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

[Mari M.]

"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?"

I'm really glad you brought this up. Thanks, yar! XD

Firstly, the Omni would be better served simply by not only having enough
money to continue to rent without the fear of losing the building, but also
to accumulate funds to eventually purchase the building ourselves.
Furthermore, with an influx of money above the bare necessities, we can
invest on the building's infrastructure, make it more accessible to people
with disabilities, general building maintenance, etc.

Secondly, if we had more money coming in, we could help each collective on
their mission by helping them financially to remain here (assuming their
purpose/values are in line with the Omni's, of course). I'm not sure of the
needs/wants of all of the collectives but if there's money coming in,
collectives doing good won't have to be pushed out because they can't pay
rent, anymore.

Thirdly, by having great collectives that continue to thrive within the
Omni, it does Oakland in general a great service by providing food for the
homeless, science/technology education, arts education and social work. All
of the collectives prospering not only benefits the Omni and it's regulars,
but also the community as whole.

I know I'm just an Omni noob, but everyone I have met here has been great
and are doing amazing community work. This makes me passionate about seeing
it thrive and not just whither away.




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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