FAQ

The Sunbeam City is an online cooperative that runs a Mastodon instance and a wiki. To make the governing of the Sunbeam City Cooperative transparent, the coop uses several other services: Open Collective, Loomio, and a Matrix chat.

The purpose of the Sunbeam City Cooperative is to promote the values of the solarpunk movement (as defined in our Values and Mission Statement) by investing in and running technologies that empower users, educating and spreading awareness of the solarpunk movement, providing mutual aid for its members, and providing support for other groups who share our values.

We believe in values of the solarpunk movement, which we believe to include:

• Post-Capitalism;
• Social, economic and ecological justice;
• Permaculture, green/appropriate tech, and sustainable living;
• Cooperation, community and mutual aid;
• Decentralisation, democracy and self-empowerment;
• Knowledge-sharing.

The entirety of our Values and Mission Statement is available here.

The coop membership consists of paying and / or labour-contributing members. See how to become a coop member below.

Members can create a proposal for the general membership to approve or refuse on our Loomio, but most of the discussion prior to the proposal is carried out in our Matrix chat.

Day-to-day tasks are carried out by action squads. There are currently two: Admin and Tech.

For more details, read our Governance Policy.

Our code of conduct is available here and applies to all members regardless of their role.

Each of our services serves a different purpose.

• Mastodon is a social network and people can join even if they don't want to be part of the cooperative. A Mastodon quick start guide is available here.
• Wiki is used for documenting the work that the coop does and for building a knowledge base for a solarpunk and DIY projects. We use DokuWiki.
• Open Collective allows us to collect membership fees and to be transparent about how we spend our money. More about Open Collective here.
• Matrix chat room is where anyone can observe and offer their opinion on issues concerning the cooperative, although the actual decisions are decided by the coop members. If you're not yet sure about joining the coop but you're interested, join our chat.
  More about Matrix here.

1. Contact a member of a Administration & Community Action Squad (find members here) indicating your interest.
2. Sign up for OpenCollective and back the Sunbeam City Cooperative. Include a link to your Mastodon account on your OC profile so we know who you are.
3. Let the Admin AS know that you've completed all the steps, so that you can be approved on Loomio and start voting!

Don't forget to join the Matrix room to keep an eye on new developments.

If you'd rather not use your real name, you don't have to.

Option A: Apply for a position to the current members of the action squad you're interested in. If all of them agree, congratulations - you're a member!

Option B: Start a proposal on Loomio (or have another member start it for you) to become a AS member. If the proposal gets twice as many Agrees to Disagrees from the general membership, you become a member of the action squad.

If you do not yet have an account but would like to contribute, please contact a member of the administration community who will be able to create an account for you.