The Hello Identity Co-op #

To address the governance concerns of a centralized service, Hellō is governed by a multi-stakeholder, not-for-profit cooperative, Hello Identity Co-op. While corporations are owned by shareholders, cooperatives are owned by their members for the benefit of the members.

Balancing Stakeholder Interests #

The Hello Identity Co-op has three classes of members: any person using the Hellō service is a member of the user class; any organization can join as a member of the corporate class by executing the corporate membership agreement and paying corporate membership fees; and all Hellō employees are employee members. The user and corporate member classes have equal representation with each class electing three directors. Employees are represented by one elected director.

Hellō Governance #

The cooperative's board of directors represents member interests and periodically reviews the Hellō operations to ensure they are meeting the Hellō Tenets, Laws of Identity, and when deployed, the Data Governance.

Enforcing Governance #

Hellō is operated by a regular, for-profit corporation (DBA Hellō). Financing is provided by traditional venture investors. Critical IP is licensed by Hellō from the Hello Identity Co-op, enabling the cooperative to enforce Hellō operates within the governance model.

FAQs #

1) Why not a non-profit foundation? #

Foundations are typically governed by a board of directors that are chosen by the existing board and/or donors. We think it is critical that our stakeholders have a direct voice in who represents them.

2) Why aren’t developers members? #

We could not devise a mechanism for developers to be democratically represented. We use the developer term to represent the entity that is incorporating Hellō into their applications and web sites. Unlike user and corporate members which have the same type of entity (a human or a corporate entity), the developer can range from a single person to a trillion-dollar organization. As the developer is the customer, we concluded that developers interests are adequately represented.

3) What does the cooperative do with its membership fees? #

The corporate membership fees are set by the board to cover the costs of operating the cooperative.

4) Why are people using Hellō called “user members”? #

They are people that “use” a Hellō Wallet. While there are some negative connotations to the term “user”, the term is well understood to mean the person interacting with software.