What Is a FREE Chapter?

Published v0.2

v0.1 — Drafted May 2026

Purpose of This Document

This is the first document in the FREE Chapter Starter Kit. It defines what a FREE chapter is, what FREE Foundation provides, what each chapter is responsible for, and what people considering starting a chapter can expect.

For the legal and governance structure of FREE Foundation itself, see About FREE Foundation in the About FREE collection.

Read this first. Every other document in the Starter Kit assumes you’ve read this one.

What a FREE Chapter Is

A FREE chapter is a local assembly of people, organized in a place, doing the work of economic emancipation in that place.

The chapter is the basic unit of FREE. Everything else — FREE Foundation, the global network, the federation infrastructure under development — exists to support chapters and to connect them to each other. A chapter is sovereign in its local work: it chooses its own focus, its own campaigns, its own pace, and its own leadership. The connective tissue across chapters is shared values, shared documentation practices, and a shared global frame, with FREE Foundation providing infrastructure and support.

A chapter is built around a recurring General Assembly (GA): an open meeting, typically held every two weeks, where members of the local community come together to deliberate, decide, and act. Around the GA, smaller groups — initially a Seed Team, later a set of operational Circles — handle the work between meetings.

A chapter is a place where the diffuse anger people feel about economic conditions becomes something specific, named, and organized. The assembly form is the mechanism. The local context is the substance.

What a FREE Chapter Is Not

A chapter is not a fan club for FREE the organization. People do not gather to support FREE. They gather, with FREE’s support, to organize where they live.

A chapter is not a study group. Reading and learning happen, especially in the early phase, and the chapter may run educational events. The chapter exists to act, in concert with the local community, on local conditions.

A chapter is not a top-down satellite of Tulsa. The founding pilot in Tulsa is where many of the practices in this Starter Kit were tested. Tulsa offers evidence of what works. Each new chapter shapes its own version. Practices in the Starter Kit are starting points to fork, adapt, and improve.

A chapter is not a legal entity by default. Most chapters operate informally for some time. If and when a chapter develops the need for a bank account, contracts, or fiscal infrastructure, FREE Foundation can advise on options. Forming a legal entity is a later-stage question, addressed in a future Starter Kit document.

What FREE Foundation Provides

FREE Foundation is the legal entity that holds the global infrastructure supporting the FREE network. It is registered as a nonprofit corporation in Oklahoma, in the United States, with global federation infrastructure under development. The Foundation provides shared support that no individual chapter would need to build alone. This includes:

Templates and how-to documents, including this Starter Kit, governance documents (Code of Conduct, Digital Communication Norms, Conflict Resolution Process), and meeting templates
Shared platforms, including document storage, calendars, and communication channels (specific tooling under review by the global Tech Cohort; chapters will be onboarded as platforms become available)
Remote training and support, including onboarding calls for Seed Teams, Q&A sessions for established chapters, and direct connection to experienced organizers from other chapters
Promotion through global channels, including the newsletter, social media, and global G+Local sessions, which surface chapter events and amplify reach
Federation infrastructure, including cross-chapter forums, working groups (the Tech Cohort, the Education Working Group, and others as they form), and shared learning across the network
Connections to an intellectual network, including critical academics and researchers, and help finding good speakers on the topics a chapter wants to explore. Clara Mattei and others in the network can sometimes join chapter events directly.
A global frame, which gives local work a wider context and connects local action to the broader struggle

Chapters bring their own local knowledge to this exchange. A chapter connects FREE with the organizers, communities, and movements active in its own place, and that local rootedness is what the wider network draws on in return.

A chapter that starts with FREE inherits institutional infrastructure that the Tulsa founders had to build from scratch. This is a meaningful head start.

What FREE Foundation Does Not Provide

FREE Foundation does not provide funding for chapter events. The Tulsa pilot was catalyzed by a major grant that covered event production, food, and PR costs for public-facing events. Most chapters will operate without that subsidy. Each chapter is responsible for its own local resources, including venues, food, materials, and any costs associated with running events.

FREE Foundation does not provide paid staff to your chapter. Foundation staff are limited and are responsible for global infrastructure, not local operations. Chapter work is done by chapter members.

FREE Foundation does not direct your chapter’s organizing focus. The chapter chooses what to organize around, in conversation with its local community.

FREE Foundation does not guarantee your chapter’s success. The Starter Kit raises the floor. The work raises the ceiling.

The Tulsa Pilot in Context

Tulsa is where FREE began, and where many of the practices in the Starter Kit were tested. It is also a particular case, with particular conditions, and chapters considering their own starting point should understand what was different about Tulsa.

The Tulsa founding group was simultaneously doing two things: starting a local chapter AND building the legal entity that became FREE Foundation. The founders were setting up the registered organization, the bank account, the fiscal sponsor, the first funding flows, the podcast, social media, public-facing PR, and event production infrastructure — at the same time as they were running local assembly meetings.

That dual role meant the Tulsa founders carried a significantly larger operational load than a new chapter will carry today. New chapters can focus on the local work. The Foundation work is already done, and is held by FREE Foundation as a separate entity. As the network globalizes, FREE Foundation and the Tulsa chapter are in the process of formally separating their operational and governance scopes — see About FREE Foundation for more detail on that transition.

Tulsa events have run from $4,000 to over $10,000 per event, with that range reflecting professional production values, paid speakers’ travel, audio and video rental, stage and set build, and catering for 100-200+ attendees. This was made possible by grant funding. Most chapter events will operate at a fraction of this cost — a community room, simple food, local speakers, flyers in the neighborhood. That smaller scale is normal. It is also where every chapter begins, including Tulsa.

The Tulsa General Assembly has run bi-weekly since the chapter’s founding, with attendance fluctuating between 15 and 45 members. The assembly uses consent-based decision-making, organizes work through nested Circles (Root Circle, MarCom Circle, Treasury Circle, and others), and rotates roles. This is one model. Each chapter shapes its own.

What It Takes to Start a Chapter

The practical question is: what does a chapter need to actually function?

A chapter needs a Seed Team: a small group of three to five people who commit to the first 60 to 90 days of work, before broader chapter structure is in place. The composition matters more than the headcount. Different roles within the Seed Team handle different parts of the early work.

A workable Seed Team usually includes at least three capacities, which may be held by three different people or by overlapping members:

A convening role: someone who helps draw the first room together, through their relationships and their commitment to the work. This is about the function of gathering people, not about status or public profile. Anyone willing to invite their networks, speak to why this matters, and help others feel welcome can hold this role.
An organizer: someone with the time, judgment, and follow-through to handle logistics. Plans events, follows up with people, holds the relational threads of the early group.
An operations person: someone with comfort using shared documents, forms, email lists, and basic tech tools. Manages the contact list, the meeting agendas, the documentation.

In smaller initial groups, these three capacities may be held by two people, each carrying more than one. In larger founding groups, more people may share each capacity. What matters is that all three are covered.

In addition to the Seed Team, a chapter will need:

Some local network: at least two members of the Seed Team should each know 20 or more people locally who might come to a first event
Access to a venue: ideally free or low-cost — a community center, faith space, university room, café back room, friendly gallery
A modest budget: enough for a first event at the scale you can sustain. Most first events should aim for under €200-500
Time: at least two members of the Seed Team should have 5-10 hours per week to give for the first 90 days

If your prospective Seed Team lacks one of these elements today, that is useful information. It may mean delaying the public launch by a few weeks while you find the missing piece, partnering with an existing local group, or holding a smaller informal gathering as a precursor to a full chapter launch. Starting underpowered and failing publicly is harder to recover from than waiting.

The Seed Team Checklist (P1) walks through these readiness questions in detail.

The Chapter Lifecycle

The sequence below is a very rough guideline, not a fixed path. Every chapter can modify it, reorder it, skip parts, or invent its own version. Chapters move at different speeds and shape their founding differently depending on local conditions. Treat what follows as one possible arc that has worked, offered to give you a starting picture, not a template you are expected to follow step by step:

Seed Team formation (weeks 0-2): Founding group identifies itself, completes readiness check, coordinates with FREE Foundation, begins planning first public event.
First public event (weeks 3-4): Public-facing event with speakers, food, and a sign-up sheet. Audience members are invited explicitly to the first General Assembly.
First General Assembly (week 4-6): Open meeting of all interested community members. Purpose: gather voice, surface motivations, identify volunteers to draft founding documents (purpose, objectives, values).
Second General Assembly (week 6-8): Review and adopt the chapter’s founding documents. Adopt an interim decision-making method. Nominate and elect Stewards for the first 90-day term.
Stewards Phase 1 (weeks 6-18): The elected Stewards hold the chapter’s coordination and external connection. The GA cadence (bi-weekly) is established. The chapter adopts a Code of Conduct. Operational Circles begin to form as needed.
First chapter project (by week 12 or shortly after): The chapter commits to one tangible project beyond meetings — a campaign, a study group, a mutual aid initiative, a public-facing media project, or another action.
Steward rotation (every 90 days): Stewards rotate on a 90-day cycle. The next cohort takes on coordination. The chapter continues to mature, with circles taking on more autonomous work and the chapter contributing to the broader FREE network.

Each of these phases has a dedicated document in the Starter Kit, with checklists and templates for the specific moment.

Documentation as the Spine of the Chapter

One practice runs through every phase of the chapter lifecycle and deserves to be named here: every General Assembly and every Circle meeting should be documented.

Documentation is what makes a chapter durable. Memory held only in people’s heads is fragile. When someone leaves, burns out, or steps back, the chapter loses what they carried. Documented decisions, agendas, and synopses survive turnover and create the institutional memory that makes long-term work possible.

Documentation is also what makes the FREE network actually a network. Chapters that share meeting synopses with the wider FREE community generate cross-chapter learning. A campaign that worked in one city might be exactly what a chapter on the other side of the world is trying to figure out. The synopsis is the unit of exchange.

The minimum documentation expectation for every chapter:

Each General Assembly is recorded (with consent of attendees) and a short written synopsis is produced afterward
Each Circle meeting has an agenda and a synopsis
Decisions are recorded somewhere durable, with the date, the method of decision, and who participated

The Documentation Standards document (X1) describes this in more detail, including templates and where synopses get shared with the FREE network.

How to Engage with FREE Foundation

Seed Teams considering starting a chapter, and existing chapters with questions, can request support through several channels:

The G+Local sessions: Recurring global Zoom meetings for people interested in FREE chapters. Open to attend before launching, useful for connecting with other organizers, and a way to introduce yourself to the network.
Direct outreach: Email FREE Foundation at [contact channel TBD] with specific questions or to request a Seed Team onboarding call.
The shared communication platform (under development): Once available, this will be the main channel for ongoing connection between chapters and with Foundation staff.

A chapter does not need formal recognition from FREE Foundation to begin organizing. Use the materials, adapt them, run your first event. Connection with the network deepens over time, through participation rather than through a credentialing process.

What Comes Next

If you’ve read this far and you’re considering starting a chapter, the next document to read is P1: The Seed Team Checklist. It walks through the readiness questions in detail and outlines the first internal meeting your Seed Team should hold.

If you’re not yet sure whether your local conditions support starting a chapter, attend the next G+Local session and meet others who are thinking through the same questions.

A Note on This Document

This is v0.1 of F1, the first foundational document in the FREE Chapter Starter Kit. It reflects what we have learned so far, primarily through the Tulsa pilot and the first global outreach to chapter-curious participants in early 2026.

It will change. Chapters that form in the next year will surface things we have missed, contexts we have not accounted for, and practices that improve on what is written here. Future versions of this document, and of the Starter Kit as a whole, will reflect that learning.

This is a living document. It will be reviewed and updated as the network grows.

The FREE Chapter Starter Kit is published by FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation). freefreeforum.org