12/21/23 Update Report
Published on December 22, 2023 by Marilyn Hunter
1. What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?
- We made important steps to become the established funding organization we envision for the future.
- We worked with an accountant and our attorneys to assist donors who had made donations in 2022.
- We worked with attorneys to guide our funding process.
- We established our project as a nonprofit Illinois corporation.
- We consolidated a small but experienced, well-connected board of directors and are in the process of expanding that board.
- We established a website, sent out broadly an announcement asking for letters of intent from organizations and individuals that share our goal and mission.
- We received several requests for grants (along with a number of inquiries) and made the decision to fund one of them.
- The initiative we have chosen to fund reflects The Archive Project’s mission very closely.
- We are currently working with that organization (and our attorney) to learn about, shape and consolidate our grant-making process that will serve our project in the future.
2. What challenges did you face during 2023? What did your Collective learn? How did you change or grow?
We took on the administrative and technical challenges of learning to use Open Collective, meeting donor needs for information, establishing a legal organization, registering with all the state agencies that regulate not-for-profits, writing and sending out broadly an announcement that included a request for letters of intent, and developing a website to get out aims out to the public.
We committed ourselves to having our first grant made AND our 501-C-3 application done by the end of 2023. But the chair of Board of Directors faced a serious health challenge in November-December, which pushed accomplishment of these goals into early 2024.
We learned:
About the amazing work done by others through Open Collective web discussions and that we are part of an exciting community.
To work together as a board, given the different experiences and perspectives of members. We learned, as well, that — after discussion — we have a very strong unity around our mission.
That there is great interest in what we hope to support and accomplish. Much of that interest is “unconsolidated” — but very much on the minds of leaders of a number of struggles who want to preserve and use their history better, but are challenged by the immediacy of the struggle.
Fortunately our first grant initiative will focus on a project that has already begun the kind of work we want to support. The partnership with this initiative will hopefully teach us — and others— how we can “treasure the past and inspire the future.”
3. What are your plans for 2024? Anything exciting coming up?
We plan to complete our “end of year” goals — to make our first grant and submit our 501-C-3 application — now that our Board chair is on the road to good health.
We are excited about 1) seeing results from our first grant (and learning from that process), 2) expanding our connections and Board membership, and 3) showing how knowing and using our history can concretely “inspire the future” in a world searching so desperately for answers about how humans and nature can live together in justice and peace.