Most Important CLN Policies, Protocols & Guidelines:
 
 
 (OLD see PDF for final version)
 
Introduction:
 
Besides the legal requirement to following the CLN top legal requirements, there are also a variety of policies, protocols, and guidelines that are internal to the CLN umbrella non-profit.  Some of these policies are mandatory that you must follow or risk initiating a long-term spin-off process to end fiscal sponsorship.  There is always more than one way to accomplish a CLN policy, it just might take doing the task twice, once for the way you want to do it, and again to report it to CLN the way that we format our systems.  Other policies are just guidelines and are optional to follow but help us all work together and make your project more successful.
 
Why Have Internal Policies?
 
The main reason we have all these internal policies, protocols, and guidelines is not to control or influence projects, but instead to help us meet our legal requirements, keep the non-profit tax exempt, build continuity, and most important build a framework for an interconnected community.  Because we are an umbrella non-profit, a lot of the sponsored projects simply are not related, and you may not even know about them.  For some projects, the only thing that binds us all together is our processes, systems, protocols, and the general way we run our organizations.  So our goal as a broad network is to have a set of processes, protocols, and guidelines that everyone follows so that we can easily synchronize, integrate, and cross organize between all the projects and programs within our umbrella networks.   
 
Types of Policies:
 
The main types of policies we  want to unify and integrate are the main functional systems for running programs and organizing within the network.  If you are not interested in learning our systems and integrate with our umbrella, that is exactly the type of reason for not being a good fit and maybe you should consider finding an other fiscal sponsor. All sponsored projects can spin-off at anytime and the CLN also can initiate a spin-off at anytime. But we feel that over time as you learn our systems and processes, that you will like them and realize the incredible benefits that we can all achieve by working collaboratively together instead of as separate unconnected groups.  
 
Examples of Policies:
 
What would happen if each fiscally sponsored project all had a different system for dealing with finances, including budgeting, tracking expenditures and income, and documenting workers and pay.  It would create chaos because it would be impossible for us to integrate all the finances together to pay our taxes correctly, and report our umbrella non-profit activities to the government, and eventually we would loose our tax-exempt status.  Additionally if we all have different procedures on documentation of meetings and decisions, or HR reporting, or internal structures and inconsistant vocabulary describing our systems, it makes it very difficult for us to keep everything synchronized and coordinated to support each individual project the level we want to.  No single project is ever going to implement every policy of the network, but our goal is that if someone chooses to help out an other fiscally sponsored project within our network, that they would see at least some of the same processes and procedures and have a sense of being from the same community because they can easily integrate themselves into a new project that otherwise could have nothing in common.
 
Vocabulary:
 
Policies - all the protocols, guidelines, systems, processes, and other regulations.
Protocols - Mandatory systems, processes and regulations.
Guidelines - Optional but highly encouraged processes and systems.
 
 
List of Most Important Policies

• Protocols:
  • 9 Top Legal Requirements (Already mentioned)
  • General Reporting
    • Annual Reporting (Already Mentions as a Top Legal Requirement)
    • General Doccumentation (Already Mentions as a Top Legal Requirement)
    • Quarterly Self-Evaluations (Already Mentioned in General Reporting Doc)
    • Regular Worker Reports (Already Mentioned in General Reporting doc)
  • Financial Tracking
    • Personnel Tracking (Already Mentions as a Top Legal Requirement)
    • Expenditures & Income (Already Mentioned in Finances Doc)
    • Donation Tracking 
  • Internal Structures
    • Internal Titles
    • Leadership Committee
    • Leadership Council
    • Leadership Representative
  • Assets Documentation
  • Decision Making
    • Documentation of Decisions
    • Meeting Minutes 
    • Official Decisions
  • Conflict of Interest Policy
  • Conflict Evolution Policy
  • Transparency Policy
  • Open Participation Policy
  • Policy Changes
    
    
    
    
• Guidelines:
  • Financial Tracking Guidlines
    • Current Bank Holdings & Assets (Already Mentioned in Finances Doc)
    • Temporal Budget (Already Mentioned in Finances Doc)
    • Budget Priorities (Already Mentioned in Finances Doc)
    • Donation Thank You
  • Use of Logos
    • Unity Flag
    • CLN Logo
  • Decision Making & Meeting Doccumentation Guidlines
    • Meeting Processes
      • Preperation
      • Standing Rules
      • Decison Structures
        
        
        
        

Brielf Descriptions of Most Important CLN Policies

• Protocols:
  • Top Legal Requirements (Already mentioned)
    • These are currently the 9 TOP Mandatory Legal Requirements that you must do to keep your Fiscal Sponsorship.  IF you haven't done these yet, there is no need to bother looking through all these additional policies, just focus on the LEGAL Requirements FIRST!
  • General Reporting
    • Annual Reporting (Already Mentions as a Top Legal Requirement)
      • 1/2 page Annual Report dew in March of each year.
    • General Doccumentation (Already Mentions as a Top Legal Requirement)
      • Doccument Everything and send it to inc@communityLIFEnetwork.org
    • Quarterly Self-Evaluations
      • Quick 1 paragraph evaluations on the progress that your project has make at meeting all the CLN Legal Requirements.
    • Regular Worker Reports
      • Send your daily or weekly work reports for what you did and how much time you worked to hr@heeo.in.
  • Financial Tracking
    • Personnel Tracking (Already Mentions as a Top Legal Requirement)
      • Talley contractors total payments on a annual basis.  If over $600 they will need a 1099 for the year.  For Employees track quarterly.
    • Expenditures & Income
      • Track expenditures and income within the online spreadsheet template.  Just do your best, and make sure to note any expenses made with cash, check, or that have odd, undiscriptive names on a bank statement.
    • Donation Tracking
      • We cannot acept annonomous donations of over $250.  In general for all donations we need the persons name and hopefully some contact information.  Make sure to give them our Tax ID so they can log tax-deductable donations.
  • Internal Structure and Titles
    • Internal Titles:
      • Sponsored Projects can create any external titles they want for any position within their project including "Executive Director".  For internal CLN disscussions and doccumentation, the highest level position within any project will be the Project Director.  No internal position name can use the term "Executive".  Other typical internal project positions can be treasure, secretary, manager, supervisor, associate, or any other position name. Technically the CLN does not have an "Executive Director", as the highest position is the "Chair of the Board".
    • Leadership Committee
      • Externally you can call your primary leadership group for your project any name you want including steering committee, or general gathering etc... Internally the highest level decision making body for each project is the Leadership Committee.  The Leadership Committee must have at least two people to make decisons.  Project Members can be part of the Leadership Committee, or you can have a seperate general members meeting for higher level decisions, but the Leadership Committee is still repsonible for legal processes and reporting.
    • Leadership Council
      • The Community LIFE Network has one single Leadership Council with representation from all Projects.  The Leadership Council will meet through conference calls as needed to support each others projects and help with overall decision making and problems or issues that come up.
    • Leadership Council Representatives
      • Each Sponsored Project must appoint at least one representative to the Leadership Council.  The Leadership Council is an on-going role and will require checking email and voting for proposals online, as well as connecting to conference calls as needed.
  • Assets Documentation
    • All assets sellable for over $50 that are purchased with CLN Sponsored Projects Budgets must be marked as follows:  "Property of CLN c/o (Sponsored Project Name)",  Along with at least one Community LIFE Network contact information: website: www.CommunityLIFEnetwork.org, email: cln@CommunityLIFEnetwork.org, Address: PO Box 20175 Stanford CA 94309, and you can optionally add project contact info too.
  • Decision Making
    •  Documentation of Decisions:
      • Any decision made by the project leadership needs to be doccumented and reported to the CLN.  Decisions do not need to be made in meetings to be offical project decisions.  Simple but important decisions like ? should be reported.
    •  Meeting Minutes
      • All general project meetings, as well as Project Leadership Committee meetings need to be doccumented in offical Meeting Minutes.  This is very simple with a note taker and needs to have the date, those present, with written proposals (bolded) and bolding the votes tabulated and wether consensus was reached.  
        •   formated (give them a template) Consensus
    • Official Decisions
      •  If a project needs to make an Offical Decision on behalf of the Network, (this would be an external decision), the decision must use the Networks offical decision making process. Basically it is as simple as striving for "Supportive Consensus", or an "Uber-Yes Vote". The system allows each meeting participant to score the proposals form a minimum of a 0-6 scale which directly corresponds to an Advanced Supportive Consensus system. 0=no-vote 1=Block 2=No 3=Concerns-Abstain  4=Willing-Abstain 5=Yes/Willing 6=Supportive Consensus/Uber-Yes
        • The highest form of voting is the 1-9 scale, put that is optional.
  • Conflict of Interest Policy
    • The Conflict of Interest Policy is very simple.  When makign decisions that can benifit yourself in anyway, you are supposed to recuse yourself from that doecision, or make sure there are at least 2 other people involved in that decision, so that it is not resting on your biais. This includes paying yourself which is not allowed.
  • Conflict Evolution Policy
    • Some organizations call this "Conflict Mediation" but we choose to focus on the evolution of the individuals within the conflicts as opposed to the "mediation" of the problemes.  When inter-personal conflicts arrise they become a Board issue, although the Project will first try to work out the issues on its own.  As long as all parties are willing to work out a means to structure a collaborative relationship, then everything will work out.  
    • For problems in general group collaboration, total loss of group trust, and stalled decision making, a project would present their collective problem to the Leadership Council for a final solution.  If the Leadership Council can't find a workable solution and is stalled, then the issue will be brought in front of the CLN Board.  If the CLN Board can't find a solution then issue will be brought to the next highest Board within the Network, and so on (through about 3+ sub-Boards) all the way up to the highest level of the "Unity Open Advisory Network" which is a public body anyone can join, and can make decisions by simple majority vote.  This would only happen if all else fails and the entire Network has ground to a halt from stalled decisions (this would be extreamily rare, as there are so many sub-advisory levels that it should never get that far, but we always plan for any potential crisis).
  • Transparency Policy
    • The entire Network is publically accountable and strives to be openly transparenet for all aspects of operations.  This means that all sponsored projects also need to be publcialy accountable and be reporting all decisions and doccumentation so that they can be avialble for review by the public as a single collection of information. This includes public transparency for all Finances and doccuments will be online for public visibility, all personell are publiclly accountable and all decisions and evaluations about personell are publically accountable.  If anyone wants to keep their legal name and private life seperate and secret from their work with our Network, that is perfectly fine, they can create an alias for use within our network.  All personally identifiable information must be kept private including addresses, emails, phone numbers, social and licence numbers, and other personally identifiable information.  Again this does not include your name, and people in leadership positions will also be expected to eventually have a public profile picture.
  • Open Participation Policy
    • Our network functions with open calaboratory systems. This means that anyone should be able to get involved in any project, minamally at an advisory level.  The Leadership Council can be a level above general membership, and advisory voting and involvmenet in a project can be required for all new people until they meet full membership criteria created by your project, but everyone at least needs to able to be involved at an advisory level.  Eventually the most important decisions of your project will be revewable online and anyone can publically make advisory votes on past deicisons for evaluation.
  • Policy Changes:
    • Changes in Policy and Protocols can happen at anytime, TOP DOWN, by the overall Network. This can be as small as a column change within financial spreadsheets, or as big as the process for paying people.  Once a policy is changed, you will only be informed if it is extreamily urgent.  Otherwize you will get an updated Packet of polices as needed.  If your project does not want to compleley integrate a particular process into your project, it is ok, as long as you create a secondary copy of your process into the networks formating so that there is fluid communication.  You just have to do the doccuemntation twice for that particular process, once for your projects internal records, and again to report to the Network.  Also if you think you have a better process, any project can always make an offical proposals of an amended or new process to the entirty of the Network.  If approved every project and organization in the network would have to change their process as well.
      
      

Guidelines (Optional)

• Financial Tracking Guidlines
  • Much of the Financial Tracking Guildlines are already disscussed within the Financial Tracking templates and at the end of this packet.
    • Current Bank Holdings & Assets
      • Make sure to update your bank holdings, espcially for the end of the year.
    • Temporal Budget
      • We encourage everyone to create a temporal budget.  It is the best way to make sure your money is being spent correctly and ensures that there is no overspending.  It also puts your budget into a format that is directly copyable into your expenditure tracking to make it fast and easy.
  • Budget Priorities
    • Technically the first Step in the Budget Approval Process is a guildlines, but it is always good to prioritize your budget escpeally when you have limited funds.
  • Donation Thank You's
    • All individual donations requesting tax-exemption require us to give the individual our tax-id number, but it is also encourage to send them a courtisy thank you letter by email or in writing.
• Use of Network & Umbrella Non-Profit Logos
  • Unity Network & Unity Flag Image:
    • The primary image that represents our overall Network of organizations is the Unity Flag, which is the representative image for the overall Unity Network and the Resource Action Multi-Organizational Entity (Ramo).  The Unity Flag represent the goal of unification between the diversity of people and movements of the world to find solutions to our common problems.  That is what we are all here to do.
      • Although it is a guildline, we encourage your project to put the Unity Flag image on every public doccument that you create, including websites, flyers, brochures, and anywhere else it seems applicable.  Again this is not a requirement but it make sure people are informed.   In fact if you are creating a legal doccument including grants or government filings, we request that you do NOT put the Unity Flag on it, and only put the CLN logo.
      • Also the Unity Flag is interactive, so feel free to get involved in updating and creating it at http://UnityFlag.net
    • The Overall website for the entire Unity Network is http://UnityNetwork.info   If applicable this would be the website that you include with the Unity Flag image.
  • Community LIFE Network logo
    • If your doccumentation can easily fit more than the Unity Flag and still look good, you are also encouraged to add in the Community LIFE Network logo.  The Community LIFE Network is the name of our Umbrella Non-Profit Network that we all legally run together.   It is important to let people know, so do include the Community LIFE Network logo on your website, all flyers, brochures and anywhre else it seems applicable. 
    • The CLN website is: http://CommunityLIFEnetwork.org
• Decision Making and Doccumentation Guidlines
  • The overall Network and the CLN have very specific decision making systems and processes.  There is no need to use these at all times, and is only required to make "offical decisions" on behalf of the network.  Therefore it is ok to use your own decison making processes, as long as they strive for consensus, but you should learn and use the Network systems of Supportive Consensus and Standing Rules overtime as well.
  • The primary form of group  coordination and doccumentation occurs using online Pads.   We have probobly already started a Main Pad for your group, and overtime  we will introduce you to it, and you can help update your own Groups Pad.  This is the centrilized location that everyone can go to get the basic information to participate directly in your project activities, and is intended for worker collaboration. But we also use wiki's, as well online forums, emails lists, and other web applications for group collaboration all linked off of the Main Pad.  You will learn some of the main processes we use though our CLN Leadership Council, and there is no hurry, this can take years.
  • Meeting Processes
    • Here is a quick review of some of our most important Meeting processes.  More information will be provided on all of our processes and if you need help with facilitation or meeting support, just ask and we will do our best to help you.
    • Preperation and Agendas
    • The process of preparing for meetings and creating prioritized agendas is the most important part of our Networks decision making processes.  Though the preperation processes we directly engage the participants of the meeting, and sometimes there is no need to even meet in real time as the decisions can be made by email and internet before a meeting even needs to be scheduled.  Of course there are many reasons to have a meeting anyways including team buildilng.
    • Standing Rules
    • Standing Rules are the Processes that occur within a real time live meeting either in-person or on a conference/internet call, of a group of 5-15+ people.  There are two primary components, the positions like the Facilitators, Note Takers, Time Keepers, Vibes Watchers, and others positions.  As well as the Meeting processes like SET UP, recordings, Check-Ins, Updates, Agenda Review, TOPICS - the actual agenda, and WRAP UP, Next Steps, Evaluation, Check-Out, and Follow-Up Preperation.
    • For specific types of offical proposals and decicsions we ask the meeting participatns to do a Pre-vote (sometimes done online pre-meeting), to see where the group stands, and proceed to disscussion.  For the final decision the follwoing questions are asked in this order; clairifing questions?, Concerns, Possible Admendments, (Staw polls if lots of possible amendsments/options). Final Offical Voting involves (0-9 scale) asking for  1=Dissent, 2=Blocks, 3=No-Votes, 4=Conserned-Abstentions, 5=Neutral-Abstentions, 6=Willing-Absentions, 7=Yes-Votes,  8=Supportive-Uber-Yes-Votes,  9=Congruency-Votes, and  0=Recorded Blank Votes.  Congruency is very rare, but is an option.   This can all be done with hand signals at the same time if in-persaon, and usually is done online, or not at all because we rarelly need to make an "offical decision".  If you'd like more informaiton on our Standing Rules, please just ask and we can give it to you.
    • Decision Structures
    • Overall Sponsored projects that function locally will almost exclusvily use Participatory Democracy as their primary decision making system.  Yet for the network as a whole, because we are a glocal network, most of our decisions are made in asyncronious time using online voting, or Direct Democracy.  The third type of voting is how the Leadership Council functions, where we make decisions through Representative Democracy.  Together the three forms of Decision Making Systems are what we call the "Democratic Trilliogy" balanced decision making structure for the entire Network.
    • Overall the processes of the overall Network are founded in Direct Democracy, our goal is to eventually put all decisions online for public advising.  This means that every decision of your Sponsored Project, weather made by a director, through email voting, or though a conference call or in-person meeting, needs to be reported to the CLN and eventually will be doccumented and reviewable online by the public.  Typcially we doccument all decisions using our online Pads, but this can happen over time and is not a urgent matter.