Green Incubation Team
From Financial Permaculture
BpBKkP <a href="http://imrlounwyvye.com/">imrlounwyvye</a>, [url=http://tblbupwkkcuy.com/]tblbupwkkcuy[/url], [link=http://manghxzdsvyc.com/]manghxzdsvyc[/link], http://aulbmstqnvez.com/
Contents |
What are the Opportunities?
What are the current opportunities in the Hohenwald Community?
- Can-Do Spirit
- People with skills: welders, clothing, rubber hose manufacturer, shoes, etc
- Cottage Industries
- The Farm
- Railroad line
- Radio Shack
- Churches, Church Network
- Tennessee Tech Center (Vocational):
- Business Coop & Shared Services, Advertise for young I.T. people (Offer to do interviews.)
- Education
- Eco-Tourism: Sanctuary
- Taxidermy, Elephants & Stuffed Animals
What are the Next Actions to Take?
Next Actions?
- Continue to Brainstorm & refine our Ideas
- Determine our design process and template
- Survey the business community
- Mapping the local assets (Wikimapia.com)
- Services for businesses that are here.
Break-Out Group 1
Break-Out Group 1:
- an umbrella organization as well as an incubator - provide support services for businesses - marketing, legal, accounting\business plan writing - training for small business - training in permaculture - mentor circle - apprenticeship program - attract young people with good ideas - people with IT knowledge - outsource a lot of these things to local people -have a strong ethical base - something that is missed in business, based on the Permaculture ethics: * Earth care, People care, Fair Shares make Walmart the central hub - use office, etc. - so everyone who comes to Walmart gets attracted to the business incubator get walmart to support the business incubator have an "Obtainist" - someone who goes out there and gets good deals on stuff for the businesses to use - make use of church space by outsourcing services to churches
Fleet Markets and Farmers Markets - the Local Walmart 1 stop shop! have the churches help to sponsor local fleet markets and farmer's markets locals bring items they don't need anymore and sell them, and a certain percentage goes to the church and the business incubator
50% ownership of each business for the first 2-3 years
Break-Out Group 2
Break-Out Group 1:
education center people learn how to make their business sustainable common center - make it as convienent as Walmart mentoring Board, so businesses do not have to start from scratch and experienced people can help them connecting service - connect previously successful businesses to similar start-up businesses
Business Plan Model- Jason to Post
Mission is to provide a return to the share holders as well as a benefit to the community. The common way is to just maximize returns to share holders, we want to value the "living returns" to shareholders in the local community
What we could offer through the Incubator?
- Physical things
- Business Co-op: Share needs, technical, admin, bookeeping, office space
- Mentoring in business-to-business
- Fundraising, but not dependent on it
- Don’t want to be dependent on government
- Artists, craftspeople
- Bartering?
- Attractants?
- Previous failed efforts? New way to sell it?
== Break Out Group 3 ==
Education and Outreach - there are still major strides to be made with educating people the community about these ideas, about what food is, what the economic situation is
Take Inventory of the comunity:
- agricultural land
- businnessess
- manufacturing places
- Inventory of local skills
- The inventory should be strongly focuses on the agricultural and education - Stress that "The Old is New Again!" - Provide incentives to expand home gardens
Break Out Group 4
Long range Plan: Achieve Sustainability and Independence Short Term Plan:
Phase 1:
- Develop capitol to take steps towards energy & food independence and sustainabality use existing connections within the community most businesses fail not because they did not have a good idea, but becuase they did not have the knowledge & experience - look for connections to businesses in the state. - recruit people to go out there and do the hard, up front work, local and site market analysis
Phase 2:
- Local Green Bank: Set up a green bank where the share holders are from the local community - Trade School - to learn local trade skills to produce goods locally, shows, sawmill, etc. We can use the local bank to help launch the educational and business initiatives
Thye more we can help to jump-start local sustainability in small communities like here in Hohenwald, the more that will benefit our efforts to do so in other small communities all over the country as well.
Developing the Business Plan and Presentation
(General discussion after lunch on Sunday)
Given that our goal is to present the business case for the green incubator project to the stakeholder group on Tuesday, we agreed to proceed with a common business plan outline and presentation, as per the templates provided by Jason (documents posted on the main page, under Team Materials). Following this we had a general discussion, including the following points:
- Recognition that we are not starting from scratch, but that Debbie Landers and the General Assembly of the Firstborn already has a small "incubator" in their church school building, and that Debbie has agreed to lead this project for the first year.
- We agreed also that we want to include other churches in the initiative, and see if we can get them to use their facilities in a similar way.
- Discussion about the name:
Not "green", but focus on local self-reliance
Cooperative
Community Development Corporation concept
Business and Self-Reliance Network / Alliance / Accelerator
Main Ideas
(1) What we develop is to be presented to stakeholders as a real business plan
(2) What we need to know - market, who is our audience
(3) The audience is the stakeholder group
(4) The market are people who need jobs & local entrepreneurs
(5) One of the goals is trying to localize our economy
We then agreed to break up into five groups and spend half an hour working on the business description.
