Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cohousing as a non-profit with an institutional use

[Tiffany Lee Brown (magdalen23]

The community I hope to start up in Central Oregon will have a public
service/institution component baked in: artist residency programs through
our 501c3 nonprofit, New Oregon Arts & Letters. I also hope that the
collaborators attracted to the project from the beginning will be folks who
specifically want to give back to the world/community, and that multiple
nonprofits and ethical, for-profit entities would be involved.

Is your group part of Lyme, or are you coming into the town as outsiders?
Especially if the latter, perhaps you could consider working with an
established organization in the area, or multiple organizations. Find out
what your members really care about in the world (community? supporting the
poor? arts? environmentalism? empowering women? wellness? the local foods
movement? education? helping disadvantaged youth? animal welfare?). Find
out what people in Lyme care about. Sincerely seek to provide an
institutional service that genuinely serves those desires.

Say one of your members really want to raise goats on the property. And
someone near Lyme is an experienced, retired farmer who now lives in a
retirement condo and misses the farming life. Someone else has been
involved in activism for autistic children. OK, start a farm therapy
program (http://modernfarmer.com/2014/02/animal-therapy-autism/).

 And if you also have artisanal cheese fanatics and someone who wants to
serve disadvantaged youth, even better: in summers, provide residency
programs for inner city youth to experience the farm, milk goats, and make
cheese. Sell cheeses to benefit your programs or other worthy programs. Now
you've given a dozen people something beautiful and unselfish to work for
in this world! And helped kids, gourmands, and goats to boot.

One thing I see a need for in the world: retreats and residencies
specifically for staff and Boards of other nonprofits, a function that
could serve a wide range of causes. Many small nonprofits are run by
exhausted volunteers and even more exhausted low-paid professionals. Having
a program that enabled them to get away, hang out by the lake for a week
while they hammer out their plans for the following year might make a huge
difference in morale. We used to do that annually with our artist-run Board
of Directors, but we had to pay for it. It was the only luxury ever given
our artist-organizers, and it was amazing. It built relationships,
refreshed very devoted, burned-out people, and gave us the physical and
mental space to delve deep into planning for the organization, without our
partners, kids, and day jobs pulling at us, just for a few days. Now we
don't have the money, and we don't do the retreat.

Hope these ideas might be useful to you!

Tiffany

now in Beta: plazm.org




tiffany lee brown

editor, plazm magazine
director, new oregon arts & letters

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 6:07 AM, Richart Keller <richart.keller [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Some are environmental education centers...
> On Dec 16, 2015 8:17 AM, "Liz Ryan Cole" <lizryancole [at] me.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Pinnacle Cohousing (Lyme, NH) still find ourselves owning 120 acres and a
> > lovely cabin based rustic resort on a pond (Loch Lyme Lodge), but with a
> > zoning ordinance that allows only 4 homes on the parcel we want to build
> > on.  We would find it very helpful to know of any cohousing communities
> > that are organized, in whole or in part, as non-profits and/or have an
> > institutional use on their land.
> >
> > (Lyme’s definition of INSTITUTIONAL USE: Public service uses provided by
> > governmental and non-profit organizations including, but not limited to,
> > education, recreation, health, public worship, and cultural enrichment).
> >
> > Please reply to me off list at Liz Ryan Cole (lizryancole [at] me.com)
> >
> > thanks!   liz
> >
> > Liz Ryan Cole
> > lizryancole [at] me.com
> > Pinnacle Cohousing at Loch Lyme Lodge
> > Lyme, NH
> > Home 802.785.4124
> > Work 802.831.1240
> > Lodge 603-795-2141
> >
> > I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a
> > desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
> > ― E.B. White
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
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