Event:2015/08/10 Until the Revolution Working Group

August 10 "Until the Revolution" Meeting

last week: https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Event:2015/08/03_Until_the_Revolution_Working_Group

who's here?

• matt, yar, daniel
• Laura will be here later, maybe 8:30

lawyer

• Our lawyer won't talk to anyone but board members until the delegates give him a list of approved liaisons. This problem was instigated by David Keenan and La Commune people trying to talk to him, and his need to be clear about who he can talk to for ethical reasons. This sucks and is holding up our work.

Still need advice from him about:

• choosing a land trust
• how to reassure the lender's concern about "locking in use of the building" with a ground lease
• whether collecting rent as a 501c2 will work

501c3

• Delegates agreed to become a 501c3. Helen told me the finance working group is taking on this process, so we don't have to. But we should still be talking to each other. Need a joint meeting soon.
• Matt met Jared at the "Becoming Omni Commons" event, friend of Matt Griffin (current treasurer) and of Mitch Altman (he had helped Jared start a hackerspace down in SD that recently folded). Has lots of experience applying for 501(c)3 and various corporation stuff, wants to help with this process for Omni Commons.
  • Matt informed Jared of the previous engagement with the UC Berkeley Law "Business Practicum" course, the advice we had already been given, and the willingness of the instructor of that course to support our ongoing efforts in the next (and perhaps following?) terms. Jared is interested in looking through the information we've already compiled with the Business Practicum students, as well as joining up with them at the beginning of the semester term (mid/late August) as potential support for our actual application.
  • TODO:
    • Give Jared access to the Business Practicum "google folder"
    • Walk through or answer any questions, discuss any relevant matters of what's inside the google folder.
    • Contact the Business Practicum professor, seek to re-initiate engagement for the fall semester.
    • Seek more participants who want to help make best use of this legal resource ;)

Donor

• Yar: What do we need from them to start the process? More confidence from the lender? Delegates have given us the go-ahead.
• Yar: would like clarity on the exact amount. I know it's "around a million" so I ballparked 1.1 to the lender, but still...

finding more donors

• Matt believes it's possible to find more donors ASAP (given the $1 million on the table), maybe not need all this debt. But wants this process to happen in parallel and not hold up the other threads.
  • TODO:
    • Create materials for answering "FAQ" concerns for a potential major donor, based on our experiences thus far.
    • Prompt and train any and all willing Omni Common participants to reach out to potential major donors (determine what other resources might be needed to assist Commoners with these "asks")
    • Ensure any communications about structuring, making, finalizing, and announcing the building purchase also provides room for other major donors to chip in.
    • Consider whether there are discrete structural improvement projects that we may want to itemize and attach to an overall long-term budget (alongside the full purchasing price) e.g.:
      • Elevator
      • Roof renovation (patio / garden)
      • Solar power installation
      • Seismic retrofit (req'd)
• Yar doesn't know any millionaires and wants to just focus on keeping the current balls rolling

Lender

• Last week Laura emailed him this: "Essentially the land trust is a contract between 2 non-profits. I think we can add whatever additional agreements to that contract that we, with the advice of our lawyer(s), believe will support the acceptable use of the building into the future."
• He's on vacation. hasn't replied yet
• Yar and Jessie watched "Art of the Steal". It was absolutely terrible, and irrelevant. About a bunch of smarmy white dudes stealing paintings and then fucking each other over while strutting around and posturing and being assholes to women. Also the script was pathetic.

Owner

• When do we tell him? Then what?

Communication

• Matt told a story about cooking with Food Not Bombs on Sunday. Most people there felt in the dark about the process of buying the building. Supportive, maybe even eager to help, but just aren't plugged in, don't know when meetings are or what mailing lists to join or where the notes are posted.
• What can we do to include more people in this?
  • Julio just finished adding all the active working group meetings to the calendar.
  • Update the wiki to eliminate mis-information about meeting times, etc.
• Need a communications working group again... also need to redo the whole website to make it more about how to engage and less about how cool and edgy we are