Hi Ajay and Sudoers:

As of this week option 4 (CAST's "Creative Cities Fund") is live and viable, the prospectus is attached.

I am not an attorney or finance expert and have not analyzed the prospectus fully but here is my summary based on conversations with CAST:

-You’re essentially buying a 5-year CD (a certificate of deposit) at 1% from the bank, the bank will then loan that money to Omni at 3% (that's waaaay below current market rate.)
-The CD is FDIC insured so while you only make 1% at least you don’t lose your principal.
-The bank requires a minimum deposit of $250K, however in Omni's situation CAST will help organize smaller amounts into an aggregate pool to reach/exceed the $250K threshold and present that to the bank. (CAST will gladly add outright donations to this pool too.)
-You can do this anonymously.

IMO this is a fascinating new instrument that lets us reinvest in the future of Omni and Oakland. It gives us a chance to keep our money working locally.

Please let any friends you know who might be interested in helping Omni about this instrument. Time is really short now, we only have about a week to stave off foreclosure.

Sincerely, -Peter

On 7/23/2024 3:22 PM, Ajay Tallam via sudo-discuss wrote:
hi all,
  What's the status of option 4?

4. We still have a great option for funding with individual contributions through a FDIC insured account, which allows for individual contributors of any size to donate for 5 years at a 1% return. And this money will be loaned to us in order to buy the building still under the CAST ownership and management. This money will be used alongside any funds that CAST is able to procure.
  • We can directly call this Funder to assist with transparency for any funder, I have the information on how to reach out, PLEASE reach out to any person(s) who are interested in helping out in this way. We also may want to run a funding drive with this option, and reach out to any one in your network who would be interested. I did not share the contact here, but it may be possible to share all contact info through the list, but for now please reach out to me or any board member for more details.
  • This option of course has the ability to be totally anonymous.

5. We will also be entertaining additional proposals, Philip Bell has submitted a proposal that ideally will be very similar to the CAST proposal, and would be an alternative to CAST, giving ownership and building management to CityInMotion, the funding for this is not secured yet, and the details are forthcoming.

If you have any questions, or a desire to reach out to funders who need more details, please reach out and I can provide details and resources for making that happen.

While we're at it, what's the status of option 5?   I'm particularly curious about EBPREC, they have so much money they don't know what to do with, I understand that when they came to the delegates meeting in 2022 they were told we had better options so they stopped engaging with us, and i'm wondering if the conversations have continued.  I know Dave has good relations with them so curious if he's pursued them.  (They were flush with cash at some point, i wonder if they could even be convinced to sign a loan for us even if they don't give us their own cash)

also wondering what the status of the may10th message is:
"
Tomorrow we plan to sign the Letter of Intent to allow CAST to buy the building from us, and take over as our creditor (possibly as early as noon), and we are currently sending it to Jessie Palmer to get some legal eyes on the document. It won't be fully legally binding, either party can back out for the next week. There won't be any other parties involved in the purchase, if we want to bring anyone else in, this can be done at a later date, after the final agreement has been signed and CAST begins the fundraising stage.

We are agreeing to sell the building and allow them to set the rent, policy, and have veto power on what organisations can be in the building. We are putting a lot of trust in them, but I have faith that they genuinely want to see us succeed, and eventually become owners of the building once again. I think we are lucky to have anyone who is willing to help with our financial issues on this short timescale.
"

I assume this didn't happen, but as autonomous noted, no updates were posted, so wanted to check to be clear.

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