[sudo-discuss] [omni-discuss] Benefit Corporation?

[Mary Ward]

Do we need the Omni to be come a non-profit entity since we will have
several fiscal sponsors in the building? We can be a for profit business
that makes no profits, without risking an audit, and with less accounting
headaches.

Best,

Mary

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:13 PM, yar <yardenack at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 10:22 AM, Mari M. <strawberrypilabs at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Some think we should continue as a non-profit, some think that we should
> try
> > to actually turn the Ballroom into a money-making venue to help better
> serve
> > the community. Perhaps a Benefit Corporation could be the bridge between
> the
> > two?
>
> Also, I want to unpack this: "turn the Ballroom into a money-making
> venue to help better serve the community". Can you explain what you
> mean by this? Who would be better served and how?
>
> It's worth mentioning that the whole point of making money in the
> ballroom is to help the Omni Commons survive as a horizontal
> collective dedicated to the radical commoning of space and resources,
> fighting gentrification, and creating alternatives to capitalism. I
> hope we will always be mindful that we're doing it as a last resort,
> it will never be the core of our project, everything will always to be
> sliding scale down to zero, the community will still be able to block
> events which conflict with our values and delegates can override
> anything that a production collective does. And if someday we are able
> to own the building and lower our expenses enough, we will return to
> doing what we've wanted to do all along - offer everything for free to
> the people who need it most.
>
> This will bring changes if we are not careful. When people are making
> money, they have an incentive to manipulate our processes in order to
> keep making money, and new people are incentivized to join who care
> more about money than about the project's values. All of our processes
> are designed with the assumption of good faith, and vulnerable to
> rules-lawyering unless we have a healthy, vigilant culture.
> _______________________________________________
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> discuss at lists.omnicommons.org
> https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/discuss
>
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