up:: La Finka - Internal Handbook
tags:: #handbook
owner:: @Niko
status:: #status/review

🔧 How La Finka Works

La Finka is a living system—more like a garden or a guild than a corporation.

This page is a plain-text guide to how we organize, make decisions, and distribute responsibility at La Finka. It's not a rigid org chart—it’s a permaculture-informed, community-powered framework that balances autonomy with accountability.

Key Principles

• Roles over titles
  People hold roles, not positions. These may rotate seasonally, be shared, or evolve over time.

• Department-based structure
  Our work is grouped into three main departments:
  1. Agriculture & Land Stewardship
  2. Infrastructure & Technology
  3. Community & Culture

• Circles of care
  Roles exist inside circles of care—meaning, if someone steps back, others can support or step in.

• Seasonal rhythm
  We think in seasons, not fiscal quarters. Planning and priorities shift with the wheel of the year:

  • Spring: Planting, planning, outreach
  • Summer: Events, builds, community care
  • Fall: Harvest, documentation, reflection
  • Winter: Downtime, repair, incubation

• Consent-based action
  If something affects others, we aim for consent, not unanimous consensus. “Safe to try” is our north star.

Departments Overview

Q:: Do we call these departments or guilds?

Each department has working groups and stewards who tend their part of the ecosystem.

🌿 Agriculture & Land Stewardship

Coordinates land use, gardens, permaculture projects, greenhouse, compost, and soil systems.

🛠 Infrastructure & Technology

Covers all physical infrastructure, digital systems, the woodshop, electronics lab, and internal tools.

🎭 Community & Culture

Handles events ( like Moon Boom & Banana Rodeo ), hospitality, outreach, documentation, and media.

See the full Department & Role Directory for who’s involved and how to plug in.

Core Team & Working Groups

Core Team
A rotating group of long-term stewards who tend to overall coordination, safety, and strategy.

Working Groups
Each project or event often forms a temporary group. Some groups (like the Banana Business Bureau) exist year-round.

You don’t need permission to start a working group. Have an idea? Find 1–2 allies, make a proposal, and begin!

How Things Get Done

• We use our shared calendar to coordinate events and workdays.
• We use Obsidian, our internal server The Womb and sometimes GSheets for operations.
• We rotate facilitators and hosts for events and meetings to avoid burnout and encourage shared leadership.
• We emphasize documentation so others can pick up where someone left off.

Feedback Loops

• End-of-season retrospectives (Fall + Spring)
• Post-event reflection templates
• Ongoing community check-ins

La Finka is an organism, not an org chart. Our goal is to stay adaptive, transparent, and joyful while working in shared purpose.

Created::
Updated::