Follow-up from Co-op Meeting: we have a lot to do, so dig in!

Thanks to everyone who came to our meeting on Tuesday - we continue to forge ahead!

First, we talked about the four Working Groups - it's time to get them working.
We decided that in order for the working groups to start working, 2 things needed to happen:

1. We needed to revisit the notes from our Nov 17 session, where we brainstormed activities for each group, and we need to put these and other critical activities on a timeline.

2. We needed to revise our meeting schedule. 

The week of February 21, Working groups will meet on their own and there will be no general meeting.

The next general meeting will be Monday, March 9.

This way, we'll continue to meet every other week - but we'll be alternating working group meetings with general meetings.


Then, we talked about an upcoming workshop on Incorporation and Bylaws with the NW Cooperative Development Center.

We're very fortunate to have Teresa Young from the NW Cooperative Development Center coming to Ellensburg to facilitate a half-day workshop on creating Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws for our co-op. 
The workshop will take place in early March - date TBD. Once we have details on the day, time and location of the workshop, we'll post a message to the blog inviting everyone from the co-op group to attend. You're welcome to come if you're able to swing a weekday afternoon!

The workshop will be strictly informational - the ultimate goal will be for us to have a VERY rough outline of our own articles and bylaws and a solid understanding of the decisions that need to be made by our organizing group as a whole. 
 

Next, we talked about the Community Survey.
As of the meeting, 160 people had taken the survey online, which is fantastic. We've barely done anything to promote the survey, and already we're halfway to our goal of 300 respondents.

Next steps for getting the survey out to more people in Ellensburg include:

1. Eight or so members of the organizing group have volunteered to distribute the survey to specific groups/locations in town, including:

-Rotary
-the library
-the Vegetarian Society
-Central Washington University faculty and students
-grocery stores around town
-the Downtown Association
-the Unitarian church
-Greendrinks

2. Mike Williams, owner of Brick Road Books, has offered to print up some copies of our Community Survey poster for distribution.

3. Carlan Wray is going to add the poster to our website so anyone can download it, print it, and post it somewhere.


YOU CAN HELP GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT THE SURVEY:

- Stop by Brick Road Books  at 305 N Main St downtown and grab a handful of posters from Mike. Put them up in public places - with permission, of course! - where you think people might see it and take one of the tear-aways off the bottom.

-Or, find the flyer on our website, ellensburgfoodcoop.org, and print out a couple copies yourself.

-Lastly, email this link to everyone you know, and ask them to take the survey:
http://ellensburgfoodcoop.org/survey

Thanks!

Finally, we started fleshing out a timeline on butcher paper with Post-it notes and markers.

We'll have to wait on sharing a digital version of the draft timeline; an exciting outcome of this exercise was the creation of 2 key deadlines.
Please know that these deadlines are, for now, SOFT. We're just getting started with our planning, and they may change if need be. 

April 13, 2010: we want to have our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws finalized, so that we are in a position to begin member recruitment by the time the farmer's market opens in May.
November 01, 2010: opening day for our co-op, when the farmer's market is closing for the season.
 
Great job, everyone. Good meeting!