We don’t partner with everyone. We can’t. The work we do is too close to the bone — disability justice, neurodiversity, mutual aid — for us to collaborate with organizations whose practices contradict the people we exist to support.
These rules of engagement exist so that potential partners know where we stand before we start. They’re not a purity test. They’re a floor. Shared values aren’t optional infrastructure. They’re how trust gets built and how harm gets prevented.
Read the deal breakers. Read the covenant. If we align, fill out the form. We’d love to work with you.
Table of Contents
Deal Breakers
- If y’all support behaviorism in any form, we will not work with you.
- If y’all bear the trappings of a bad autism organization, we will not work with you.
- Don’t be TRAAAAASH: Transphobic, Racist, Ableist, Abusive, Anti-Black, Anti-Indigenous, Anti-Semitic, Sexist, Homophobic.
- No proselytizing. We are not your mission field.
Contributor Covenant
All Stimpunks and our partners agree to abide by our covenant when we’re working together.
We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.
Contributor Covenant
In Brief
- We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.
- We use prosocial principles, restorative practices, transformative justice, and an advice process.
- Don’t be TRAAAAASH (transphobic, racist, ableist, abusive, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic).
- No proselytizing.
- In addition to speaking different languages, we have different neurotypes with different communication styles and norms of sociality. In the case of misunderstanding, assume good intention.
- Tell your truth in such a way that you’re allowing others to tell their truths, too.
- Maintain learner safety and remember what it is like to be a new contributor.
- You can’t just open the door; you have to put out a welcome mat.
- Stimpunks is created by all of us.
- Live your truth.
- Shred some gnar.
Learner Safety
Maintain learner safety and remember what it is like to be a new contributor.
We do educational and learning work. That means learner safety isn’t background context — it’s a core operating condition.
Learner safety is the second stage of psychological safety. It’s the climate in which people can engage in all aspects of the learning process — asking questions, making mistakes, experimenting, not knowing — without fear of rejection, ridicule, or neglect. Fear shuts down learning. Learner safety opens it back up.
Psychological safety is a condition in which you feel (1) included, (2) safe to learn, (3) safe to contribute, and (4) safe to challenge the status quo—all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way.
All human beings have the same innate need: We long to belong.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation
The moral imperative to grant learner safety is to act first by encouraging the learner to learn.
In the second stage of psychological safety, we shift our focus from human status to human need — in this case the innate human need to learn and grow, to engage in all aspects of the learning process without fear of being rejected or neglected.
There are three patterns of fear-inducing emotional danger that remove learner safety and create a state of risk: (1) neglect, (2) manipulation, and (3) coercion.
That’s our standard. Not compliance. Not performance. Safety to learn in the comfort of your own skin.
For organizations we partner with: if your model depends on behaviorism, compliance pressure, or fear of failure to motivate learners, you are destroying learner safety. That’s a deal breaker.
Read more about psychological safety →
The Form
Use this form to indicate agreement with our rules of engagement. Thanks for working with us.