Planning Meeting - 2025-02-06

DNOVA Summit Planning Meeting 

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Notes by: Nairuti Shastry

• VASEN virtual meeting (2/21)

  • Nairuti and Jeff attending and providing a brief summary of the dinner event

• USFWC Racial and Economic Justice Council updates from Johanna

  • Fundraising support for SECOSOL

    • $20K/year (currently funds Johanna’s position)

    • Interest in more of a membership-based fundraising model 

• DNOVA Summit 2025: Building Community Power, Growing Community Wealth

  • Planning for 150-200 people (last one had 50 people)

  • Budget

  • Sponsorships/fundraising

    • Eleanor meeting with folks from the Northern Virginia Community Foundation

  • Program - what do we want to do with the space? What do we want to accomplish? 

    • Keynote address: Anthony Cook (Georgetown) - working to build a network of cooperative grocery stores in underserved communities in DC; can talk about how to creatively finance this good work 

    • Roll call - round robin introductions to get a sense of who we are together 

    • Community assembly to establish some discussions - could we do Mentimeter? Or roundtable facilitated conversations? Potential ways to use Decidim? 

    • Afternoon session is fairly open - last time, did sharing stories, a panel, and then social hour (at a local spot)

    • Organizations tabling throughout the duration of the event

    • Sunday is workshops and sessions → coming back together for a sort of what’s next conversation  

  • Logistics 

    • Core team at GMU is Eleanor, Sara Aftab (20 hours/week), Ben (lead professor), Katharine Rupp (administrator, logistics management)

    • Booked space at Merter and Horizon halls 

  • Eleanor and Sara met with Kelly (who organized the 2022 summit) - got good feedback

    • Admin and finance 

    • Media - have a draft digital flyer 

    • Staff/volunteers (GMU interns will be supporting a lot of this)

    • Invitation/outreach

    • Logistics (need a lot of support)

  • Trying to get registration together – Ben wants to move DNOVA/NSS infrastructure to Action Network 

  • Jeff: don’t just want people to come together and talk; could Sunday be a VASEN conversation? Sunday should be when we get work done (not just going from session to session).

  • Nairuti: getting people to participate in live campaigns on the second day

  • Jeff: would be helpful for SECOSOL to be in conversation with BCI; getting coop community together to visualize a plan 

  • Nairuti: sector-specific conversations on Day 2 based on the DNOVA landscape scan that GMU peeps did; following up on the land/labor/capital conversation on the first day 

  • Jeff: need to get back in touch with BCI; how do we get all the cleaning coops to cooperate and be able to access contracts within anchor institutions (like public schools, for example)

  • Johanna: at the USFWC conference in Chicago, women I went with shared that the first day of panels/speakers was going over their head - felt too academic; what did work was a show of our experience of going through the incubator and then feeling abandoned by them, struggles with finding help for taxes, etc. (theater of the oppressed); storytelling felt much more culturally appropriate

  • Eleanor: that’ll be a tension no matter what, but getting to know each other can build a bridge; working together needs to be built on trust (misconception that this region is just a place where people work); people with similar interests to come together or people who don’t know each other? 

  • Jeff: motivation of Madre Tierra has been housing for those who have survived domestic abuse; ongoing relationships of trust/interdependence = how you build community

  • Nairuti: need to get clear on audience, because that will shape the program; my preference is for community residents (not just the nonprofit peeps and academics/funders) 

  • Pat: we’re all about building relationships; to build power, there needs to be education to get people on the same page; to grow the community = opportunities to work together; VOICE as a part of IAL (Saul Alinsky); over the last year, have been learned about the power of allies; relationships + stories + allies 

  • Pat: Michele Winters for CLTs (as a mechanism for people to be homeowners) 

  • Eleanor: should be broader than coops / SE; ecology comes to mind; database is also out of date; like the idea of starting to build an invitation list off the database; remember this is just where we’re building from (can grow in two years, and so forth)

  • Nairuti: need to get clear on audience and socialize that with Ben

  • Pat: VOICE is planning a two-day NoVA Labor Federation; what are the goals?

  • Jeff: I want to leave this conference with a wider group of SE activists with whom SECOSOL/NoVA Web Development is working.

  • Nairuti: When participants leave the summit, how do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do? 

  • Pat: commitments people should make at the end 

• Next steps/action items 

  • Let’s start using Decidim for these meetings moving forward…

  • Eleanor to share documents (planning spreadsheet, program, etc.) 

  • Eleanor to invite Yolanda to be a part of this process 

  • Jeff to email Ben and ask him to be a part of this process 

  • Eleanor to share this two-day concept with Ben and what are the goals 

  • Eleanor to add “evaluation” (one on Sunday and one six months later)