Your co-op’s first 90 days of technology

A founding group can spend weeks comparing apps while its important decisions remain scattered across personal inboxes. Your first technology plan should make it possible to work together, find agreed records and hand responsibilities to someone else. It does not need to anticipate every service you might offer in five years.

The sequence below is a proposed working plan, not a requirement for every co-op. Adapt it to your stage: a group exploring an idea has different needs from a shop opening its doors or a worker co-op taking on its first customer. Allocate a named owner and a backup person to each step.

Days 1–14: establish control and a place to work

Write a one-page record of the tools you already use, who pays for them and whose account controls them. Include the domain, email, document storage, website and any social profiles. If the co-op is not yet incorporated, record who is holding registrations temporarily and the agreed process for transferring control when the organisation exists.

Agree where decisions, draft documents and contact information belong. Use separate areas for generally shareable material and restricted information. The first structure might contain “Founding decisions”, “Working drafts”, “Launch tasks” and a restricted “Finance and applications” area. Give every file a clear owner who can answer whether it is current.

Set up named accounts for the people who need to work in the system. Avoid turning one shared password into the foundation of your organisation. Protect important accounts and establish a recovery route before collecting significant amounts of information. The NCSC small-organisations guide is a useful baseline for accounts, devices and backups.

Days 15–30: choose the minimum useful stack

List the work you actually need to do in the coming month: arrange meetings, draft a business plan, receive enquiries, track spending and perhaps sell something. Choose tools against those tasks. A small number of well-understood services is easier to support than a collection of experiments with overlapping responsibilities.

• Email: a named account per regular operator, plus an agreed route for general enquiries.
• Files: an organisational workspace with permissions that match responsibilities.
• Tasks: a simple shared list showing owner, next action and due date.
• Website: enough accurate information for the next audience action.
• Finance: the records and approval process agreed with whoever handles your accounts.

Discuss the shared email pattern before advertising addresses. Confirm domain control before linking your entire operation to it.

Days 31–60: rehearse the work

Use fictional information to follow one enquiry from arrival to completion. Can the second person see the reply? Does an application reach the right decision-maker? Can someone using a phone read the joining instructions? Can a colleague find the approved version of your opening announcement?

Try an absence exercise. Ask the main organiser to observe while another member locates a supplier contact, edits a page and finds the next renewal. Record missing instructions as tasks. This is more revealing than asking whether everyone feels confident.

Choose what needs a recoverable copy and perform one small restore. Allocate time for induction, support and routine maintenance in the budget. A licence price alone does not represent the cost of running a service.

Days 61–90: make launch repeatable

1. Confirm the legal or agreed organisational holder of each important account.
2. Check enquiry forms, delivery destinations and acknowledgements using test submissions.
3. Confirm that restricted records cannot be opened by an ordinary member or public visitor.
4. Record renewal dates, billing contacts, recovery arrangements and support routes.
5. Assign a weekly check of incoming work and a recurring review of access.
6. Agree what happens if your website, email or primary organiser becomes unavailable.

For an illustrative six-person food co-op, success at day 90 might mean two people can process an enquiry, approved documents live in one workspace, payments require the agreed approval and a replacement committee member can follow the instructions. A custom portal can wait until a specific problem justifies it.

Use the startup planner to turn this sequence into your own first three months of work.