Carter McNamara

Meeting - 03/15/12

Attendees: Marcin Jakubowski, Carter MacNamara, Aaron Makaruk

Topic: Resource Development and Strategic Planning

Notes

Letter of Confirmation: IRS mails this to us to confirm that they have received our f1023 application.

• Before submitting anymore grants, make sure we have this.

LC3 - non-profit/for-profit organization

• It's better to form the non-profit organization before spinning off a for-profit entity. Do not do it the other way around.
• npEnterprise - resource for starting a non-profit/for-profit hybrid.

Resource Development - 8 forms:

1. Grants
2. Corporate Donations
3. Government Grants
4. Individual Contributions
5. In-Kind Donations
6. Collaboration
7. Volunteers

Things that foundations want to know:

• Who are our competitors?
• Is there a bona fide social need that we are going to address?

• This needs to be proven by a Community Needs Assessment. Don't reinvent the wheel - a CNA is difficult to do, and many organizations exist that do this kind of research. Sources for CNAs: librarians, census data, Urban Leage, NAACP, etc.
• Change the name of our evaluations survey, because it makes us sound inauthentic - change it to a volunteers recruiting tool.

• Can Open Source Ecology meet that need?

• Outcomes can prove this.

• Can we sustainably meet that need over time?

• Are we viable financially?\
• Do we have suitable management?
• Are we collaborating?

Funding resource development/development officers:

• Overhead - state that a certain percentage of the grant covers overhead/administration of the grant.

The Ask - when speaking to foundations, teach board members to:

1. Describe what the social need is.
2. Describe what is required to meet the social need.
3. Describe what Open Source Ecology is doing to meet that need.
4. Describe what our successes have been.
5. Directly ask the foundation for an investment - The Ask.

Strategic Planning:

• Make a plan for one year of solid strategy.
• Find someone to volunteer to do this - Human Resources Department heads from corporations are a good resource.

• What are we working on, what are we going to do.

• After that, develop a strategic vision and a grand vision.