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Founder finding

The first step in founding a Circle: find the others. (Rough timescale: 2-4 weeks)

Before any new Circle can take shape, you need to gather the people who will shape it: the Circle Founders. This is often where the spark happens: the moment a small group of people come together with a shared belief that care can, and should, be done differently.

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Who are Circle Founders?

Circle Founders are the ones who:

  • Set the early tone, direction and culture of the Circle

  • Recruit the first Coach, care and support workers, and key Circle roles like the Recruiter and Team Starter

  • Begin to define how power, responsibility and care will be shared locally

They are the ones who carry the Circle’s early momentum, and who will eventually step into Circle membership as Worker Members of Equal Care Co-op.

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How do you find them?

In our pilot year, we found that people often came to us: driven by direct experience and a deep desire to change the system. It was largely about relationships, shared values, and their readiness for the level of commitment involved.

But we’ve also learned that this organic process isn’t always accessible to everyone - especially people from capital-light backgrounds, where time, money, and confidence in navigating systems may be harder to come by.

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Making it more inclusive

We’re working to improve access for Circle Founders from capital-light and underrepresented communities. That means designing a process that’s:

  • Welcoming - without gatekeeping or complex requirements

  • Supportive - including orientation and mentoring

  • Resourced - ideally, costings for Circle development should include a small grant provision for founders from capital-light backgrounds, to make time and participation more possible

A light-touch, values-based application or expression of interest process may help with this. In other words, a process that invites the right people in, rather than filtering people out.

This step is about more than recruitment — it’s about laying the groundwork for a Circle that is equitable, grounded, and genuinely community-led.

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