Welcome to AVFM’s most out of the ordinary fundraiser, and without a doubt one of the most important ever. Financial supporters will want to read all of this appeal, as it will explain the enormous transformation AVFM is undergoing. I will try to get all this out without writing a book, and hopefully without diluting the point, which is to raise money.
If you have been following us closely you are probably aware that AVFM has formed a Limited Liability Company (LLC) which now governs our operations. This means some very significant changes, beginning with a team of company officers responsible for operations, events and commercial opportunities that can finance the work we want to grow into doing.
That team is comprised of myself as CEO, Dean Esmay as Chief Operations Officer, David King as Chief Information Officer, Al Martin as Chief Security Officer and Peter Wright as Chief Marketing Officer.
As you might imagine the expense of pulling this together was considerable, given the rates of attorneys and CPAs. And that is not even close to all of the expenses.
For our upcoming publishing house, Zeta Press, we have had to engage attorneys to develop editor’s and author’s contracts and invest in the web development and ecommerce necessary to make that a reality.
All of this has been slow, arduous and expensive, and all of it has been happening in the middle of planning for ICMI ’15 in Houston – an even more time consuming and expensive project than the organizational transition. At this point it has been so financially consuming that the LLC’s needs preclude me from AVFM personal income for the foreseeable future. That means I have to work at something else for personal income. The LLC’s needs take priority over mine.
To accomplish this I will be offering online coaching services to men only for a limited amount of hours a week in order to keep food on the table. I will be including one hour per week of pro bono work for those who cannot pay.
Another thing we have learned during this process is that these things move slowly. Contracts involve negotiations which can drag out and die as often as they succeed. And they are very time consuming.
We had fully intended to have a membership plan ready for launch with this fundraiser but it was just not possible to make that happen. So, with your kind indulgence we will do one more traditional fundraiser with high hopes for success. That money will be directly used for LLC needs and to push us to a position to do the things we really want to do. For instance, we would love to see this (or something like it) on a billboard in Houston for a month leading up to the conference.
After we get the doors open to Zeta Press and An Ear for Men, a functional Patreon page, secure our advertising agreements and make payments on conference expenses, we can then formulate a realistic set of perks for different levels of membership support. We can make AVFM more self-sustaining, financially viable and socially powerful in complete defiance of the modern zeitgeist.
We do not intend to fail at this and we have the people to get it done.
So, with that I will ask you again to reach in and help us over this hump to the next level of AVFM’s ability to change the narrative on gender and sex to one that is rational and functional. As always, our deepest appreciation to those who help.
Provided byFund-Raising-Ideas-Center.com
Funraiser will end midnight CDT, April 4, 2015
