Action10 is a volunteer organisation registered in Sweden.
Action10 operates under the umbrella of Human Rights and Science (HR&S) and HR&S is providing back-up support to Action10.

Action10 manages the Action Invest fund which is used by pilot project social entrepreneurs, at the start-up phase. Action10 also manages an Afro-Swedish network through which stakeholders in Sub-Sahara African countries can be identified and kept in contact with. These stakeholders may be part of our local support team and may include, auditors, monitoring survey managers and coaches.

www.action10.se

Action10 Members

Being a volunteer driven organisation Action10 is registered in Sweden as a membership organisation, and thus the highest governance body is the annual General Assembly (GA). The GA ensures democracy and member driven programmes.

The member categories of Action10 are Volunteer staff and Monthly givers.

Volunteer staff

The Action10 Volunteer staff (VS) are the Board members and the Workgroup members.  All Action10 Volunteer staff are responsible for ensuring that the Ten Actions are fully honoured in each activity. Previous volunteer staff are welcome stay within the Acrion10 Family as Action10 Friends and as Monthly givers.

Volunteer staff agreement

All volunteer staff signs a Volunteer Staff Agreement (VSA). According to the VSA the volunteer staff agree to: i) First and foremost, attend a Ten Actions (TAct) presentation and decide on a personal level, whether or not the Volunteer staff agrees with the Action10 value platform. TAct enforces for example needs driven programmes, equal partnership and sustainable economy; ii) Allocate a certain amount of workhours.  The President agrees to be working 30 hours per month, other Board members 20 hours, Team Leaders 15 hours and Workgroup members 10 work hours per month, iii) Actively participate in meetings and events.  The QV arranges Action10 event during the first week of every month, and the volunteer staff are expected to attend. The Workgroups meet once a month or more often; iv) Make oneself familiar with the Action10 co-working platform, our Portal. Action10 benefits from the OnlyOffice platform. Be active on the Portal by capturing information about the organisation, and use the Documents section, the Projects and the CRM. Communication with Partners shall for example be posted on the CRM; v) Represent Action10 externally in a positive and a supportive manner and honour the Ten Actions, and iv) In case a volunteer staff can no longer meet the requirements, she is expected to inform the President with one month notice, before she will resign as a Volunteer staff.  

Selection criteria for Action10 volunteer staff

We seek those who honestly want to jointly run a joint Action10 according to the TAct principles and who has the time and the capacity to do it. Lessons learned has indicated that these people needs to be filtered out if the Institution shall be able to be efficient.

Volunteer staff are carefully selected among those who understands, agrees with and enforces TAct, including the Needs driven concept, Equal partnership, Trust, Sustainable economy with sharing input and profit and Institutional capacity. The TAct criteria are tested through workshops and workshop discussions.

1st selection criteria – past record
1. What did the person do before applying for Action10.
2. Pervious lessons learned.
3. Why did the person apply for Action10.

2nd criteria – effort
1. Time available.
2. Interest in attending workshops and meetings.
3. Interest in understanding and use the Portal.

3rd selection criteria – core values and structure
Capacity and interest to:
-Be wise enough to see the value of HR&S structure, for herself and for the partners. Someone who tries to be smart will not become a partner, as this will reduce the efficiency of the company.
-Put herself in the partner’s situation.
-Understand the partners’ core values, including truth and trust, and purpose with the programme, to discuss, agree and maintain a structure, sealed by an agreement that captures the all partners’ values and goals.
-Honestly, openly and efficiently discuss the prevailing challenges and to actively propose solutions, phrase the challenges and solutions and include them in the agreement that is signed and implemented.
– Enter into a long-term partnership with highly set goals and visions that shall be scaled-up as structures are becoming more and more firm.
-On their own initiative proposes and implements internal and external control functions that ensures transparency and accountability in ethics and governance.
-Develop and maintain an equal partnership type of relation that is win-win with equally shared input, work effort, responsibility, benefit and profit.

Efficiency & Structure

Efficiency

Action10 shall be both effective and efficient. The words effective and efficient both mean “capable of producing a result,” but according Action10 and HR&S there is an important difference. Action10 and HR&S identifies the two words as: Effective – Adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result; and Efficient – Performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time and effort. The difference between effectiveness and efficiency can be summed up shortly succinctly “Being effective is about doing the right things, while being efficient is about doing things right”.

Efficiency versus effectiveness can be illustrated with a grid. Our aim is to pursue the top right box – pursuing the right goals and being efficient. It is not enough to know what goals we want to achieve, but being inefficient in achieving those goals. It is equally not good to having everyone working efficiently but with the wrong goal.

Structure

The governance, management and operations of Action10 is organised through the: i) General Assembly; ii) Board, iii) Workgroups, iv) Country partners: Programme management partners and Target partners, and v) Country Coach and control: Coaches, Auditors, Social structure.

General Assembly

The highest governance body of Action10 is the annual General Assembly (GA), which is constituted of the Action10 members.  The GA appoints the Board members. The General Assembly also appoints a professional Auditor who is in charge of the annual auditing as well as a Nomination committee for the coming GA Board election. The annual work plan and budget is proposed by the Board and decided on by the GA.   The General Assembly is responsible for: i) Overseeing the work of the organisation (governance), and ii) Appointing the Board and thus including the Heads of Departments / workgroups.

Board

The Action10 has a Working Board. The Board consists of the; President, Vice president, Secretary, Head of Finance, Head of IT,  Head of Institutional capacity, Head of Knowledge sharing, Head of Sustainable economy, Head of Evaluation planning, Head of Quality values, Head of Focal Points and two Substitutes. The President is the head of the Board.  The Board meets every second month with even number;
February, April, June, August, October, and December, thus the Board meets six times a year.  The Board members meet and share about daily work, progress and challenges, discuss and decide on activities and solutions. The Board members are responsible for the overarching coordination of the Action10 work as well as developing and implementing work strategies and policies. The Board members are responsible for informing about the output of the Board meetings to all volunteer staff, other Action10 members and partners.  The Heads of workgroups shall keep herself updated on the daily work and progress of the workgroups and step in to fill any gaps and address any challenges that may occur. They shall be in continuous contact with the Team Leaders and support them directly.  The Board is responsible for: i) Overseeing the work of the organisation (governance) according to the instructions by the General Assembly; ii) Organising the daily work (management); iii) Appointing Team leaders, Deputy Head of Finance and Deputy Head of IT.

Workgroups

The operations of Action10 are structured around five Workgroups: Institutional capacity (IC), Evaluation planning (EP), Knowledge sharing (KS), Sustainable economy (SE), and Quality values (QV).  One Head of Workgroup is appointed for each Workgroup and the Heads of Workgroup are members of the Board. One or two Team Leaders are appointed for each Workgroup. The Team Leaders also carry the title Senior Officers. The Team Leaders are responsible for leading the teams, team motivation and team spirit.  

The team leaders and the Head of Workgroup are together responsible for the implementation of the work tasks appointed to the Workgroup by the Board. The team Leaders call for Workgroup meetings every month or more often.  The Head of Workgroups and Team leaders are responsible for assigning enough volunteer staff (usually seven) for the Workgroup to be able to manage its assignments. The Quality Value Workgroup supports with the operational matters in the recruiting process (please find more details below). The Workgroups are responsible for: Carrying out the work of the organisation (operations).

EP – Evaluation planning
IC – Institutional capacity
KS – Knowledge sharing
SE – Sustainable economy
QV – Quality values

 Action10 Friends

Previous Action10 volunteer staff and HR&S staff and volunteers and invited to become Action10 Friends.

Strategic partners

  • Rotary Stockholm International: grant giver.
  • Only office: Free access to collaboration IT platform.
  • Sudiefrämjandet: Free access to venue for workshops.
  • HR&S offers free access to venue for Board meetings to a value of SEK 2,000 per year.
  • Swedbank: Reduced bank fee.
  • Fortnox: Free access to bookkeeping programme.