The mutual responsibilities between Unities CIC and its contributor-members. Practical and clear — not legalistic. So everyone knows the rules.
Unities CIC is a practitioner cooperative that produces and shares evidence-based tools, frameworks, and practical resources to help senior leaders navigate AI-driven change in complex organisations. It is a Community Interest Company — a non-profit limited company with a statutory asset lock, meaning company assets and surpluses are used for community benefit, not private gain.
Unities focuses on leadership, governance, procurement, workforce transitions, pace of adoption, public trust, and learning from failure — the institutional challenges that determine whether AI works in practice. The technology is the context, not the content.
A contributor-member is a practitioner — someone with direct professional experience of AI adoption, digital transformation, or technology-led change in an organisational setting — who has agreed to contribute their knowledge and experience to the cooperative's shared library of resources.
Contributor-members are not employees, contractors, or consultants to Unities. They are peers who participate voluntarily because they believe in the cooperative's mission: helping leaders who are underserved and oversold get honest, practical support.
There is no fee to become a contributor-member. Membership is by invitation or application, and is approved by the Unities core team.
You agree to share practical experience, insights, tools, or lessons learned from your own professional context. Contributions can take many forms: a written case study, a framework you've developed, a documented lesson from a failed initiative, a tool you've found useful, or participation in a structured interview with the Unities team. There is no minimum or maximum — contribute what you can, when you can.
The cooperative's value depends on honesty. We are particularly interested in what hasn't worked and why. You agree to share your experience accurately, including failures and difficulties, not just successes. We create a safe environment for this — see section 5.
You agree not to use your contributor-member status to promote commercial products, services, or your employer's interests. Contributions should reflect your professional experience and judgement, not a sales message. If you have a commercial interest relevant to a contribution, you must declare it.
If your contributions reference specific organisations, individuals, or sensitive situations, you are responsible for ensuring you have the right to share that information. Do not disclose anything that would breach your employment contract, a non-disclosure agreement, or any legal obligation. Unities will work with you to anonymise contributions where necessary.
You agree to engage with other contributor-members and the Unities core team in a spirit of mutual respect, constructive challenge, and shared purpose. Disagreement is welcome — hostility is not.
Unities will review, curate, and where appropriate enrich your contributions with additional evidence and context before publication. Nothing you contribute will be published without your knowledge. You will have the opportunity to review any material derived from your contribution before it is shared publicly.
Unless you request anonymity, your contribution will be credited to you by name and role. If you prefer to be anonymous (for example, because the contribution describes a sensitive organisational situation), Unities will respect that completely.
Your contributions become part of the cooperative's shared library and are made freely available. Unities will never sell contributed material as a commercial product, license it to a third party for profit, or use it in any way that contradicts the cooperative's non-profit community interest purpose.
Unities maintains a published editorial independence policy. No funder, partner, sponsor, or commissioner reviews or approves content before publication. Your contributions will never be altered to suit a commercial interest. If Unities receives funded research commissions, the outputs are shared openly — the commissioner does not control the findings.
Unities will not publish any material that could reasonably damage your professional reputation. If you share a difficult experience or a failure, it will be presented constructively and in context — as a learning resource, not as a criticism of you or your organisation.
Unities will keep contributor-members informed of new publications, resources added to the shared library, and any significant developments in the cooperative. This will typically be through a regular email update — not a deluge of communications.
The cooperative recognises that the most valuable contributions are often the most sensitive — accounts of what went wrong, why a programme failed, what leaders wish they had done differently. This material is rare precisely because there are so few safe places to share it.
Unities commits to creating that safe space:
You retain ownership of any intellectual property in the material you contribute. By contributing, you grant Unities CIC a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free licence to use, adapt, curate, and publish your contribution as part of the cooperative's shared library, in any format, for non-commercial community benefit purposes.
This means: you can use your own material however you wish (including in your own publications, presentations, or professional work). Unities can use it as part of the shared library. Neither party can prevent the other from using the material.
If Unities substantially adapts or enriches your contribution (for example, by combining it with other practitioner accounts or adding evidence from research), the resulting publication is jointly attributed and published under the cooperative's standard open licence.
This agreement has no fixed term. You are a contributor-member for as long as you wish to be. You can withdraw at any time by notifying the Unities core team in writing (email is sufficient). On withdrawal:
Unities may also end a contributor-member's participation if the individual acts in a way that is materially inconsistent with this agreement — for example, using the cooperative to promote commercial products, or behaving in a way that is hostile or disrespectful to other members. This would only happen after a conversation and an opportunity to resolve the issue.
There is no financial obligation in either direction. Contributors are not paid for their contributions (though Unities may in future offer small stipends or expense reimbursements for specific projects, by separate arrangement). Contributors do not pay any fee to participate.
Unities is sustained through research commissions, grants, and university partnerships — not through contributor fees.
If a disagreement arises between a contributor-member and Unities, both parties agree to resolve it through direct, good-faith conversation in the first instance. If that does not resolve the issue, the matter may be referred to an independent third party agreed by both sides. The cooperative's aim is always to resolve disputes constructively, not litigiously.
By signing below, you confirm that you have read and understood this Contributor-Member Agreement and agree to its terms. You also confirm that you are contributing in a personal professional capacity and that your participation does not breach any obligation to your employer or any other party.