A few people have told us “put up a donate button and people will give.” It seems everyone involved in prosocial projects would be operating on a shoestring budget, as we are, but maybe they’re right. Here’s our attempt to allow you to give, in a way that (a) acknowledges your contribution and (b) gives you a choice about what you want to fund. Here’s our list of what we want to put funds toward next. It might take months or years to accomplish if it has to wait for funding priority from us. If you fund a project, we will note the project is in progress and put your name and logo with the project, in the same format as with the first two funders below. Why not contribute and write it off as advertising funds!
Completed project: Beta version of site Spring 2021 thru Spring 2022
Funder: Earth’s Coincidence Control Office (ECCO) (plans synchronicities for the greater good)
Amount: $31K+ (breakdown follows)
Funding details:
- $5K ECCO coordinated the bizarre and improbable recovery of a VW poptop van I gave my dad, that was in the possession of a bunch of swindlers after he died, then I sold it to a fireman who fixes them as a hobby
- $5K ECCO coordinated the delivery of gold coins saved for an apocalyptic future, which became an inheritance, but which were strangely overlooked by many, until one of my brothers found them in plain sight
- $21K ECCO coordinated my cashout of Bitcoin in January 2021 (earlier than the highest points, but it was when my consultant friend was available and eager to help with the technical side)
Completed project: SEO, DEI, and upgrades Spring 2022 thru Spring 2023
Funder: Vancity Credit Union (tagline “make good money” and offers “mixer mortgages” to groups)
Amount: $10K loan
Project details:
- Hire of Entrepreneuron Marketing. Chris Kindig is a past member of FIC directorship. After his magic, we’re ranking second to FIC in searches for “consultants for intentional community.”
- Hire of Consultant Kate Kirby and consultant group The Next Big Step to get us closer to the most inclusive and diversity-welcoming language and structure. Any failures in this direction are the result of stubbornness on the part of founder, or result of internal debate about signalling too much wokeness that could alienate the counterculture right and center.
- Addition of the Team Up page including its search functions. The group profile component is unique in that it links to each of the member profiles that is interested to be affiliated with that founders group.
Advertisement to generate interest = more member profiles in your area?
We’d love to reach out to our favorite podcasts and other platforms and pay to get advertised. We’re open to hiring a social media marketing person to manage a presence on other platforms, but it hasn’t been a top priority yet. If you have a project in your area, you could fund us to devote staff or outsource resources target your local relevant magazines, FB pages, and any news outlets you believe would be most effective.
Consultant additions (to your area?)
We want to search out the most IC-qualified real estate and legal professionals to list for each province and state. These may be less likely to be advertising themselves as IC specialists. If you are interested to pay to search out resources in your area, then these can be made available to you and to others.
Table of contents for consultants page
All categories would be immediately apparent. You could click down to a category at the end instead of scrolling.
Projected cost: $50 coding time
Additional lists of ecovillages and their contact info
Currently we have a list of 62 established ecovillages in Canada, or that describe themselves as a group or founder wanting to start a farming intentional community, or a regenerative farm or “ecofarm” that brings in seasonal workers. Want a similar list for your state or region? We’ll get to work on it with your contribution! It will be posted with free access.
Projected cost: $50 for search time per large state or region
Grant-funded projects for regional ecovillages
We have developed a grants list for Canada ecovillages with over 80 qualifying grants. If you would like to fund a grant writer, ICmatch will coordinate funding for a project such as paying consultants of the ecovillages’ choice to help them level up, or in other ways they need funding. This could involve your joint oversight if you would like. A partnering non-profit ecovillage that has agreed to act as an umbrella organization for the grant funding. If you’d like to fund a similar project for another region, that works too.
Grant-funded projects for small local farms
We would love to hire a grant writer to potentially help us fund a project for outreach to farmers. This project could be funded directly and could target your area. There is potential for grant funding because there’s a lot of concern about farmers’ mental health as they’ve been financially squeezed for decades. We would like to fund consultants to reach out to strategize about marketing specialized products, or help them set up bringing in volunteers thru wwoof.org or workaway.info.
Create current grants lists for a variety of IC types
These would be shared based on entering an email address by which one could be updated about news for that specific IC type. While users could unsubscribe, they may value the infrequent update of new grant information and/or events relevant to their location or their IC type.
Search by state and province (more detailed than regional locations)
Currently searches are by region, because our membership isn’t yet passed 100. When more populated, it will make sense to help people narrow down by state or province. However, if someone wants to help us get a jump start on this, we’ll do it, even if it means making a category for their specific state or multi-state area for small states.
Projected cost: $25-$200 coding time
Add and sort by worldwide continents
Currently searches are by region, as membership isn’t yet past 100. We have one category as a catch-all for outside the U.S. and Canada. There’s also an expat community page. When we have more members, or when funding allows, we could increase the regions to worldwide. It might be better to let someone take our code and duplicate the service in their continent. It would need to be an established non-profit that could agree to use it ethically and in a similarly accessible fremium model.
Projected cost: $100-$500 coding time depending on level of detail
Curated podcast list for various community types
We’ve got loads of favorites saved up. Podcast series or relevant single episodes would be curated and presented in an easily accessible list.
Projected cost: $200
Projects further detailing the creation of grant-funded grassroots social services
Community living can be a political solution, a way of offering a social safety net that many political viewpoints could agree with. If people can live and work around like-minded others, and we create grant-funded communities that offer affordable housing to especially underserved and vulnerable groups, people won’t be so insistent that all of society should be changed to be the way they prefer. See our overview page for this concept, and our writeup of details for a variety of underserved populations who need more suitable housing options.
Region search option for founder’s groups on “Team Up” page
In addition to search by region and keyworks, we could add on the groups page a search by IC type. Currently, a group coordinator can subscribe and have their profile show up on the group types pages with a badge showing them as a coordinator. In this way their individual profile can be identified as associated with a specific type of intentional community. Many forming groups will be planning an IC type that is a combination or different from a category on our list, so the more unique ones would be disadvantaged, and possibly not found if we added this option. However, if we add this search function, we could add an additional category of “other” for IC type to make sure all are able to be found.
Projected cost: $200 coding time
Hide inactive profiles (reinstate after member login)
After a member hasn’t logged in for 3 or 6 months, we’ll make their profile disappear from searches until they log in and recover it. Currently members simply show up in order of last login. The hope is, even if they’re not active, someone new will eventually chat message them or match them, then they’ll get an email and decide to log on. Part of the deactivation code is in place, but without an overwhelming number of profiles, it isn’t a top priority.
Projected cost: $100 coding time
Profile questions and responses into list format
Profile question options have checkboxes not separated from the corresponding answer; line breaks would improve visual format; questionnaire response format would be easier to read as a list, but is currently read as a block. These utilize a WordPress pre-programmed “plugin” purchase. We could wait to see if the plugin gets improved, then we’d automatically get an upgrade with a future release of plugin. Alternatively, we could pay the coding team to upgrade, but then we would be unable to utilize future plugin upgrades from the plugin originators.
Projected cost: unknown coding time (not a high priority for us, but maybe the current format is more annoying than we’ve heard yet)
Online resource pages
Resource pages for these topics: community land trust, membership processes, privacy in community, religious & political freedoms in community, site analysis, visioning processes, zoning, building relationships with neighbors/community. There’s a lot of good information already on these topics, some of it behind paywalls. With some grant funding, we could pay for permission to bring some of the highlights out for all ICs to have access to.