Whew, it's July already.

Foundation building continues: I've got a complete first draft of our Bylaws ready to go out to the Board and our tax lawyer. I'm also reviewing feedback from the Board on our budget and fundraising plan. Plus, we have a couple of events coming up for folks on the East Coast:

Happy June, everyone!

Foundation building for the Effing Foundation proceeds apace: Bylaws! Articles of Incorporation! Fundraising planning! (Adding exclamation points makes things more exciting, right?!)

Our board of directors and our nonprofit tax attorney Jon have given their votes of confidence to our updated mission and strategic plan. This means it's much more likely the IRS will classify us as a 501(c)(3) organization, the magic nonprofit designation that means our donations would be tax-deductible. Here's our updated pitch, in a nutshell:

A Merry May to you, my marvellous mates!

After the umpteenth time going into therapy and saying how the Effing Foundation is going soooooooo sloooooooowly, my therapist gently pointed out, "Every building needs a foundation. That's what you're doing: building a foundation."

Suddenly, I felt a lot better. Building the foundation of a building isn't glamorous, it takes time, and once the building is completed most people won't notice it. But your building won't last very long without a solid foundation.

Happy April to you all!

This past month, progress has continued to feel slow --nothing like Tax Season and a severe cold to put a damper on things -- but I've been steadily working on our new Terms of Service and updating the master to-do list for launching our grantmaking program.

Ahoy, sex-positive supporters!

I've spent the past month reworking our mission statement and strategic plan to be more IRS-friendly, and I've started discussing those updates with our Board. It's not finalized yet, but here's the current draft:

A fabulous February to you, Foundation followers!

I hope your 2016 is off to a good start. My research into payment processing led me to questions about nonprofit tax law that Google and my own reading of Internal Revenue Service documents couldn't answer, so I ran our strategic plan by a nonprofit tax lawyer.

Welcome to December!

This past month, I started drafting our incorporation documents and continued talking with payment processors: we've still got to find someone that will let us take credit cards for our crowd-directed grantmaking site. Some folks didn't want to talk until we've incorporated, which gives us a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: we hadn't wanted to spend the time and money on incorporation and lawyer fees until we were reasonably sure we could find a payment processor, but those underwriters want to see our articles of incorporation and a few months' of bank statements before they can say whether they would work with us.

Happy November, noble netizens!

I'm overjoyed to report that this past month we were able to get a demo version of our grantmaking platform up and running, and we've started talking with payment processors! (The grantmaking platform is still called "Passionate Produce," for now -- finding a better, more memorable name is still on our to-do list.)

Greetings, fabulous folks,

I, for one, can hardly believe it's already October! September in Boston was warm enough that it still felt like summer, but now I have to face the fact that there are only three months left in the year. (How did that happen?)

Part 1

Happy September, everyone!

This month's newsletter is a two-parter: we're finally switching our newsletter over to be sent out by info@effing.org, and we want to make sure all of you are able to make that transition with us.

This email is coming to you from info@passionateproduce.com, our old email address. Shortly after you receive this email, you should receive Part 2 of the newsletter from info@effing.org, our new email address. If you don't see Part 2, please check your Spam folder or other filters and update them accordingly.

Thanks for your patience!