Transition Culture

As a university researcher involved in transition town movement and teaching/researching in this area, I’m frequently asked to give talks on the the transition and the TT movement. Often it comes with an honorarium which I graceously accept and tell my hosts that the funds will go to Transition Oakville (where I live). We have raised a very modest amount (<$1000 from 12-16 talks) this way.

Our more ambitious plan, in discussion with other TTs, is to incorporate Transition Canada as a hub so that it can go after funding and funnel these funds to local initiatives (incorporation is required by most funding agencies in order to receive public funds, but it is a rather involved and expensive process that forces a rather corporate hierarchical governance structure – thus not appropriate at the local level, but better for umbrella group, in our opinion).

In the interim, we have just submitted a proposal to Trillium Foundation for funds to support a public fruit tree gleaning and garden sharing program, a collaboration of Transition Oakville and the Oakville Sustainable Food Partnership (that includes the Harbourside Organic Farmers Market), with some involvement from the local Arts Council. I expect our Permaculture and Edible Landscaping Club (to be launched Dec.2) will also be involved. We won't hear about funding decision until the new year. We worked with the Halton Environment Network as an incorporated entity to flow the funds through and manage the finances.

Blake Poland
Transition Oakville
& Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Ontario, Canada
http://www.blakepoland.ca
http://www.TransitionOakville.ca
http://www.HaltonGreenScreens.ca
http://www.EHJiC.ca

I haven’t started a Transition movement yet so I have no experience to tell you, but I would certainly like to know how this was done in Totnes and specially to found the Totnes Pound.

I wrote about Resilient Nonprofits over at Transition US http://www.transitionus.org/blog/resilient-nonprofits I wrote the piece well prior to the Stoneleigh talk, but the Stoneleigh talk only underlines the urgency of what I was saying. My piece was a followup to someone else’s post about Raising Funds for Transition:

‘Several months ago, here in Los Angeles, we were discussing similar issues. But thoughts which began with “how do we get money” soon ventured into a different realm: “What does a sustainable service organization look like in this powerdown era and time of economic contraction?”

‘Here in the Transition movement, we understand that with the end of cheap oil, we will experience an inevitable (and likely severe) economic contraction. In our Transition Trainings we discuss the fallacies of the Industrial Growth Complex. We know what lies ahead: simpler times, less affluent times, less cash available, and necessarily more community participation in every single aspect of life.

‘Nonprofit organizations won’t be immune. Already, most nonprofits are struggling for funding, and the fun’s just beginning. Just like the energy surplus which is disappearing with the end of cheap oil, the cash surplus which used to fund nonprofits is disappearing with the credit/banking/economic crunch. We have witnessed “peak nonprofit.”

‘It is absolutely absurd, in this post-peak day and age, to set up a nonprofit organization with the expectation that it will run on society’s cash surplus (i.e. donations and grants). This old model, the nonprofit model we’ve grown up with, is a phenomenon of pre-peak excess.’
continued at http://www.transitionus.org/blog/resilient-nonprofits

Our TLA city hub has operated for 2 years and our initiating group has operated for 5 years following the “resilient nonprofit” model I describe.

I am a member of Sammamish Valley Grange that supports local agriculture and small farms. The Grange has approved Transition Woodinville as a committee and I have proposed an initial budget to support a ning.website, reskilling classes and seed money for a Great Unleashing event. This is our first wave of funding as we are currently in the discussion course phase. What is next will reveal itself in this organic process!

The national Grange network in the USA holds great potential for Transtion partnerships.

I have thought about funding social enterprises through raising Sterling by asking for investors in a community group (transition initiative?) dedicated to reskilling, resource conservation, creating employment, abundance etc. [+other beneficial enterprises] as a simultaneous exercise in launching local currency. It would rely on selling investors the idea that they’d be taking funds out of something risky – e.g. equities or bonds – and putting it to good use in THEIR community. The return on investment might be quite flexible. By having a tokenised currency unitised in time denominations (as Ithaca) it would enable the (elderly?) cash-rich investors to gain some guarantee of securing services from their community, services provided by (younger?) cash-poor neighbours. And of course facilitate local exchange. A weekly auction in the community – all trading in local currency – would reinforce the culture of conserving resources and help to bed in the concept that a currency can be used for exchange of goods simultaneously with services.

Transition Haddenham has raised modest funds from book sales (speak to Green Books in UK!), donations and from a small profit from bus tickets to the Wave demo last year. We have invested some funds in an apple press and mill which we expect to recoup 75% of thru rentals this, our first year. We have had to subsidise some film showings (End of the Line was expensive) which have had spectacularly poor attendances.
I look forward to learning from other groups!
Dave

Reminds me of the seeing Roger Daltrey on the album cover of “The Who Sell Out” from 1967.

I have no ideas on financing, as we are struggling with that particular issue. Michael Brownlee from Transition Colorado told me earlier this week that you really don’t need it. But we cannot figure out how to make meaningful awareness raising experiences without it.

Looking forward to some answers.

Hi All

Nic Frances has some good ideas:
http://theendofcharity.wordpress.com/

There are some progressive economic minds in this movement. I hope they can help us with this one!

Luke

Hi, We in Tranås Sweden, financed a local food map http://www.narodlat.nu with EU Leader money. We got 11,000€ for the project and have made good friends with the local EU office in the process. It is like pulling teeth with all the bureaucracy, but here in Sweden they have a lot of money for sustainability projects. The main problem is getting the extra financing as they usually only finance half the project.

Here on Denman Island, BC, the Transition Denman Island group held an all-day Transition Expo and 34 island groups got together to talk and network. We raised $240 from the refreshment stand. Food (bake sales etc.) really work here as fundraisers as we all love to bake and eat!

Here in Finsbury Park, Martyn from the core group has been pretty good at bringing in money. He did the London Marathon one year and then organised a sell out Chopin concert at his church. Then there’s good old jam/chutney/dried herb sales. Most of our activities don’t cost any money. We have ongoing costs for buying recycled paper. People donate loads.

Where necessary we have got money on a project by project basis. Growing projects: Haringey Council, Capital Growth, Hornsey Parochial Charities and London Overground. Bike project – London Cycling Campaign. Buildings and Energy project – Islington Council.

There is a fantastic plan in the ether to buy the lease for a local pub. If that happens, it will be some kind of community co-operative management thing.

Like others as reported here, Downham Market & Villages have tended to do well from donations and received funding for our first major project (local food).
An additional income comes from writing a local column for the regional paper each week. A small group write under a pseudonym, drip-feeding transition ideas but not attributing the column to our group. The payment per line is tiny – it would be an insult if we considered it as a wage but as the opportunity to spread the word is welcome the money received is a useful bonus. Over the past year we’ve averaged just over £50/month – which covers basic stationery and printing costs.

We’re risking a link with our local authority and their partner, a local insulation supplier to the council, and one of the big energy companies in a scheme to get more older houses better insulated more quickly. The energy company has statutory targets to meet and for every house insulated, they’ll pay something to community groups that help them achieve it. We’ll see how well – or whether -this works without compromising anyone’s integrity, especially our own !

Trugs

What do you mean ‘risking’? Shoudn’t we be forging links with local sustainable businesses and local government? We can only see if these things work by trying and we need to be increasingly more creative in the links and programs we forge.

I’d like to hear more about the mechanism behind this. What statutory targets? This would suggest they are a large company.

Luke
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/initiatives/kurilpa