Welcome to Cooperate for Canada! Our primary objective is to ensure that we limit Conservative power in government as much as possible and build conversations between progressive parties to cooperate.
This document contains the following information:
- An overview of our Volunteer Code of Conduct
- Volunteer teams and organizational structure
- A guide to our communications platform: Slack
Code of Conduct: An Overview
We ask all volunteers who participate in Cooperate for Canada to review and adhere to our detailed Code of Conduct. Below is a summary of the main principles:
- Treat everyone with respect. Absolutely no harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, or hate speech of any kind will be tolerated.
- No spam or self-promotion. This is not a commercial space.
- Families are welcome in Cooperate for Canada. All content should be safe for children. Age-restricted or obscene content in Cooperate for Canada shared spaces or content is not acceptable.
- We are cross-partisan and united.
In addition to these principles, we expect volunteers to be respectful of each other’s time and energy, and of their own needs. Self care is important – take breaks when you need to, ask for help when you need it. If you need space, please take it. Keep lines of communication open. If you have committed to completing a task but find you can’t finish it, please just let us know. Informing us allows us to reassign work and keep things moving.
We are 100% volunteer-led and grassroots, and the model of organizing we are using is relatively new. We’re building the airplane as we are flying it. We are stronger when we learn and grow together, so if you see things that could be improved, have suggestions, or constructive criticism of any kind, we encourage you to let us know!
Organization Structure and Volunteer Teams
At the national level we have teams organized to handle national strategy and to keep in communication with local chapters – to gain insights about what works locally and provide resources and support as needed.
Our organizational structure includes a strategy team, a steering committee and four support teams dedicated to Communications, Outreach, Volunteer Recruiting and Data/Research/Insights.
We are welcoming volunteers for the four support teams: Outreach, Communications, Volunteers and Data Research & Insights. As with our philosophy our model is collaborative not top-down – this means discussion between our teams and feedback and insights from local chapters are critical to our campaign.
Cooperate for Canada is a grassroots volunteer-led initiative. With federal and provincial elections this year, we hope to spin up quickly and efficiently, and to be able to quickly add capacity where it is most needed as volunteers plug in.
If you are interested in volunteering on one of our teams, please contact us Put “Volunteer [Name of Team]” (the name of the team you would like to volunteer for, e.g. Volunteer Team, Outreach Team, Data Research & Insights Team, etc.) in the Subject Line ()
Our Communications Platforms
Action Network – when you sign one of our letters, our voting pledge, send us a message or subscribe to our newsletter on the Cooperate for Canada website, this information is stored and managed using a platform called Action Network – a very powerful well-respected platform. All of the information you share with us: your name, email, city, province and possibly your phone number – Action Network stores it and also uses this to determine which electoral riding you are located in. We do not share your information without your consent. Action Network has a very strict privacy policy. The platform allow us to contact members quickly and to target messages to relevant member groups (e.g. by riding, province, or a particular issue, or people who have volunteered for a particular team). Please encourage the volunteers in your riding to sign our Voting Pledges and subscribe to our newsletter, so they are part of our database. This helps to ensure we can coordinate our messages across the country.
If you are a Chapter Leader organizing at the local riding level, we will send a message to all the people who have signed on in your riding, to ask permission share their email information with you. It is only with their consent we are able to share that information with you. When you contact members, it is best practice to bcc them to hide their contact information from others, unless they give you permission to share their information.
Slack – Slack is an online team messaging app (similar to Discord, or a bit like a Facebook group or internet forum). It is built to make it easy for people to talk to each other, share resources. It is very useful to provide assistance within teams, and it is well organized into channels which simplifies finding relevant messages easily so they can stay connected. (It’s way better than having to sift through messages in your Inbox!)
Our Core Teams coordinate in Slack so if you’re joining one of the teams – Comms, Volunteer, Outreach, or Research, please do sign up for an account.
If you are a Local Chapter Organizer, we invite you to join Slack as well to coordinate with us as we are undertaking national campaigns and provide us with feedback on issues specific to your riding. If there is an issue that needs a larger discussion across several ridings, we also have the capacity, using Action Network, to contact you and other relevant ridings across Canada to set up a zoom discussion.
If you’re part of a Local Chapter Team, you will need to be connected through your Chapter Leader – they will share updates via email and Facebook – Slack is optional in your case (but feel free to join!) Once you have the app downloaded and your account created and verified, you can use the link we send you to join our Slack workspace. If you need help with this, please ask for assistance. Contact us and put “Slack Help” in the subject line. One of our organizers can get you pointed in the right direction.
Please Note: At this time we ask that you do not share the information on this page. Thank you. – Cooperate for Canada Team