News

An enormous "Thank you!" to all who participated in the Culture Make Sale, whether by contributing goods and offering services, purchasing others' donations, or simply perusing the website and sharing in the event.

*culture is not optional's network stretches across the globe, and thanks to the success of the Culture Make Sale, that web of connections is growing! Over the past two months, friends of *cino new and old, from all over, have given and received gifts of time, energy, and resources, to benefit the renovation and development of the former Huss School building into a community center in Three Rivers, Michigan. Handmade ceramics, customized love letters and website design, brilliant books and poetry, yard work, artwork, apple pies, and so much more - these are little bits of human culture that enrich our lives, and all the more so when they are shared.

Thanks to all for helping raise over $1500 for the Imagining Space at Huss School! Your continued support ensures that Huss School is on its way to becoming a place of peace, hope, and justice.

Additionally, the sale will continue soon in Three Rivers: World Fare, a fair trade store downtown, has partnered with *cino as an outlet to sell goods that give life to projects and endeavors in the local community. Be sure to stop by 37 N. Main St. in the near future and check out the many wonderful items still on sale!

Huss Future Festival took place last Saturday, as 300 visitors from near and far filled the hallways with music, laughter, participation and creativity. We had a good ol' time and raised over $600 for the Imagining Space Project at Huss, in addition to raising funds for Triple Ripple Community Gardens and the annual Back to School Celebration. See the Imagining Space blog for a full report from the festival, as well as our photos of the event. CAUTION: if you missed it, you're going to wish you hadn't!

Join us on July 30 for the Second Annual Huss Future Festival! This year's event will include live music, food from the Triple Ripple Community Garden and the Three Rivers Area Faith Community, an art and art supply sale sponsored by the Three Rivers Artist Guild, a used clothing sale ... and more! We invite you to drop by to get a glimpse of the vision for the Imagining Space at Huss School.

On July 28-30, we're also partnering with Maple Tree Meadows to host a ^camping is not optional event in Three Rivers. This beautiful farm is only ten minutes from Huss School, making it an ideal place to stay if you're coming into town for the Future Festival. Our camping events are very informal, but provide plenty of opportunities for sharing good food, stories, farm chores, songs and more. If you'd like, you could also volunteer for the Festival while you're here; just send us a note to let us know you're interested. We have limited space available, so register early!

*culture is not optional has applied for a $50,000 grant through the Pepsi Refresh Project. We'll be using the money to renovate one room in Huss School, the 27,000 square foot building we purchased for our Imagining Space project. To receive the grant, though, we need to solicit votes from our supporters; the 10 projects with the most votes in each grant amount will win!

Voting for our project starts Wednesday and you can vote on the Refresh Everything site, via text message or through a Facebook application. You can vote once a day and we'll need you to vote every day in December if we stand a chance of winning. We will post the links and numbers to vote as soon as possible.

If you'd like to receive a daily e-mail reminder, sign up for our daily asterisk e-mail list. We send out a provocative quote every day and, during the month of December, we'll be including a reason to vote for *cino's project.

Thanks! And more soon ...

The first annual Huss Future Festival was a great success! Check out the video below, then read Kirstin's overview of the event on the Imagining Space blog (with links to photos and news stories).

Dear friends of *cino,

On Friday, February 19, the *culture is not optional board of directors met in Pennsylvania before attending the annual Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh. We had great conversation at Beaver Falls Coffee & Tea about *cino's identity and about fund raising.

The good news

Here's the good news: our work is flourishing. It was fun to be at Jubilee and hear directly from so many people who are inspired by the road journal, who love writing for catapult, who read the daily asterisk quote every day, who want to come to Practicing Resurrection and who are excited to see what is sprouting in Three Rivers at Huss School. We also had many good conversations with college students and post-grads who are striving to discern Kingdom faithfulness in all things: career, family, place, church, relationships and more. We're glad that the resources *cino already offers can provide some of what they need on their journeys.

The...other news

Here's the...other news: we are on the edge financially. Last spring, we stepped out in faith to purchase the historic Huss School building in Three Rivers and it has stretched our organization to the extent that we have urgent needs for the building and other expenses. We board members are praying and trusting that God will provide--and we're getting to work!

Introducing SUSTAIN *cino

SUSTAIN *cino will be our effort over the next few years to cultivate our resources through three phases--getting by, sprouting and thriving--and we need your help. We have outlined three budget goals that will allow the work of *cino--including the Imagining Space project at Huss School--to grow and flourish. We've broken down the goals into monthly target amounts:

• $2,500 per month: June 12, 2010


• $5,000 per month: End of 2010


• $10,000 per month: End of 2011

What we are asking of you now is to consider making a monthly commitment to help us meet our $2,500 per month goal by June 12, our one-year ownership anniversary Huss School. If $10 per month is what you can afford, you will be part of our foundation of many--after all, 150 gifts of all sizes helped us raise $25,000 in 40 days to purchase Huss School! Just think: if each of those 150 households gave $10 per month, we'd be over halfway to our first goal! And if you can afford $20 or $30 per month, you'll help cover the share of someone who benefits from *cino's work, but is in a low or no income situation.

Our experience has been that the foundation of *cino's support will consist of many people like you catching the vision and doing what they can to participate. We are praying and working for major gifts and grants, to be sure, but we also need you to walk with us through the both the thrilling and the difficult times.

Our commitment is to keep doing and growing the good work God has called us to do through *cino and to stay in regular communication with you. Will you match our commitment with one of your own?

Yours in gratitude and trust,
The *culture is not optional Board of Directors
Jeff Bouman
Grant Elgersma
Gail Heffner
Sylvia Keesmaat
Tim Raakman
Hank Suhr
Rob & Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma

To set up a monthly donation or make a one-time contribution, please visit the *culture is not optional web site.

A good chunk of our board meeting on February 19 was spent discussing the financial needs of *culture is not optional. We've never been more excited about the work we're doing and the possibilities that lie in front of us--especially the Imagining Space project. But to move forward, we really need to establish a much more stable financial foundation. Toward that end, we established three budget goals that we'll be working toward over the next few years.

Getting by

$30,000 per year / $2,500 per month

• Basic building expenses (mortgage, insurance, utilities)
• Technology costs (server fees, domain registration, etc.)
• Printing and mailing
• Event fees (conference displays, etc.)

Sprouting

$60,000 per year / $5,000 per month

• All of the above, plus ...
• A double mortgage payment (paying down principle faster)
• Additional printing budget for books in the Road Map Series
• Salary and benefits for director
• Funding for professional accountant
• Promotional budget

Thriving

$120,000 per year / $10,000 per month

• All of the above, plus ...
• Additional mortgage payments, paying off the mortgage in 3 years
• Additional printing and mailing budget for expanded mailing list
• Additional printing budget for books in the Road Map Series
• Intern stipends
• catapult magazine/road journal honoraria
• Salary for part-time property manager
• Additional promotional budget

These budget goals are primarily operational and only extend for the next few years. We're hoping that we'll be able to raise additional funding through grants and other sources to help fund the renovation of Huss School.

We've set the following timeline to try to meet these goals:

• $2,500 per month: June 12, 2010
• $5,000 per month: End of 2010
• $10,000 per month: End of 2011

On the one hand, these goals seem ridiculously ambitious and unattainable. On the other hand, we feel like we're simply following through on *cino's vision. As we reflect on God's faithfulness when *cino's supporters contributed $25,000 in 40 days a little less than a year ago, an annual budget of $120,000 seems pretty realistic. And when we think of what we'd be able to accomplish with such a relatively small institutional budget, we get pretty excited ...

We'll be sending out more information soon about meeting our first goal!