Corporate Records

Meeting Minutes: July 2015

I have not had time to do a full accounting but then there is not really much to account for.  Since the first of the year we have taken in $1,216.99, including $165.11 from people contributing to the MeetUp group, $9.79 from Amazon Smile and $70 in general donations.  The balance is from program revenues including the Huglekultur and Mushroom classes.  We have spent $1,860.71 the biggest expenses being $426 for insurance and $750 for accounting. There is also some printing for bee safe neighborhoods in there. The balance in the account is $1573.29 plus about $21 in paypal.

As we have been discussing, my goal is to become more effective at sharing our message.  I think the best way to do that is a series of short videos documenting integrated closed loop production systems. The only financially feasible way for us to do that is for me to learn to shoot video and edit it.  Initial investigation indicates that an adequate camera will run in the range of $150 and good editing software might be around $300.  Do we know anyone who can make a recommendation on equipment?  Maybe someone who is willing to help me learn how to use it?

We would use the videos to attract people to fund raising events for specific projects.  Aleece and Kris, we could start with your green house / food cell if you are ready.  We would need to put together a bill of materials and schedule a series of events to ask for donations.  A crowd funding campaign would be feasible once we had a video.  I am thinking LSI would need something in the range of a 10% administrative fee if we are sponsoring the projects.  We will want to find ways to reach out to new audiences that have the resources to support this work.

I need your feed back, insights and ideas about this proposal.  I will look further into the camera and software.

Thanks for improving our habitat.

-- 
David Braden
Executive Director

Update:

I am no closer to having a price on a camera, equipment & software but I have offers of loans of cameras, a line on free on-line editing software and several offers of assistance in filming and editing.  I still think we will want our own camera and start holding and documenting events.

Jeannette is retiring a week from today and the final payout on the sale of my law practice will be December.  I will be fine financially but I won't be able to put in the kind of money I did in 2013.  What we will need to continue is the insurance of $420 and the accounting fee of $750 annually and then funding for materials for projects and volunteer labor.  Eventually I hope to demonstrate the viability of this approach to our systemic problems and attract funding for expertise and expert labor for projects.

The next step in that direction is this introductory video.  I have attached the story board that Cori DeFoe, the current intern, and I worked up.  I think I need to make a more direct statement that sets this approach apart from all the other solutions being touted with "we must do" this or that:
 

Our industrial system depletes resources. Systems that use and mimic natural systems can build resources into the system with each production cycle.

The one is not sustainable. The other is.

It really is as simple as that. So long as we rely on industrial processes to provide for our needs our world will continue to run down. When we employ integrated closed loop production we begin to build our world back up.

Thank you again for your thoughts on this introductory message.  If you think the foregoing fits in the script, where would you put it?

-- David Braden Executive Director