One of the things I am working on at this time is the raising of some capital to fund the organization for the next few years. While we want to run this organization as inexpensively as possible, there are some costs for mail and accounting/legal expenses that will be necessary.
In trying to decide how to raise funds, I had a couple ideas. The first one, and one I still like best, is allowing the community to crowdsource some funds. Were it not for the pandemic and the interruption of events, I would have loved to ask a lot of people to donate $5. However, given that events paused and restarting them is challenging, I decided this feels wrong at this time.
Ideally, I want to give back to the community, not take from it.
The other option is to ask vendors for some help. I have started a grant proposal to send to a few of them, asking for a nominal amount to get started. My hope is to raise $5,000 from a few vendors that will sustain all operating costs for a number of years. At that point, I’ll go looking for more funds if they are needed.