electoral civic traditions

In many communities — particularly those with histories of exclusion from formal political institutions — mutual aid networks, community associations, and informal governance structures are the primary democratic institutions, more immediate and trusted than electoral parties. If the Cooperative expands to serve these communities, it should do so as a learner, not as an exporter of a particular democratic model. The tools and knowledge it builds should be offered as resources, not prescriptions.

7.7 Digital rights, data privacy, and political data — flagged gap

This Charter does not yet contain explicit provisions governing the privacy and ownership of member data, the handling of political affiliation records, or the data rights of people who use tools built by the Cooperative. This is a deliberate deferral, not an oversight — these questions are complex, jurisdiction-specific, and best resolved by the founding membership rather than pre-written into a draft Charter.

However, they must be resolved before the first governance cycle opens. Political affiliation data is sensitive in every jurisdiction, and acutely so in some. Under UDHR Article 12, people have a right to privacy that extends to their political associations. Under emerging data rights frameworks in many countries, individuals have rights over their own data including the right to access, correct, and delete it. The Cooperative’s tools — membership databases, voting records, coordination platforms — will handle all of these categories.

The founding membership should address at minimum: who owns member data; what happens to that data on dissolution; what privacy standards govern tools built by the Cooperative; whether tools built for use in higher-risk jurisdictions require additional privacy protections by design; and how data minimisation principles apply to membership and governance records.

7.8 Consensus and deliberative governance within the Cooperative itself — flagged gap

The Cooperative’s internal governance currently uses majority-vote participatory budgeting and a supermajority threshold for structural decisions. This reflects one democratic tradition. As membership grows and diversifies — particularly if it includes people from consensus governance backgrounds — the question of whether the governance model itself should evolve will arise.

This Charter does not prescribe an answer. It flags the question so it is not overlooked. The supermajority requirement for structural change provides some protection against rapid shifts, but the founding membership should discuss explicitly whether additional consensus mechanisms — for example, extended deliberation periods before structural votes, or formal objection and response processes — are appropriate as the Cooperative matures.

7.9 Insolvency, asset protection, and the relationship with party funds — flagged gap

The Party Members Fund amendment includes provisions for what happens to Fund assets if a party becomes insolvent or dissolves — including a recommendation to establish Fund accounts on trust terms and a named fallback transferee. These provisions name the Civics Ecosystem Cooperative as a default transferee where it exists as an incorporated entity.

This creates a dependency worth flagging. If the CEC is not yet incorporated when a party wind-up occurs, the fallback chain in the PMF amendment defaults to a registered charity with compatible purposes. The CEC’s incorporation timeline (Article VI) should therefore be treated as operationally significant — the faster the CEC incorporates, the stronger the protection for PMF assets across all adopting parties.

More broadly, the question of asset protection across jurisdictions is unresolved. Australian insolvency law governs the PMF provisions as written. If the CEC expands internationally, or if parties in other jurisdictions adopt equivalent instruments, the interaction between local insolvency law, trust structuring options, and cross-border asset transfer will require jurisdiction-specific legal advice. This Charter does not address those questions — it flags them for the membership and any future international adaptation effort.