New England Pagan Land Project

They say organizing pagans is like herding cats… but harder. But I hope we can get something going which will be a lasting benefit to our greater community.

The intent here is to create a Non-Profit organization empowered and entrusted to create, maintain, and support a number of Pagan Sanctuaries, Retreats, Temples, etc. for public use.  Below are some of the ideas on how to run the organization:

Board of Directors: Every non-profit needs a board of directors.  If we form in the State of New Hampshire, this means we need at least 5 people to sign off on the paperwork and attend annual or more frequent official board meetings.  I’m hoping to come up with 5-7 people who are willing to do this.

Executive Director: This position is the day to day head of the organization, as elected by the Board of Directors.  In smaller organizations, this person can be a board member, and this position is often a paid one.  No one is in this project to get rich, but an Executive Director should be compensated.  I propose that the Executive Director be paid a salary no more than equal to the most recent previous year’s US Median Household Income.  This gives a respectable working salary while capping it to a rather low level compared to the directors of most major Non-Profits.

Organization Membership: Here’s a tricky part.  How do you ensure the founders vision is maintained while making the organization and it’s voting equitable?  I have a solution.  The vision is usually most closely shared by those closest to the founders.  I propose a set of membership requirements which includes a probationary period and a sponsorship of a current member.  During the probationary period (6 months or 1 year), the candidate is vetted by the other members and gets to know the membership.  The candidate has all the benefits of a full member except for voting rights.  If there are no major problems, a vote is taken and if passed, the candidate becomes a member.

Voting Power: This is a relatively new concept I came up with and I think would maintain the Founders’ Vision.  Each member has a Voting Power of 100 divided by their generation from the Founders, where Founders have a generation of 1.  This gives a Founder a Voting Power of 100.  People they recruit have a Voting Power of 50.  Their recruits have a Voting Power of 33.3 and so on.  This gives Founding Members a strong influence during the formative years and as long as they choose to participate.  Each member of the Board of Directors has a Voting Power of 100, regardless of their generation while holding office.  As time goes by and the organization grows, the average voting power of new members will even out and may even be capped to a minimum of 1.  For simplicity, round each member’s Voting Power to the nearest tenth of a point.  A quorum can be made of a total Voting Power of 50% of the total Voting Power of the organization.  Thus, in the early stages, the Board of Directors alone can easily form a quorum while later, general voting and proxy voting can be instituted, much like stockholders.  This gives strong incentives to get in on the organization early, and to convince the Founders your vision reflects theirs.

Funding: Among the “Herding cats” problem is the fact that today’s Pagans seem to have a low net worth and can not usually afford large financial donations, even to a cause they support.  Every journey begins with one small step.  As one solution to this, crowdfunding can be employed.  With crowdfunding, interested people can pledge or donate $5 or $10 at a time or a monthly donation to cover operating expenses like grounds maintenance, real estate purchases, and employee salaries.

Operations: Day to day operations will include fundraising, helping out existing sanctuaries, and finding and buying land to build new gathering places.  We hope to run many of our own places, where Pagans and others can gather and attend events and retreats, classes, etc. We hope to assign a steward to each of our own sanctuaries and fund them as appropriate to their size.  The steward would be in charge of day to day safety, operations, and maintenance of those grounds and facilities and would receive a stipend to that goal as well as a salary for their work, again, capped at a maximum of the previous year’s US Median Household Income.

Here’s the Proposed NH Articles of Incorporation (PDF).  And Here is the Proposed ByLaws (OpenOffice Format).

Who’s in?

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