Call for Expressions of Interest: Community of Practice development for Community Tech
Promising Trouble is looking for a freelance community building specialist to facilitate the creation of a Community Tech community of practice.
Expressions of Interest due by 9am GMT, 30 November 2022 by email to jobs@promisingtrouble.net
Budget and timing
In 2022: £6,000
We are looking for someone to start as soon as possible, as a bridge while we make a permanent hire, working from now until February 2023.
These figures include VAT.
About the Community Tech project
Community technologies give power to and generate benefit for communities. Our programme of work combines funding, research, and advocacy to build the field – initially in England, with an ambition to broaden out across the United Kingdom and beyond.
Promising Trouble runs the secretariat and research strand for the Community Tech programme of work, currently fully funded by Power to Change. We are working to build a network of funders to support and grow the field.
Activity to date includes:
Future planned activity in 2022/23 includes:
Two additional funding opportunities (specifics tbc)
A Green Tech playbook for community organisations
Development of a community of practice to support community tech practitioners
Policy influencing programme, evidenced by additional research
A programme of events and digital content to engage other potential funders and to grow the community tech ecosystem
Developing relationships with an aligned community of thinkers, makers, and doers, wherever they are based
What we need
A significant part of the Community Tech programme for 2023 will be the development of a community of practice. This will be open to organisations that are funded through the Makers and Maintainers Fund, and part of their grant is intended to support their active participation in the community. It will also be open to other organisations working in or interested in community tech, and will form a major part of our aim to grow the community tech sector.
We are recruiting a community manager to set up and facilitate the community throughout 2023, but before they are in post we want to get started on scoping what it might look like and how it will work by:
consulting community tech creators and users on what they want and need from a community of practice
exploring a range of options for organising and operating the community of practice
developing a sign-up and onboarding process
exploring open source and ethical software that we could use to facilitate the community of practice
Ways of working
We are a fully remote team that currently uses Slack and Zoom for day-to-day communication, and a range of digital tools including Asana, Miro, and Google Workspace. This freelance contract will be based in and collaborate with the Secretariat.
About you
We’re looking for expressions of interest from individuals or small teams with expertise in designing and developing communities of practice.
You will have experience in working to develop a community remotely, and knowledge and expertise in tools and techniques that facilitate the setting up, growth and ongoing maintenance of a remote community.
You’ll be digitally savvy, and ideally have an interest in and some connections within the community tech ecosystem – either with community businesses or as part of the broader alternative technology world. Ideally, you’d be ready to start work immediately, and work through to January 2023.
How to submit an expression of interest
Please send a short document (no more than 4 slides or A4 pages in total) to jobs@promisingtrouble.net with the following information:
Tell us about you – your previous experience of community development and management, your connection to the community tech landscape, and why you’re interested in this opportunity (no more than 1 page)
We need a plan that sets out how we will bring newly funded organisations together, understand what the community tech sector needs, and how to sew the seeds of a collaborative and creative community. Over two pages, tell us how you would go about creating this, and some options for delivering it. This should also include information about open source, ethical or alt-tech tools and platforms that you suggest we might use to run the community
Lastly, tell us about time and money. We’d like to know your day rate and how you would propose to allocate your time.
About Promising Trouble
Promising Trouble is a social enterprise whose work puts community power at the heart of technology and innovation. Our work centres equity and social justice, with a network of clients and associates distributed internationally. With our sister organisation, Careful Industries, our mission is to make sure more people have the chance to shape, inform and create new technologies.
Our Values
Care is the organising principle for everything we do: care for and about people and the planet, combined with a rigorous and diligent approach to investigating uncertainty.
We are constantly learning, always curious, and strive to be inclusive and accepting.
We champion careful innovation and feminism for the 99%.
We are wayfinders not competitors.
We ask good questions, seek useful answers, and listen closely
We are impatient for change, but careful in our actions
We use our power to state the unsaid and make space for others
We look after each other so we can make careful trouble together
About Power to Change
We are the independent trust that strengthens communities through community business. We use our experience to bring partners together to fund, grow and back community business to make places thrive. We are curious and rigorous; we do, test and learn. And we are here to support community business, whatever the challenge.
Power to Change started life in 2015 with an endowment from The National Lottery Community Fund. Responding to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic we were given an additional grant of £20million in 2021 which enabled us to set out a new five-year strategy to continue to back the sector, creating the ideas, evidence, and exemplars that make the case for others to back them too.