The Seed Team Checklist

Published v0.1

v0.1 — Drafted May 2026

Purpose of This Document

This document is for people considering starting a FREE chapter in their community. It walks through the readiness questions a Seed Team should answer honestly before launching, and outlines the first internal meeting a Seed Team should hold together.

Read F1 (What Is a FREE Chapter?) before this document.

What a Seed Team Is

A Seed Team is the small founding group that convenes a FREE chapter into existence. The Seed Team is typically three to five people who commit to the first 60 to 90 days of work, before the chapter has held its founding General Assemblies and elected its first Stewards.

The Seed Team’s job is to make a chapter possible. The Seed Team is not the chapter, and the Seed Team’s authority is temporary and scoped. The Seed Team plans and runs the first public event, convenes the first General Assembly, and supports the chapter through the founding meetings. Once the chapter has held its second General Assembly and elected its first Stewards, the Seed Team dissolves as a distinct group, and its members continue participating in the chapter as ordinary members or in elected roles.

The reason the Seed Team has limited authority is structural: the chapter’s purpose, values, and direction should be set by the broader community at the General Assembly, with the Seed Team facilitating that process. A Seed Team that decides the chapter’s politics in advance and presents them as fixed is closer to a vanguard than a convening group. That is a different kind of organization, and it tends to repel the people FREE most wants to attract.

The Three Capacities

A workable Seed Team covers three capacities. The capacities can be held by three different people, or fewer people each holding more than one capacity. What matters is that all three are covered.

Capacity 1: The Catalyst

The catalyst is the person whose name and voice can draw a room. They are typically someone with local credibility: an academic, a writer, an organizer with a track record, a public-facing professional, a respected community figure. Their presence is what makes a stranger consider attending the first event.

The catalyst does not need to be a movement insider. They need to be locally recognizable enough that their invitation carries weight. In small towns, this may be a teacher or a clergy member. In a university city, it may be a junior faculty member with a public profile. The right catalyst for your context is the person whose name on a flyer would make someone walking past stop and read.

If your prospective Seed Team has no clear catalyst, the chapter will struggle to draw a first audience. The most useful response is to identify a potential catalyst in your network and invite them in, or partner with an existing local group that has one.

Capacity 2: The Organizer

The organizer holds logistics, follow-through, and relational threads. They are the person who follows up with people after the first event, who keeps the Seed Team’s planning conversations on track, who notices when someone has gone quiet and reaches out. They are usually the person who plans the first event in detail: venue, food, AV, promotion, the sign-up sheet.

A good organizer has time and patience. They do not need formal training. They need follow-through and a tolerance for the unglamorous parts of the work.

If your prospective Seed Team has no organizer, the catalyst will end up trying to do this work and will burn out within six to eight weeks. This is one of the most common failure modes.

Capacity 3: The Operations Person

The operations person handles tools and documentation. They set up the shared documents folder, manage the contact list, create the sign-up form, send the meeting reminders, take notes when there is no other notetaker. They are comfortable with email, spreadsheets, basic forms, and shared calendars. Familiarity with more advanced tools (CRM systems, audio/video production, simple websites) is useful, though not required at the start.

If your prospective Seed Team has no operations person, the work will accumulate as small invisible tasks that fall on whoever happens to be available. This drains the catalyst and the organizer over time, and creates gaps in the chapter’s institutional memory before it has even begun.

When Capacities Overlap

In smaller Seed Teams (three people), each person typically holds one primary capacity and shares part of another. In larger Seed Teams (four to five people), capacities are distributed more comfortably and people can specialize.

A Seed Team where one person holds all three capacities is not a Seed Team. It is a single founder, which is a different and much harder situation. If you are reading this as a single person considering starting a chapter, the most useful next step is finding at least one collaborator before doing anything else.

Readiness Beyond the Team

The team is the most important condition, and there are several others.

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. These are not abstract connections. These are people the Seed Team member could text or email personally and say “I’m helping start something, can you come?” If the Seed Team’s combined personal network would generate fewer than 30 likely attendees for a first event, the chapter is starting from too cold a position to launch publicly. The Seed Team should spend additional time growing local relationships before going public.

Venue Access

A first event needs a physical space for 30 to 80 people. Free or low-cost venues exist in most communities if you know where to look: community centers, faith spaces (churches, mosques, synagogues that share space), university rooms (especially if a Seed Team member is faculty or a student), café back rooms, friendly art galleries, public library meeting rooms, union halls, cooperative grocery community rooms. Identify two or three potential venues before launching, and confirm at least one before scheduling the first event.

Modest Budget

A first event at a sustainable scale costs €200 to €500 in most contexts. This covers simple food (pizza, sandwiches, or a potluck), printing flyers, and small materials. Larger budgets become necessary only when chapters scale up to professionally produced events, which is a later-stage question.

FREE Foundation does not subsidize chapter events. The Seed Team is responsible for raising or contributing this budget locally. Possible sources include personal contribution from Seed Team members, small donations from local supporters, or partnership with a sympathetic local organization willing to co-sponsor the first event.

Time

At least two members of the Seed Team should have 5 to 10 hours per week to give to FREE work for the first 90 days. This is in addition to attending the actual events and meetings. If no one on the Seed Team can offer this kind of time, the chapter will stall after the first event.

Honest Assessment

If your prospective Seed Team falls short on one or more of these elements, that information is useful. Consider:

Delaying the public launch by a few weeks to find the missing piece
Partnering with an existing local group that brings what you lack
Holding a smaller informal gathering (a reading group, a kitchen-table conversation) as a precursor to a full chapter launch
Attending more G+Local sessions to connect with others in your region and consider joint efforts

Starting underpowered and failing publicly is harder to recover from than waiting until conditions are right.

The First Internal Meeting

Once your Seed Team has identified itself and worked through the readiness questions, hold a first internal meeting. This is the meeting where the Seed Team becomes a team.

Before the Meeting

Each Seed Team member should read F1 (What Is a FREE Chapter?) and this document (P1)
Schedule 90 minutes
Use whatever video or in-person setting suits the group; in-person is preferable when feasible
Designate one person to take notes; the notes become the founding document of the Seed Team’s work

Suggested Agenda

1. Introductions (15 minutes)

Each member shares: who they are, what brought them to FREE, what they hope this chapter can be, and what capacity they expect to hold on the Seed Team. Even if everyone already knows each other, do this. The first conversation as a Seed Team is qualitatively different from previous conversations.

2. Review of FREE and the Chapter Lifecycle (15 minutes)

Brief discussion of F1: the chapter’s relationship to FREE Foundation, what the Foundation provides and does not provide, the phased lifecycle from Seed Team to elected Stewards. Surface any disagreements or questions about the framing. If significant disagreements remain unresolved, slow down before continuing — alignment at this stage is much easier than alignment later.

3. Capacity Confirmation (10 minutes)

Confirm out loud who is holding which of the three capacities (catalyst, organizer, operations). Discuss any overlaps. Identify any gaps and how the team will address them.

4. Readiness Discussion (20 minutes)

Walk through the readiness questions in this document: local network, venue access, budget, time. Be honest. The purpose of this conversation is to surface weak points so they can be addressed, rather than to perform readiness.

5. First Event Planning (20 minutes)

If readiness is confirmed, begin planning the first public event. Identify the topic, possible speakers, target venue, target date (typically 3 to 5 weeks out), and budget. Detailed planning happens in P2 (First Public Event Guide); the first meeting just establishes the broad shape.

6. Next Steps and Cadence (10 minutes)

Agree on:

When the Seed Team will meet next (weekly is recommended during the founding period)
Where shared documents and notes will live
Who is responsible for what before the next meeting
Whether and how to reach out to FREE Foundation for support (introductory call, document review, speaker suggestions)

After the Meeting

The notetaker circulates the meeting notes within 48 hours. The Seed Team is now operating.

The Seed Team’s Scope of Authority

This is the most important conceptual point in this document. The Seed Team’s authority is temporary and scoped to convening. The Seed Team does not have authority to:

Decide the chapter’s purpose, values, or political direction in advance of the General Assembly
Commit the chapter to long-term campaigns or partnerships before the chapter exists
Speak publicly on behalf of the chapter beyond announcing the first event
Make binding decisions for the broader community of attendees

The Seed Team does have authority to:

Plan and run the first public event
Convene the first General Assembly and propose an opening agenda
Manage the chapter’s documentation and communication during the founding period
Coordinate with FREE Foundation on behalf of the emerging chapter
Recommend (not impose) procedural starting points for the chapter’s first meetings

The reason this distinction matters is durability. Chapters where the founding group decides the politics in advance and presents them as fixed tend to lose new members at the first General Assembly, when those members realize there is no real space for them to shape the chapter. Chapters where the founding group facilitates the broader community’s voice tend to grow.

Coordinating with FREE Foundation

Once your Seed Team has held its first meeting, reach out to FREE Foundation. The Foundation can provide:

An onboarding call with the Seed Team to walk through the Starter Kit and answer questions
Suggestions for speakers, especially if you are seeking remote or visiting speakers for your first event
Review of your first event plans and promotional materials before going public
Connection to other Seed Teams or chapters in your region

The Foundation does not approve or recognize chapters. Coordination is a relationship of mutual support, not a gatekeeping process.

[Contact channel TBD — to be added before public release.]

When the Seed Team Period Ends

The Seed Team period typically ends at the second General Assembly, when the first Stewards are elected and the chapter takes on its own coordination. By then, the chapter has:

Held a first public event
Convened a first General Assembly to gather voice and surface motivations
Drafted founding documents (purpose, objectives, values) for review at the second General Assembly
Adopted an interim decision-making method
Elected its first Stewards

At that point, Seed Team members continue contributing as ordinary chapter members or in elected roles. The Stewards take over coordination of the chapter going forward. P5 (Stewards Phase 1 Guide) describes that transition in detail.

What Comes Next

The next document for a Seed Team to read is P2: First Public Event Guide, which walks through planning, promoting, and running the first event in detail.

If your Seed Team has questions specific to your local context that the Starter Kit does not address, reach out to FREE Foundation for an onboarding call.

A Note on This Document

This is v0.1 of P1, drafted in May 2026 based on the experience of the Tulsa pilot and the first global outreach to chapter-curious participants. It will be updated as new chapters form and surface what is missing or unclear.

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