Sunday, October 30, 2016

Mmmm... local meat shop

I stumbled on this place by accident.  It's a local meat shop called, creatively, Front Range (Organic & All Natural) Meats.



Not exactly a butcher.  The meats are packaged (see below), but it's fresh and a bunch of it's local.

Here's my haul:



Rib eye steak, bison burgers, uncured natual bacon and something I've never had before: Back Bacon!  This should be interesting!

For those of you thinking: whoa.. that's way too much meat, for me, not so much.  I'm on a keto way of eating (think: low carb/high fat).  Details here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/keto_in_a_nutshell

That means meats are a big part of my daily diet.  Very happy to have found an all natural source right here in Longmont.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Set Up A 501(c)3 Non Profit Corporation




I keep getting asked to help people set up a non profit because I've done a couple.

I think lawyers try to make it sound more complicated than it really is.  With a little focused expertise, you can get it done quickly and at a much more reasonable cost than hiring a lawyer (or trying to figure it out yourself).

It's really quite simple.  I've done two so far and given this advice to about half a dozen others (those that carried though with it as outlined all got their 501(c)3 designations).  The first one we did took 30 days (denhac, the Denver hackerspace) and the second one took 60 days (TinkerMill, the Longmont Makerspace).

We used the same process for both.  It involves three steps:

1) create a Colorado (or whatever state you're in) non profit corporation. In Colorado, the cost is $50.  You do it online here (Colorado's Secretary of State website, your state likely works in a similar way): http://goo.gl/c9qdZ2

2) hire this firm to do your paperwork:  Floyd Green Financial Services (Atlanta, GA).  Ask for Tina Mikova (tina@fgfservices.com)  tel. (877) 457-2550; direct line (678) 608-3911;  They charge between $500 and $650 for everything.  This person did both of our's and she's a pro.  They want to be paid via credit card up front.  Trust them and pay them.  We did and got exactly what we paid for.

3) pay the IRS their one time fee.  You now send in the paperwork Tina prepares for you and a check to the IRS for $850.  Or $400 if you're doing less than $10K in revenue a year (for regular 501c3 applications). For those organizations that qualify for the expedited 501c3 application (f1023-EZ), the IRS filing fee is $275 if their projected gross income is of less than $50K.

So, total outlay, about $1000 low end, about $1400/1500 high end.

I would strongly recommend you not try to do this yourselves.  Hire these guys.  They got ours through the IRS with zero hassle.  They've done thousands of 501(c)3's and know exactly what to do.

DISCLAIMER:  I am getting NO referral fee's or any other remuneration of any kind from Floyd Green Financial Services. I just think they do really good work at a fair price, fast.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

TinkerMill- Time For Me To Move On


It's time for me to leave the leadership of TinkerMill, the Makerspace, to the next generation of members.

Monday, 7/25/16, was my last Board of Director's meeting and a new board was elected Tuesday night.  After three years, I'm no longer part of the team running TinkerMill and am now just a regular member.

TinkerMill started in May of 2013 as the simple idea that I  wanted a makerspace in Longmont, where I lived.  I'd been a member of denhac, the Denver hackerspace, and was tired of driving to Denver multiple times a week.  So, I started talking to people.

First (among several people) was the VP of education at SparkFun, Lindsay Levkoff.  She and I met at City Cafe, one of my favorite places to eat, and decided, 'yea, this is a good idea'.  She had a URL called "TinkerLab" which we considered as the name.  We settled on TinkerMill though because one of the first places we (almost) rented was an old flourmill.

So, we used meetup.com (highly recommended).   I posted a meetup and thought, if 4 people show up, we'll have a second meeting. 6 people showed up and we haven't missed a weekly membership meeting since.

Within a month, we'd created a non profit Colorado Corporation (June of 2013).  Within 2 months, we had about 30 members.  Within 6 months, we had 50 members and we had a space - about 4000SF in a soon to be torn down mall).  Around a year or so in we got our 501(c)3 non profit status.  We found a new home (about 10,000SF indoors and another 3/4000SF of covered outside space at 1840 Delaware Place, Longmont CO., where TinkerMill still lives.

We created bylaws, a board of directors, documents, structures and processes for protecting the membership and a culture that, apparently, is working well.  I served as president the first two years, and the last year as a director on the Board of Directors.

As of early July, 2016, we have around 400 paying members making TinkerMill one of the largest makerspaces in the USA.

It's become a true melting pot of people from all walks of the creative life.  From bits - computers and software - to atoms - metalwork, pottery, woodshop, plastics, robotics, blacksmithing, welding, wetlabs, glassworks, silversmithing, music, amateur radio, recording, art of all types, scouts and other kid friendly learning, sewing, prototyping and coming up with new art, products, companies and, well, just creating and innovation in general.

It's also become a place with over 100 classes a month (often more) on everything from how to use a 3D printer or lasercutter to how to throw and fire pottery to how to program arduino chips and build robots and drones to how to develop a new game (software, board, cards, dice, you name it).

Everyone at TinkerMill is an expert at something.

It's, (initially) by accident, then intentionally, turned into a kind of incubator/accelerator and center of entrepreneurial activity for the area.  With members from all over the front range, and several small companies forming and growing within TinkerMill's walls; new products, businesses and primary employment are being created in a place, and in areas of interest, that have never happened before in Longmont.

Although I'm the original founder and had a significant part in getting it started, the real star here is the membership itself.  The members of TinkerMill made it what it is today.  In the last year, we even found our new, very capable, leader:  Ron Thomas, our full time Executive Director.

One person can't create a group of creative artists, craftspeople, scientists, developers, engineers and entrepreneurs like this though.  Even the membership can't really do it alone.  It's something an entire community has to get behind and that very much happened at TinkerMill.

The City of Longmont (Sandi Seader in particular, as well ad Harold Dominguez) have been very supportive, with the City Council (in a 6-1 vote) providing us with a $60,000 grant for equipment in our 2nd year, which helped jump start our membership due to the great tools we could buy.  Other entities in the business community were also really helpful, especially the Longmont Economic Development Partnership (Jessica Erickson) and the Longmont Community Foundation (Eric Hozempa).  The State of Colorado awarded us a $50K advanced industries grant.

We even worked with Eric H. to create a kind of 'small' investment granting entity he named Longmont Ignite that helps find and fund great ideas from entrepreneurs at TinkerMill.

Brad Feld, a very well known venture capitalist in Boulder County (who's home is in a Longmont zip code no less) and his wife Amy Batchelor sponsored one of our bathrooms (a Brad thing).  Brad also is helping Eric H. with the Longmont Ignite fund, or so the rumor goes.

There were many others as well.  Hundreds of people from all over the community, too many to name here, unfortunately.

We've been visited by dozens of different entities from around the country (and world, a S. Korean TV station did a special on how TinkerMill and makerspaces in general are the future of education) and inspired, we're told, more than one other makerspace in Colorado (one of the first being our sister city:  Loveland, and their Loveland Creatorspace.

So, it is with a slightly sad, but satisfied, heart I leave the leadership of TinkerMill.  I wish the new leadership a smooth and fruitful journey and I look forward to whatever the next adventure might be.

If you've got something that you think I might be interested in or could help you with, I'm around; feel free to drop me a line.


Thursday, February 11, 2016

Well, it keeps getting weirder.

Last Monday, I went to check on my youngest brother Brian, and found him slumped over in his easy chair. He'd passed away the night before. He was 50. He'd developed lung disease (a heavy smoker most of his adult life) and it took him, peacefully, in his sleep.

It's been a pretty crappy 3 months. Dad in November (88, heart disease); Craig on Christmas eve (53, complications from surgery) and now Brian. The good news is I still have one brother and Mom, who are doing as well as can be expected, plus a large extended family across the country.

Brians obituary

An excellent read from an ex-evangelical.

  As you know, I once was an evangelical megachurch pastor and my pastoral career stretched over many years. Eventually, I could no longer t...