Topic
Community Kitchen Fundraising
The Community Kitchen is a group that prepares and distributes food & drinks to help make Glitch a friendly game and to create social spaces where people can meet new people, chat, form friendships, find ways to help each other, etc. The work of the group is mostly supported by contributions from group members, but the group also now uses the Vegan Cafe, located in the Farm Coop Tower on WindBorn's street, for fundraising.
The Vegan Cafe is the *only* location the Community Kitchen uses for fundraising. We do fundraising in the Vegan Cafe in two ways:
1. Food provided by the Community Kitchen group is sold at market prices. All funds from such sales go back to the Community Kitchen group.
2. A donation box is provided where people may purchase 1 sheet of paper for 100 currants. All funds from this box also go back to the Community Kitchen group.
In addition to the Vegan Cafe, various members of the group also provide food from "community kitchens" either directly from their home street or from a tower room. It is the policy of the group that all food provided from these "community kitchens" will either be free or charge or sold for 1 currant, and that these locations will NOT have "donation boxes."
If you see locations other than the Vegan Cafe with donation boxes for the "Community Kitchen," please be advised that these have been placed without the knowledge or sanction of the Community Kitchen group's admins.
Similarly, with the exception of the Vegan Cafe, if you see food being sold for more than 1 currant from a tower room that describes itself as a "community kitchen" or otherwise suggests an affiliation with the Community Kitchen group, please be advised that this is being done without the knowledge or sanction of the Community Kitchen group's admins.
For those who are interested, I will post more below on how funds raised by the Vegan Cafe are used and the methods we've put in place for accountability.
Replies
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What Happens to the Money?
I'm so glad you asked, lol. Have fallen, pretty much by accident, into managing what many consider to be a "Glitch charity," I've had to give some thought to how the game mechanics might be used to create a responsible non-profit organization. It's not easy.
While we can have groups in Glitch, there's no way at present for groups to own anything. So everything donated to a "group" must be held and controlled by individual players. My way of dealing with this has been to look for ways to provide transparency and accountability -- while keeping in mind that Glitch is not a job, but rather a game I play for fun when time permits.
The Vegan Cafe is currently located in a tower owned by the player WindBorn. When you buy food from the Vegan Cafe or make a donation by purchasing a sheet of paper, your currants go into an SDB. That SDB is owned and controlled by WindBorn, but SDB sales can be tracked, so other people know how much money the Vegan Cafe takes in every day and we thus have some transparency and accountability.
We leave the currants in the SDBs until they are needed. In effect, the SDBs are acting as a "bank" for group funds. When funds are withdrawn, they are used to purchase ingredients for cooking or containers (bags, boxes) for distributing food. As ingredients are purchased, they are put into a set of SDBs located in two floors of my tower designated as the Community Kitchen Food Bank. These ingredients are removed as needed to prepare meals and drinks that either go back into the Food Bank or to the Vegan Cafe.
Because it resides in a public tower, the Community Kitchen Food Bank can be inspected at will, not only by members of the Community Kitchen group, but also by the larger Glitch community. In addition, as time permits I update a spreadsheet detailing the contents of the Food Bank. This spreadsheet, which includes a revision history, is shared with five other senior players who serve as admins or advisors to the Community Kitchen group. So again, we have some transparency and accountability.
While the Food Bank contains some ingredients purchased with funds from the Vegan Cafe, most of the ingredients, meals and drinks that you will see there are donated by group members. In addition, players who are not group members sometimes make donations of food, and these also go into the Food Bank.
Meals and drinks are taken out of the Food Bank to supply the Vegan Cafe and to be given away for free via group events. So far we have not used the Food Bank to provide food for individual group members. Food that is given away or sold for 1 currant by individual group members comes from their own resources.
So that's what happens to the money! - Awesome! This is very well thought out, and I applaud your efforts to help newbs when food is tough to come by prior to having the skills to make it themselves. Great to see the well thought out accountability measures you folks have put in place. This should be the model for others in game that want to do similar things.
- Wow, even more impressed with the Food Bank and Vegan Cafe!
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Splendora has quite beautifully covered everything.
Although unrelated to fundraising, I'd just like to mention in addition that Community Kitchen food/drink supplies are not limited to newer players. I tend to provide medium-range energy replenishment foods as being of most use to the younger Glitchen, but anybody is welcome to avail themselves of Community Kitchen nourishment during the course of their wanderings around Ur, either at the Vegan Cafe or in member's streets or towers. Sometimes you just need a nosh, right?