We had set a goal of 100 Seed Members by the end of this year - and to kickstart us, Cath set us a goal of 50 Seed Members by the end of Sept. It was a real fire starter! Our Steering Committee was out talking and presenting our little patooties off.
At the Open Meeting on Sept 28, we were announcing 40+ new Seed Members, handing out key fobs and answering lots of questions from curious Co-op Friends. By the end of the meeting, Seed Member #50 filled out the form and gave us a check!! Lots of hugs and cheering :)
And because of all these wonderful people who believed that the Lakeshore area needs and can support a full service, member-owned Food Co-op - we are now on our way to the feasibility/marketing study!! Hooray!! We have enough to use the matching grant from The Co-op Initiative - we are hoping that the results will be available by year end.. Then, with our 100+ Seed Members that we want to have, we are on to a member/owner meeting, creating a board...Clipper City Co-op, here we come!
BUT - we are not resting on our laurels. We still need to have 100 visionary people signed up by the end of the year. That will give us the push needed to start off 2016 and gather even MORE Seed Members. It's estimated that we may need 800 to 1000 Seed Members to open the Co-op doors. So we have a ways to go - but we know where we are going, so hopefully we won't end up someplace else :)
