93 Days to Launch

Unbelievable! This past year has been flying by as we are preparing for the launch of ChristmasFuture to the world. And as the pace continues to increase so does the level of reality in the decision making. The organization itself is becoming more of a real entity right before our eyes. All of the effort of groundwork and attempting to do things 'the right way' are now bearing some good fruit. Of course, we're not perfect, and we never will be - we just strive to be authentic about what we experience and where we're at. A little glimpse into the kinds of things we've been up to in the past few weeks:

- We've been making huge strides towards the completion of the DonorTrust software - which is an open-source project meaning we will open it up to the world of software developers to enhance / improve as well as give it away to other NGO's that want to use it to improve their business models.
- We'll be able to show you some screen-shots very soon

- We've brought on a full-time Project Manager to keep all of our work in order - and coming from corporate North America, managing volunteers is COMPLETELY different than managing staff.

- After some significant effort we've been able to raise another $30,000, enabling us to hire more people to help get C-Foo launched this year

- We've decided to hire a professional fund development agency to define what our NGO 2.0 Fund Development Organization should look like, as we are directing 100% of the Christmas season investors towards the projects they choose and covering our own organization's overhead costs separately.

- We've been meeting with potential implementing partners to get their projects in the database for you folks to donate to. This is a thorough process that is being managed by a team of 7 people with over 100 years of International Development expertise combined! What a team we have.

- In line with our 'new way of doing NGO work' we continue to try to keep our overheads low by not having an office space and working out of coffee shops. It's fantastic! I've met and continue to meet the most amazing people at 'the office'

- We had a meeting with the Ideaca team last week to determine the service levels they will be providing to us. They will be giving us top of the line support at no charge - incredible!
-For those of you who don't know, Ideaca is a world-class technology developer and provider with offices across Canada. They are providing us with servers and supporting those servers to host the website and software at no cost, they have given us the equivalent of 2 Full-Time software developers on their own tab, and made their office space available to us for meetings. They have been absolutely amazing to us!

- We're arranging to have our quarterly get-together at Ironwood in Inglewood (yes - in Calgary)...it's always a great time to get together with the other folks that are giving their time and their lives to help end extreme poverty in our world...it's a great community of friends...come on out at 6pm if you're interested.

So the pace has been rapid but it is exhilarating! This truly has been the best 4 years of my life...I wouldn't change a thing if it meant I wouldn't be right here right now.

Hope to talk to you all again soon....yikes...93 days! Gotta go!


....jay

Jay Baydala