A Finance Working Group was convened by Vince Taylor at the Thursday night (2 April) session and met on Friday, 3 April 1998. Vince suggested we make it short and efficient; he had prepared an agenda to that effect. Vince agreed to chair the meeting, and Michael Potts agreed to take notes. Three working members introduced themselves. Vince brings organizational skills, and is good at managing people who want to be managed. He has writing skills, and has written successful grant applications. He has done economic analysis and is good with ideas. He has fewer contacts than he might wish, but does have a few, and has a small private foundation which may be able to offer some bridging capital.

(Pamela) Hunter is trained as a specialty gas chemist, but recently has worked as a technical writer, writing proposals for water treatment companies; she has also worked with design engineers. She brings goopd problem solving capabilities, is creative, but above all she is motivate by a personal reason: she wants to put down roots in Caspar.

Michael, trained as a poet, jack of all trades but master of none, is an author and web designer, business consultant, and has written one grant applications, which was funded.

Michael suggested that a successful project will probably draw funds from three areas, governmental, foundation, and private investors, and that we should appeal to each group separately. He believes we can do the initial work with dedicated volunteers. Hunter thinks the initial fund raising challenge amounts to about $500,000, and thinks probably 20 people could be found to fund this. She notes that the golf course was funded by 40-50 people each of whom signed $5,000 notes at the bank, plus a couple of substantial investors. She proposed possible businesses as a way to raise repayment funds, not just real estate transactions. Vince thinks we should plan to raise more like $5,000,000. He thinks the best investment model would be lots of smaller investors and a few larger ones. He proposes that we should hire an executive director for approximately 6 months at a modest salary (circa $2,000-$3,000/month) to devote concerted effort to fund raising effort once it's launched. He thinks voilunteers mean well, but don't always follow through well. He suggests we need a sellable concept, and proposes a Caspar Historical State Park to show old-time redwood logging ...or something else 'sexy' to make Caspar special. He thinks we'll need a prospectus and a slide presentation. Vince thinks that until we have a consensus appeal from the community, we should just gather names of interested investors and donors. We each volunteered to do a short term and a longer term task before the next meeting. Vince agreed to see that Oscar is invited to view the presentations at What's Afoot this weekend, and to prepare a flow chart of possible fund-raising tasks and benchmarks. Hunter will prepare a suggestion box for potential donors/investors/contacts/ideas. She will start searching out possible funding agencies on the web. Michael will prepare, solicit revision, and post these minutes, and will follow up contact with the office of Congresswoman Virginia Strom-Martin.

The next meeting was scheduled for 11 o'clock (promptly!) on Friday, 10 April. If you are interested in attending this meeting, email Vince (vtaylor@mcn.org).

respectfully submitted by Michael Potts.