permaculture

["Robert Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>]

If a person sets up a non-profit, it's important 
to set it up so it can't be hijacked.  The 
Oklahoma Food Coop isn't a non-profit, it's 
cooperative, but when I wrote our Articles of 
Incorporation, I included this paragraph:

(4) (c) No person, persons, or other legal entity 
may own or vote more than one membership share in 
the cooperative; however, any person may give 
money to the cooperative to pay for shares of 
stock for low income persons who desire to be 
cooperative members but who do not have sufficient 
funds to pay for the membership. Shares may not be 
transferred directly from members to non-members 
or between members.

And the article on amending the Articles says:

Provided, however, that section 4 (c) above, 
(limiting ownership of shares of membership stock 
to one per membership), is neither amendable nor 
repealable.

Other protections include:

+ Amendments to the Articles of Incorporation can 
only be made by members at a membership meeting. 
Written notice of amendments has to be given to 
all members 25 days in advance of such a meeting.

+ The cooperative may issue only one class of 
stock.

+ The voting rights of all members are equal.

What this means is that nobody can start buying up 
member shares, because you can't do anything with 
a member share except sell it back to us.  No one 
person or entity can own or vote more than one 
share, so we have no proxy voting.

It's not perfect, but it would make a takeover 
very hard.  If the board went crazy, members can 
of their own initiative call a special meeting of 
the membership to reverse or change anything the 
board does.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City
www.oklahomafood.coop



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <lbsaltzman@aol.com>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] SSE again


The middle ground here is that we should all do 
what we can to conserve and even breed seeds 
locally, but as Marshall suggests we don't want to 
loose the thousands of years of seed?breeding by 
farmers all over the world. Organizations like SSE 
are irreplacable in the near future.? If somebody 
has the time and resources to duplicate elsewhere 
what they have acheived that would be a good 
thing, but an extremely hard thing.? So work to 
get the bad guys kicked out and restore the good 
guys.
> And if you ever start a non-profit learn from 
> this. Never, never let outsiders in you don't 
> know and give them the chance to steal and 
> subvert the organization.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marshall Chrostowski <mcfarm@silcom.com>
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:14 am
> Subject: [permaculture] SSE again
>
>
>
> Jay, yes this is a flawed world and a world 
> filled with well-meaning people
> rushing about doing good works. Most anyone can 
> learn to save seed and acquire
> the means of growing, selecting, protecting, 
> harvesting, processing and storing
> seed -- year after year after year after year. 
> How many of us have the time,
> opportunity and perserverence to conserve 
> unique, mostly annual plant materials
> over many years? The reality is closer to the 
> situation where relatively few
> people grow a relatively small roster of seed 
> types more or less readily
> available.
>
> I now get that you really don't understand the 
> SSE's role and functioning in
> conservation of heirloom and traditional 
> varieties. The single organization
> works closely with similar organization in 
> country and abroad as well as
> national governments. Yes, there is a large 
> number of seed stored at Heritage
> Farm but samples of many of these have been 
> donated from other holders of same
> seeds and many others have been distributed to 
> listed members who grow them out
> and conserve them. Other varieties have been 
> introduced into the commercial seed
> trade. This is a dynamic  and living 
> conservation effort. Yes, it would be
> cheaper to deep freeze germplasm to available 
> for future plant breeding. Is this
> to be the end result of 10,000 years of crop 
> selection by farmers and
> horticulturists from many parts of the world?
>
> Marshall
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:20:20 -0600
> From: Jay Woods <woodsjay@cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Seed Savers Exchange
> To: permaculture 
> <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: 
> <200801210520.20694.woodsjay@cox.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> So what do we do to become trained and equipped. 
> In this flawed world, to
> depend on a single organization at a single spot 
> is folly.
>
> On Monday 21 January 2008 12:19:51 am Marshall 
> Chrostowski wrote:
>
> > > 3. SSE practices living conservation of 
> > > genetic resources with a
> > > rigorous program of rotating growouts. The 
> > > USDA and other governmental
> > > agencies have been expanding germplasm banks 
> > > held at very low
> > > temperatures. It was been SSE's experience 
> > > that such germplasm storage
> > > systems do not protect living matter for 
> > > advertised durations.
>
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