How we organize
This page is public. Last updated March 2025.
We are a 100% volunteer-led community. Major updates and changes to the community are tracked in the CAT Decision Log.
➡️ Organizers
As volunteer organizers, we set basic guidelines, direction, strategy and structure. We are working to make CAT more member-driven and self-sustaining. We also manage and develop the infrastructure we have in place to run our community. And lastly we try to facilitate discussion and projects and actions based on CAT member interests.
Current organizers
Melissa Hsiung | @melissa
Sandra Pallier | @Sandra
Eugene | @Eugenus Optimus
Heather Baden | @HeatherB
🎩 Directors
CAT Directors manage CIC administration and finances. Directors also provide support through subject matter expertise, industry insights, and strategy.
Current directors
Chris Adams | @mrchrisadams
Melissa Hsiung | @melissa
Sandra Pallier | @Sandra
❤️ Volunteers
CAT volunteers work together to achieve a common goal that’s aligned with our mission. We recommend 2-7 members per CAT project team.
🐈 Assembly
The CAT Assembly is a decision-making group that represents community members.
Current Assembly Members: Matt Munz, Janne Kalliola, Mark Butcher, Fiona Leibundgut, nico, Alexander Dawson, Bradford Roarr, Mark Butcher, Ariel Chamberlain, Brett Duboff, Chris Pointon, fershad, hannah, Christian Alafaa, Mobolaji Ladega
🌲 Advisors (in progress)
Projects & programs
Find our projects in the CAT Projects collection.
Key Organizing Documents
Document | Status | Last update |
|---|---|---|
Guiding Principles | ||
Mission, Vision, Values, Theory of Change | 🟢 Current | Dec 2021 |
Community | ||
Rules to create a safe, inclusive community | 🟢 Current | May 2024 |
Principles to encourage productive discussion and knowledge sharing | 🟡 Needs updating | Jan 2024 |
Management | ||
🟢 Current | Fall 2024 | |
🟢 Current | Fall 2024 | |
🚧 In progress | Fall 2024 |
Tools
Tool | Category | What we use it for | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Slack (free) | Communication | Our main community hub | See pros & cons here | See pros & cons here |
Gmail | Communication | Sometimes internal comms. Often used by external folks reaching out. | ||
Documentation | Meeting notes, forms, confidential data, feedback forms, collaborative documents | Document permissions | Hard to search across documents | |
Outline (free) | Documentation | Capturing community conversations from Slack or from events long-term | Easily searchable | Sign in through Slack is an extra step and can be a bit funky |
GoogleCal | Event listing + scheduling | Public CAT calendar and invites for volunteer invites and internal meetings | ||
when2meet (free) | Scheduling | Finding time to meet (e.g. with volunteers in many different time zones) | Cross timezone scheduling | Requires following up with people who don’t fill in their availability |
Zoom Pro | Events | Community events with speakers | Safety controls, accessible | |
Miro Pro | Whiteboard | Brainstorming internal projects (like the volunteering structure or onboarding flows) as well as event/workshop facilitation | ||
Design + Whiteboard | Creating brand assests (e.g. MeetUp thumbnails, banners, etc.), brainstorming | Limited amount of free files | ||
Donut (free but we need to have their logo on our website and quarterly share what Donut is with our community [via Slack or Newsletter]) | Networking | Opt-in | ||
Gatheround.com (free) | Social | Social events where we match people into small groups and prepare conversation prompts | ||
1password (free) | Management | Storing our shared passwords | ||
Buttondown | Newsletter | |||
Trello | Management | Organiser task management | We stop using it for volunteer task management because they raised pricing |
Potential tools
Loomio for collaborative decision-making
Cobudget for participatory budgeting
Past tools
Wonder.me: Community events and internal meetings (e.g. organizer meetings, volunteer co-working sessions or onboarding). Simulation of a ‘room’ where folks can move around and join different conversations. Shut down in April 2023.
MeetUp Pro: Used until 2024 to list all public CAT events. One pro was that all MeetUp members get notified when a new event is announced but one big downside was that it was an additional step - Slack members had to join MeetUp separately and we had to verify whether they were actually Slack members before adding them (we set up this rule because we had a troll at one of our events in the past).