Happy to discuss this. I think the choice of vehicle - non-profit, coop, other - should be determined by the person who is the lead for the effort.
IMO, coops come with lots of excess work.... On Sep 24, 2014, at 8:02 AM, Bob Waldrop <[email protected]> wrote: > P.S. Coops often have volunteer requirements. The Park Slope Food Coop on > the east coast, for example, requires each member to donate IIRC 4 hours of > work every month, they are a $20+ million operation. Prices would be > determined by costs divided by number of people using the service. > Everything is open and transparent. Quality is guaranteed by member control > and design of the entire process. Money can be saved by requiring some > reasonable amount of time investment. Sometimes coops allow a financial > buy-out of the labor requirement (usually priced at whatever the paid labor > cost of the hours would represent, plus an overhead percent. Others don't > allow a buy-out because they want everyone to be part of the work, which has > both ideological and practical/management notes within it. > > rmw > On 9/23/2014 5:55 PM, Bob Waldrop wrote: >> I am not likely to ever make it to Burning Man although I am quite the fan >> and spend a lot of time watching the video feeds. >> >> But I am something of a maven of what permaculturists refer to as "invisible >> structures" and the thing that immediately popped into my mind is that what >> y'all need is the Burning Man Hexayurt Cooperative. >> >> Cooperatives exist to provide a service to their members. If they run an >> operating surplus (a/k/a "profit"), then it is refunded to the members in >> proportion to their patronage (that is to say, the amount of business they >> did with the coop, which means they paid more into the surplus, so they get >> back more). Cooperatives are business organizations that can facilitate the >> traditional self-help ethos that we see in barn and house raisings and other >> such communal efforts. >> >> People join a cooperative by buying a membership share. The group sets an >> initial price, which is usually the expected startup costs of the >> organization divided by however many members they think they can/need to >> attract to make it viable. The coop is governed on a one member, one >> share, one vote basis. When a member leaves, the coop buys the membership >> share back (although there can be restrictions on that if the coop is not >> doing well financially, most state laws on coops forbid buying back shares >> if doing so would endanger the financial status of the coop). >> >> The whole thing can then be designed to meet the needs of the members. >> >> I will resist the temptation to give me entire 90 minute "What is a >> cooperative" workshop in this email, lol, but I do have such a workshop I >> do, as well as a longer 8 hour workshop for groups actually getting started. >> >> There are lots of resources available to help organize coops. I am not a >> lawyer, but incorporating a coop is not advanced legal procedure, and I have >> written articles of incorporation for one hybrid customer/producer coop (the >> Oklahoma Food Coop, which was the first food coop in the US to only sell >> locally grown and made food and non-food items, in business for 10 years, >> sales approaching $6 million total), the Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network >> (a cooperative organizing group), Fertile Ground Compost Coop (a >> worker-owned coop offering residential compost services in the OKC area). >> >> SO ANYWAY. . . I will help if y'all are interested in putting together >> something like that. We can do it right here in this group (I'm sure Vinay >> wouldn't mind), or we can go into private email or another google or yahoo >> group etc. >> >> The first thing is to decide exactly what it is this cooperative can or >> could do. This storage and transportation idea is one. >> >> But another issue I keep hearing about in this forum is access to the >> Thermax panels which are often hard to get. The Coop could organize >> "thermax bulk purchases" and deliver quantities of them to locations chosen >> strategically for access to the people who pre-order them. E.g., if there >> are lots of people in the SF Bay Area, Seattle, portland, interested, the >> Coop might be able to arrange deliveries to those areas on a >> pay-in-advance-you-come-pick-them-up basis. >> >> Same same with any other supply issues involving the hexayurts. >> >> So let me if anyone is interested in this. >> >> Bob Waldrop >> Oklahoma City >> >> On 9/23/2014 4:46 PM, Jay Batson wrote: >>> I very much like the idea of a centralized yurt-storage service. A couple >>> of thoughts: >>> There's a guy who did this last year for me ("Black Rock Hexayurts"). He >>> charged a very modest price last year ($75), but raised it to $300 this >>> year. Sadly, his service quality was poor; yurts were not on-playa on the >>> date promised, the yurts were buried under lots of his other camp "stuff", >>> and he was rarely around when you went to find him. A solo person, >>> unorganized, with poor standards is NOT the solution. (I found a different >>> solution this year, but would still like a quality service.) >>> Charging for this in advance of the burn is reasonable. The service must >>> incur a fairly substantial investment to make this happen; having a >>> predictable number of people / yurts is crucial to viability. >>> It's also reasonable to require that Yurts be packaged to specific >>> requirements. Because people are not likely to always comply with them, the >>> service should have some spare supplies - tarps, ply, etc. - to "fix" those >>> that are not delivered properly (at either end). By the way: 1/4" ply adds >>> a huge amount of weight to a wrapped bundle; I used 1/8" satisfactorily. >>> I LOVE the trolly solution pictured in this thread. These could actually be >>> made of ply & some wheels with carriage that could be broken down for >>> storage year-to-year. We could actually have / make a half-a-dozen of these >>> to help people get yurts to their camp quickly (and back). Some form of >>> generalized clamp-to-bike-seatpost needs thought up, so people can use >>> their own bikes. >> >> -- >> http://www.ipermie.net How to permaculture your urban lifestyle and adapt to >> the realities of peak oil, economic irrationality, political criminality, >> and peak oil. >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "hexayurt" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > http://www.ipermie.net How to permaculture your urban lifestyle and adapt to > the realities of peak oil, economic irrationality, political criminality, and > peak oil. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google > Groups "hexayurt" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/hexayurt/oIMTWVXc_ak/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------- Jay Batson [email protected] Mobile: +1-978-758-1599 Blog: http://startupdj.com Twitter: @jab Schedule time to meet or talk -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hexayurt" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hexayurt. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
