I had hoped to get these thoughts joted down earlier to give folks more time to mull them over and come up with fresh thoughts or modifications. Asi es la vida (such is life).
Of course we will need to come up with what works best and satisfies the group, but as a starting point,I'll mention what I think would work best for me. I would like to do more of my purchases through the organization. The first element to make that more feasible for me would be a predictable fairly frequent ordering schedule-once a month would be super, bi-monthly next best. I think we're headed towards that. My understanding is in order to make that happen we need the following: $500 in purchases per order, a drop off location tied to a business, and a trained rotating volunteer base to coordinate and facilitate the ordering,disbursing, and payment collection phases. It sounds like we have a couple of possiblities for the business location. One way to pull the rest off smoothly would be if we had twelve core members who were willing to commit to ordering a minimum of $42 a month, being trained in the order phases above, and volunteering the time necessary to manage two orders a year. Obviously, numbers could be adjusted if we thought we needed more than two people volunteering per order, etc. I imagine that some people might not want to place an order every month, perferring to order larger amounts less frequently. It would also work to stagger two groups of six people ordering a minimum of $82 every other month. As Jeb mentioned at Friday's meeting, we do want to encourage people to buy in bulk whenever possible. Obviously, the numbers could be adjusted with more core members, etc. There is a number of other activities I'd love to see the organization (or interested groups of members) get into as time goes on, but I think that in the beginning we should focus our energy on becoming a strong purchasing group for organic and environmentally friendly products. I think that we should design at least our initial structure towards people who are willing to make a committment to the organization. People do have other options now (Wild Oats, etc.) for introductions to organic products. One major thing that contributed to the Washoe Zephyr Coop's demise was catering to the convenience of people making small, infrequent purchases who weren't interested in giving anything back to the group. Just thoughts...I'm interested in hearing what other people think is our best method of development. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's meeting. _______________________________________________ Buying Club discussion list at BuyOrganic.org http://buyorganic.org/mailman/listinfo/friends
