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We had two priorities for this reporting period. The first one was to finalize and post the job description for the Research and Instructional Design Project Coordinator position that will be central to updating our Early Warning manual as the source document for creating our training curriculum and a multi-media interactive learning experience for participants. This is a unique position requiring the successful candidate to have research, writing, formatting and instructional design skills. This person will also assist the senior team with overall project implementation including workshop coordination, and outreach and recruitment. Filling this position will add significant capacity to our team allowing us to achieve our goals much more quickly as we can now fully operationalize our implementation plan. We are in the process of reviewing applicants and plan to start interviews shortly. Our goal is to hire as soon as possible. Our second priority this period was to finalize the specific roles and expectations for the project advisory committee whose main function is to assist with the editing and publishing of the manual, inform training design, to assist with stakeholder outreach and participant recruitment, and to help ensure that the training is effective towards achieving our goals. We have established specific criteria for candidates in our existing network ideal to serve on this committee and we have identified our list of individuals we wish to invite to join the committee. We have also finalized the MOU language and we will begin communicating with the target listed individuals next week. We expect to confirm 5-7 individuals on the advisory committee by the end of November, with a target date for the first advisory committee meeting is the first week of December. We plan to have monthly meetings, more as needed, with the advisory committee going forward to inform and review the training materials and our participant recruitment process with the goal of beginning training in March of 2024. Administratively, we have new staff assigned to assist with the invoicing/voucher process and they are in the process of reviewing the city’s system as explained in the power point that was shared with us a month ago. Senior staff continues to attend the HUB and convening meetings and we also continue to connect with other members of the social economy eco-system in Chicagoland and across the country.

The most significant challenge over the last reporting period is managing staff turnover in our financial management department. While our new person is learning fast, keeping up with the constant flow of financial activity including this grant will take time to streamline.

We participated in all but one of the CWB Hub activities.

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One of our senior staff was invited to facilitate two workshops at COOP Cincy’s conference on Oct. 20-22. He was able to connect with several leading coop advocates and practitioners and will be working with the National Association of Black Cooperatives (Dr. Sutton is among their leaders). We were able to engage in discussions around ownership succession, political and stakeholder advocacy, and finding the proper balance between cooperative development as a social movement and advancing the work in the current capitalist business construct. We also connected with some of the Revolution Institute team while we were there.

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