Step 1: Fund building.

Okay here is the list

Short term/ initial fundraising stuff to get us some cash (might want to get a corporation/nonprofit or something going once we get enough cash, gotta pay taxes)

-classic fundraisers (bake sales, raffles, etc)
-itunes (if we put out some songs that people would download)
-ibooks (we could put together some LARP guide or something)
-art commissions (yes, lets tap into THAT market too, like there is money there, and if we can protect Wednesday, we can protect our silo)
-whatever else anyone can think up
-donations bad idea, i know, but we should allow people to give something if they feel strongly, and are too lazy to help out

midterm (silo located and purchased, mid renovation)

same as above, plus
-power/ green grants tap into this ASAP, so we qualify and get another steady stream of income
-once stuff gets built start using it, (club, restaurant whatever else is there)
-locals- my guess is that we will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, group in the county, so we could start by offering tours, or something, just to get started. also, we may find some people willing to staff the place/ pick up some games/work 4 food
-hopefully farm is up, saving on food costs
-SCARP most of the non toxic metals can be thrown in a blast furnace, so we can get some cost back, we should keep anything interesting that might be of use (cool odds and ends, savable copper, leftover military hardware, shop tools. toxic stuff is going to be tough, depending on what it is
-by this point we should try to minimize the need for donations, and instead look for sponsors/ investors. if we get investors, we are to make sure that we guard our controlling shares by a safe margin. probably not going down this road, but needs to be stated


long term (silo is operational and important parts are completed

-introduce tournaments etc. to get the main flow in
-farm/power plants reduce costs/ get us mola
-phase out most art commissions (especially THOSE), or junk THOSE only
-get dance club up (be careful here, may be at mercy of locals with this one)
-get locals to frequent the silo restaurant/club/above structures
-enjoy the fact that we have a nuke proof hangout where we can be our true neck-beardy selves!!


i want EVERYONE's feedback, this is NO WAY final

a while back I was hearing about a guy who put out adds in every major city for people to donate 15 cents to his college fund.

Supposedly he ended up with some hundreds of thousands of dollars.


Could we maybe do the same kind of thing? Just post a couple of adds asking for donations?

I don't think you should discount donations quite yet. I think donations from ourselves, as well as from other people are going to be the most reliable form of income for us, at least initially. Especially when we're such a disparate and widespread group, doing any traditional fundraising is going to be hard.

As long as there's something like Kickstarter that can keep track of planned donations, it should be alright. Obviously, no-one would actually donate until it was clear that this was actually going to happen.

Oh, and we're going to need to trust some random stranger on the internet with our money. Unless we get a lawyer involved or something, which is all extra money.

We need to form some sort of IRL group to hold the money that can be met, trusted, and most of all, sued for fraud if things go south.

No offense to anyone but I would not trust people on the internet to hold onto my money (Call it paranoia). I think we need to make a nonprofit organization and funnel all the money in there, least thats what I think. Also I did setup a paypal account.

Maybe we can make it a real buisness, with a trick. This might be a silly idea, and might also make the whole thing a bit more complicated, but I'll propose it anyway.

Let's begin with a naval junk disposal society. Armies from around the world pay for such entreprise to dispose of their old warships. I know a friend who's in an engineer school and who learned the proper way of disponsing of industrial waste, and who'd be able to tell if such activity would be profitable.

What we then need would be a harbor in an aging costal city, where autorities would be glad to see us coming with work to give. Using a loan, we'd rent the place and some storing facility for the ship parts we'd keep.

This done, and if we manage to raise enough money in the operation, we would then purchase the silo, and move the scrap metal there to build the rest of the facility.

This way, we not only have a military facility, but also military ship(s) as buildings, standing gloriously over the ground.

Not sure but wouldnt it be hard to transport ships? Its not like they weigh a ton.

Not to be a downer on that idea but I'm pretty sure getting the knowledge and capacity to dismantle a fucking warship not to mention getting any government to actually be willing to deal with us would be a much larger endeavor than buying the silo. Unless you know something I don't the idea sounds kind of far fetched.

As for where to deposit funds, I agree that it's a difficult issue since it's understandable that people don't want to trust some random internet stranger with easily embezzled money. And the problem with Kickstarter as I see it is they have a limit on how long the funds can be in there, IIRC it's 90 days but someone can double check me. What may work better would be if, at least for now, people were to hold on to their own money, but set aside whatever they intend to donate. At some point soon we set up a system here to keep track of this joint funding (everyone records how much they can set aside), and that will also help us project how much we can generate from simple group donations over the next few years so we'll have an idea of how much we need to gather from alternate fundraising sources. And if shit does not work out in the long run, noone's lost anything, in fact all it means is you've got a nice chunk of savings.

Lich wrote:Not sure but wouldnt it be hard to transport ships? Its not like they weigh a ton.

Indeed, thus why they'd be turned into pieces then transported where needed.

Not to be a downer on that idea but I'm pretty sure getting the knowledge and capacity to dismantle a fucking warship not to mention getting any government to actually be willing to deal with us would be a much larger endeavor than buying the silo. Unless you know something I don't the idea sounds kind of far fetched.

Yes, it's far fetched. And I'm only proposing this idea because I know someone who studied industrial garbage disposal, and thus abls to tell us if this could be done or not... As stated earlier, I do realize it's not necesserally an optimal solution.

B&Hammer40kun wrote:Maybe we can make it a real buisness, with a trick. This might be a silly idea, and might also make the whole thing a bit more complicated, but I'll propose it anyway.

i do like your idea of having some sources of income that would have a stable cash flow, which we are going to need anyway, beacause of the grant application procces (i think)

we should probably look at some ways to make money online to start out, then branch to IRL

We should also keep in mind that we are going to want some kind of loan/mortgage in order to make this possible when the time comes. This will probably take the form of either we get some sort of housing mortgage by filing for it as a residence, or a business loan if we can come up with a pretty comprehensive Nerd Vegas business plan this sounds feasible enough that any bank would actually give us money.

I am not particularly knowledgeable about how housing loans/mortgages look, but I will look into it and report back to you guys if I find anything relevant. My understanding right now is that a mortgage would be approved not based on how much money we can throw down right away, but based on our future earnings (demonstrate that you make enough money annually to meet your payments). If I'm even remotely right about this, then when we are all out of school in a few years I'd bet that our combined salaries will be more than enough for this. I will try to gather more info but this is something encouraging to think about for anyone who was worried about having to raise $150k+ in cash.

As a base, if each and every one of us sets aside 10,000 by the end of 2013, we can buy the 275,000 cost silo. Its a goal, and one that should be pretty attainable.

And if we do that, then we have no need for investors, just use our own cash.

Mind thats just for the initial purchase.

Well guys I made a kickstart account then I saw this: "Kickstarter is not a place for charity projects, raising funds for business expenses (rent, payroll, etc), soliciting donations to causes (medical bills, etc), or having people fund your life (travel, living expenses, etc). Additionally, Kickstarter can not be used to solicit investment or loans; projects may not offer financial returns under any circumstances."
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines/project
Looks like kickstart is out. Oh well it looked good at the time

Lich wrote:Well guys I made a kickstart account then I saw this: "Kickstarter is not a place for charity projects, raising funds for business expenses (rent, payroll, etc), soliciting donations to causes (medical bills, etc), or having people fund your life (travel, living expenses, etc). Additionally, Kickstarter can not be used to solicit investment or loans; projects may not offer financial returns under any circumstances."
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines/project
Looks like kickstart is out. Oh well it looked good at the time

So, then what the fuck is the site good for then? It seems to exclude goddamn near everything.

I made the account and sent in the project info.

this is the reply got back from kickstarter

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for taking the time to share your idea. Unfortunately, this isn't the right fit for Kickstarter. We receive many project proposals daily and review them all with great care and appreciation. We see a wide variety of inspiring ideas, and while we value each one's uniqueness and creativity, Kickstarter is not the right platform for all of them. We wish you the best of luck as you continue to pursue your endeavor.

Best,
Daniella


So no kickstarter for us guys.

I have modified my list since last time.
much is the same

Short term/ initial fundraising stuff to get us some cash (might want to get a corporation/nonprofit or something going once we get enough cash, gotta pay taxes)

-classic fundraisers (bake sales, raffles, etc)
-itunes (if we put out some songs that people would download)
-ibooks (we could put together some LARP guide or something)
-art commissions (yes, lets tap into THAT market too, like there is money there, and if we can protect Wednesday, we can protect our silo)
- selling gaming supplies (custom dice, tape measures, counters, mugs, whatever with our symbols on it)
-donations

midterm (silo located and purchased, mid renovation)

same as above, plus
-power/ green grants tap into this ASAP, so we qualify and get another steady stream of income
-once stuff gets built start using it, (club, restaurant whatever else is there)
-locals- my guess is that we will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, group in the county, so we could start by offering tours, or something, just to get started. also, we may find some people willing to staff the place/ pick up some games/work 4 food
-hopefully farm is up, saving on food costs
-SCARP most of the non toxic metals can be thrown in a blast furnace, so we can get some cost back, we should keep anything interesting that might be of use (cool odds and ends, savable copper, leftover military hardware, shop tools. toxic stuff is going to be tough, depending on what it is
-by this point we should try to minimize the need for donations, and instead look for sponsors/ investors. if we get investors, we are to make sure that we guard our controlling shares by a safe margin. probably not going down this road, but needs to be stated


long term (silo is operational and important parts are completed)

-introduce tournaments etc. to get the main flow in
-farm/power plants reduce costs/ get us mola
-phase out most art commissions (especially THOSE), or junk THOSE only
-get dance club up (be careful here, may be at mercy of locals with this one)
-get locals to frequent the silo restaurant/club/above structures
-enjoy the fact that we have a nuke proof hangout where we can be our true neck-beardy selves!!

i think that perhaps donations, gaming supplies, and our own cash are are best bet right now, unless anyone wants to write a book, app or song

Da Crazy Techmarine wrote:I have modified my list since last time.
much is the same

Short term/ initial fundraising stuff to get us some cash (might want to get a corporation/nonprofit or something going once we get enough cash, gotta pay taxes)

-classic fundraisers (bake sales, raffles, etc)
-itunes (if we put out some songs that people would download)
-ibooks (we could put together some LARP guide or something)
-art commissions (yes, lets tap into THAT market too, like there is money there, and if we can protect Wednesday, we can protect our silo)
- selling gaming supplies (custom dice, tape measures, counters, mugs, whatever with our symbols on it)
-donations

midterm (silo located and purchased, mid renovation)

same as above, plus
-power/ green grants tap into this ASAP, so we qualify and get another steady stream of income
-once stuff gets built start using it, (club, restaurant whatever else is there)
-locals- my guess is that we will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, group in the county, so we could start by offering tours, or something, just to get started. also, we may find some people willing to staff the place/ pick up some games/work 4 food
-hopefully farm is up, saving on food costs
-SCARP most of the non toxic metals can be thrown in a blast furnace, so we can get some cost back, we should keep anything interesting that might be of use (cool odds and ends, savable copper, leftover military hardware, shop tools. toxic stuff is going to be tough, depending on what it is
-by this point we should try to minimize the need for donations, and instead look for sponsors/ investors. if we get investors, we are to make sure that we guard our controlling shares by a safe margin. probably not going down this road, but needs to be stated


long term (silo is operational and important parts are completed)

-introduce tournaments etc. to get the main flow in
-farm/power plants reduce costs/ get us mola
-phase out most art commissions (especially THOSE), or junk THOSE only
-get dance club up (be careful here, may be at mercy of locals with this one)
-get locals to frequent the silo restaurant/club/above structures
-enjoy the fact that we have a nuke proof hangout where we can be our true neck-beardy selves!!

i think that perhaps donations, gaming supplies, and our own cash are are best bet right now, unless anyone wants to write a book, app or song

Currently in the process of finishing my first book, dunno if it'll do well, but i think it might because of the target audience. (Which i'm not going to reveal because the lot of you will cry "HERESY!!!!" as you douse me with fresh promethium. lol )

If the bleeting sheep buy it, that's not your problem. We'll commend you for being a wise business man rather then a heretical advocate.

As stated in my other thread, I propose we use as many fellowships and government grants as possible to create a revolutionary design firm. Be it architectural or shit for infomercials, whatever brings us an influx of cash is a good thing.

I don't know if this would be something we do to raise money to buy the facility or do in the facility once we have it, but it seems like a very similar business model. Snakes & Lattes, a Toronto coffee shop with 1500 different boardgames for rent.

http://torontoist.com/2010/08/board_game_cafe_welcomes_you_but_not_your_laptop.php

http://ht.ly/2BOzM

Wakfag123 wrote:I don't know if this would be something we do to raise money to buy the facility or do in the facility once we have it, but it seems like a very similar business model. Snakes & Lattes, a Toronto coffee shop with 1500 different boardgames for rent.

http://torontoist.com/2010/08/board_game_cafe_welcomes_you_but_not_your_laptop.php

http://ht.ly/2BOzM

might be good to get to know the locals, and a great way for us to eat and relax on site

good find

Could somebody update me with the major points made in this thread, and people who are possibly "investors."

People have conveyed a few loan offers, as well as rights to profit from their products and design. Everyone here is willing to donate time, effort, and expertise for free to create this place. So that's over 40 investors thus far.

Hm

I shall monitor this project for the time being.

Well as i said in the headcount, if my dad happens to kick the bucket early, Id have 1.2 million dollars minimum in cash, assets and stocks which id be more than happy to throw into the project as long as it follows a logical course and not HURP DURP RAPTURE IS COOL. As fun as that is, some things must be taken from a logical point of view.

1.2M is technically enough to do a project like this on it's own. But I wouldn't suggest doing so, as shared ownership makes the success rate skyrocket.