green drinks international as a non profit

[Laurens Laudowicz]

aloha

i thought maybe we should start of the discussion forum with a question that edwin had to hear more then once.

the non profit status of green drinks international.

there would be some benefits to it, but there would also be some trade offs. in emails between me and edwin, this is what became clear. these are edwins thoughts here, not mine ;-)

Drawbacks of a non profit -- there are many:

Pointless labour: Requires many days of work from several people just to do nothing but the basic mechanics / company secretary, legal, accounts, annual meetings etc
Pointless CO2: Requires travel of these people
Pointless aggravation: The vast majority of cities have indicated they don't want it
Pointless bickering: It would take months to agree constitution purpose etc amongst all 370 cities

Benefits of a non profit -- there are none:

You can raise outside income: But there is none 'Please donate so my friends can go for a beer' yeah right
You can raise income from the cities: But there is none -- most cities have no costs or at least no net income
You can get sponsorship: For what? Each city does their own thing, you can't make them all send promo emails to their lists or have displays at events -- you can't guarantee exposure to a sponsor.
You can get web ads: For the current hits at greendrinks.org there might be $100 a year ad income on googleads. I'm not cluttering and cheapening the site for that.

After all that effort if there is some net income to spend on something, what would it go on? Something else pointless like T shirts?

please post your thoughts on this topic here.

if you have any other questions, feel free to contact me, Laurens Laudowicz, in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

[Christina-GreenDrinksVancouver]

Hi Laurens,

I'm with Edwin on this one as I think the time & effort required to start and maintain a non-profit (particularly internationally) are just too much for any perceived benefits. I think two of the strongest aspects of Green Drinks are its local adaptability and ability to be run "organically" without heavy structure...a few individuals doing whatever they need to bring people together every month. I know others will have different thoughts but I think Green Drinks can be a great example of running something greater than the sum of its parts (or people) without sponsorship and the like.

I'm not saying that I will never need to change the way things are done for Vancouver Green Drinks, but I'm pretty sure it can be done locally within the larger aims or (dare I say..) values of the global Green Drinks network.

Cheers,
Christina

[Matthew Lynch]

agreed; OPENSOURCE and CROWDSOURCE are the way to go.... it aint broke, so no need to fix it!!

[Evan Tector]

The first question is if there is a need to incorporate at all. It takes the same energy to run a business regardless of it being a profit or non-profit. Non-profs can do all the functions of any corporation. The main difference is that all of the "profits" from a non-profit outfit are required to be re-applied for the purposes for which the organization was formed, as opposed to being distributed to owners or shareholders.

So assuming that the community energy of GD is best aggregated into "good causes", if incorporation is necessary or desirable for specific business objectives, then it is more a question of the character that you want your organization to have and its monetary relationship to its members. Non-profit would be the way to go.

[Bernie Lynch]

For over a year, our local collaborative effort, Green Innovators, has been attempting to NOT incorporate, much for the reasons discussed here. The dilemmas? Governance and funding. Decision making and chain of command in collaboration are too difficult with out this (if you sought a flat structure for shared decision making). Unless the decisions always fall to Edwin, and this may be the best manner to continue, this could get dicey when others want to weigh in. On funding: how do you receive funding that seeks you out and wants to engage? what is the mechanism to receive and account for it?

What happens, I think, is that your effort grows into something that demands this structure. If you continue to ignore it, you cannot grow. "Grow or die" is the business mantra. This will grow. How to manage its growth without an entity becomes harder to figure out than just creating an entity. We are at this point in PGH now with our effort. It is too difficult to continue without an entity. I have a sense Edwin is experiencing the ongoing difficulties of NOT incorporating. It is hard not to be an entity!

[Nur David Bernhardt]

We are continuing this conversation face-to-face in Seattle September 10-11. All are welcome.

http://www.seattlegreendrinks.org/events/2009/sep/greendrinks-north...

Hope to see you here!

Peace,

Nur

[Gabriel Scheer]

Seattle Greendrinks incorporated as a non-profit over 2 years ago, for a number of reasons - not least of which is liability. As organizers, we should all be aware of the liability inherent in being a person running a drinking event.

With regards to an umbrella organization, I'm very interested in pursuing something like this, but less as going after a single entity (as described above), but perhaps more modeled after the National Cooperative Grocers Association. Organizations who want to opt in, could; those who don't, needn't. Benefits would be numerous - resource sharing, shared revenue opportunities, etc, and overhead should be minimal.

I also would note that monetization is not only possible, but in our case, needed; we are running multiple sub-branded events, including events reducing energy use through efficiency retrofits and sustainability education events. I, and now we, have been doing this as a volunteer, on the side of my "real" job, since founding Seattle Greendrinks over 6 years ago. However, that is not a sustainable model. We now have the opportunity, through sponsors and ad revenue, to create actual roles to effect possible change in our areas. That, to me, is a great reason to investigate monetization and incorporation. I don't agree that there is not possibility for monetization; we already have numerous sponsors involved, and a diversifying business model. As an additional piece - we pay $1300/year for our insurance, as well the cost (now sunk) of creating our website (seattlegreendrinks.org) and ongoing monthly hosting fees. Those are costs that I cannot pay on my own - hence, the need for revenue. Our site is more than supporting itself, and our insurance, through ad revenue already, and has been for over a year.

I think it's great that different areas are running differently, and don't imagine that'll change. However, I'd love to have a more common platform from which to operate, so I can learn from others, share resources (for example, our articles of incorporation could be very handy to others going through the same stuff we went through, with our lawyer's help, two years ago), etc.

As Nur said, we welcome one and all to the conference in September! I look forward to more dialogue.

All the best -

Gabriel

[Ronald A. Miller]

Here in the Minnesota Green Drinkers for Civic Activism we are questioning the role of corporations in the world economy from the standpoint of their personhood that conflicts with the individual citizens' role as a person in the American experiment of constitutional republican self-government. Initially, the 1789 U.S. Constitution was framed and ratified by individuals in states for individuals in states to secure their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The corporation and its non-profit cousins' personhood came later on in U.S. history (via 1886 U.S.Supreme Court mistake) creating a conflict between the state and the individual citizen. Thom Hartmann's book Unequal Protection explains how this happened. Wendell Berry's books, The Art of the Commonplace and Citizenship Papers are well worth reading on this topic if it is the desire of Green Drinkers to remain free from corporate board rule through city councilors, mayors, state representatives, and state governors, by forming civic associations instead to end corporate personhood.

Quoting Wendell Berry on page 69 in his 2003 book Citizenship Papers,

"The folly at the root of this foolish economy began with the idea that a corporation should be regarded, legally, as "a person." But the limitless destructiveness of this economy comes about precisely because a corporation is not a person. A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. Unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular. It can experience no personal hope or remorse, no change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money. The stockholders essentially are usurers, people who, "let their money work for them," expecting high pay in return for causing others to work for low pay. The World Trade Organization enlarges the old idea of the corporation-as-person by giving the global corporate economy the status of a super-government with the power to overrule nations."

[Laurens Laudowicz]

thanks for sharing all the info.

i had a look at the http://www.ncga.coop/ site. seems interesting. USGBC is similar. each chapter basically runs their own thing but gets lots of guidance from national.

look forward to meeting you soon.

Gabriel Scheer said:

Seattle Greendrinks incorporated as a non-profit over 2 years ago, for a number of reasons - not least of which is liability. As organizers, we should all be aware of the liability inherent in being a person running a drinking event.

With regards to an umbrella organization, I'm very interested in pursuing something like this, but less as going after a single entity (as described above), but perhaps more modeled after the National Cooperative Grocers Association. Organizations who want to opt in, could; those who don't, needn't. Benefits would be numerous - resource sharing, shared revenue opportunities, etc, and overhead should be minimal.

I also would note that monetization is not only possible, but in our case, needed; we are running multiple sub-branded events, including events reducing energy use through efficiency retrofits and sustainability education events. I, and now we, have been doing this as a volunteer, on the side of my "real" job, since founding Seattle Greendrinks over 6 years ago. However, that is not a sustainable model. We now have the opportunity, through sponsors and ad revenue, to create actual roles to effect possible change in our areas. That, to me, is a great reason to investigate monetization and incorporation. I don't agree that there is not possibility for monetization; we already have numerous sponsors involved, and a diversifying business model. As an additional piece - we pay $1300/year for our insurance, as well the cost (now sunk) of creating our website (seattlegreendrinks.org) and ongoing monthly hosting fees. Those are costs that I cannot pay on my own - hence, the need for revenue. Our site is more than supporting itself, and our insurance, through ad revenue already, and has been for over a year.

I think it's great that different areas are running differently, and don't imagine that'll change. However, I'd love to have a more common platform from which to operate, so I can learn from others, share resources (for example, our articles of incorporation could be very handy to others going through the same stuff we went through, with our lawyer's help, two years ago), etc.

As Nur said, we welcome one and all to the conference in September! I look forward to more dialogue.

All the best -

Gabriel

[Kenneth Westervelt]

I'm also a member of American Atheists and the local affiliate, FLASH (FLorida Atheists and Secular Humanists). It is necessary that my atheist group be a nonprofit, due to our 400+ member list and various expenses (website, Darwin Day, Camp Quest, Sagan Day, picnics, community service programs, advertising). I've seen how national leadership and local affiliates work together to create community for non-believers and provide a collective voice for lobbying for non-religious policies.

I am of two minds about a GreenDrinks national non-profit, mostly because I'm still so new. Should there be more groups like Seattle's that put on money-intensive events, it would make sense to form a non-profit to defray the costs. If the group is just about meeting up once a month, it's not worth it.

Whether or not a national nonprofit should be created depends on how ambitious GreenDrinks' aims are. Will there be occasional Green-job fairs? Sponsored competitions? Scholarships? That'd be a reason to incorporate, and I would completely support that direction.

[Ronald A. Miller]

A new book informs us here at Green Drinkers for Civic Activism in Duluth, Minnesota, that adding green or sustainability initiatives through incorporation, whether in profit or non-profit versions of the corporate form of business to our state's economy at this time, may not be a good idea.

I bought a copy of David Swanson's book entitled, "Daybreak: Undoing The Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union," because I wanted to see if he acknowledges a corporation's legal personhood as a social and environmental problem. He does on page 214 under Environmental Rights in the following paragraph:

"Our history is one of slowly expanding the group of people entitled to civil rights, breaking down barriers of wealth, race, sex, and age. But what about species? Although we've criminalized cruelty to animals in some cases, we've never dared to scandalize the philosophers by giving rights to nonhumans. I'm not proposing that we include dogs and pigs and insects in our Constitution as individuals. I don't think they have much more place there than do corporations, which have falsely claimed constitutional rights. But we might want to consider giving our environment as a whole a right to survive. "

Right now, through the cooperation of Rep. Roger Reinert, Rep. Margaret Kelliher and House Committee Administrator Andy Pomroy, the House Legislative Analyst is doing research on how and when "corporation" was added to the definition of "person" in Minnesota Statute 13.02. I'm waiting for Andy's report as I write this to add to my petition drive to bring before Duluth city council a resolution that rejects the concept of corporate personhood.

Here's hoping more Greendrinks folks will embrace civic activism by not taking the unnatural step of incorporation until we abolish corporate personhood.

Ronald A. Miller

[Julia Gorrell]

For me, the appeal of Green Drinks... there were no hoops to jump through. Green Drinks feels like a grassroots cog in the green movement ~ in a good way. It is one more mechanism to get the conversation going and for change to take place in a non-confrontational/casual way. In Fort Wayne there are several non-profit formal green organizations, and they serve their purpose. I feel Green Drinks affords a different way to broaden the conversation without all the hierarchy of formal organizations. I agree with Edwin, there are no benefits of being a formalized non-profit organization.