11-19 Conference Call Notes

For tomorrow's meeting:
Keep in mind, we are negotiating from a position of strength. We are targeting key needs in the community that have not yet been addressed. We are offering them a program/resources they do not have.
-Get them to promise that we have access to a facility.
-Work with their needs/vision. Get to know our audience and align our plan to them accordingly. We are there to develop the community.
-Give them confidence that we have the skills/credibility to help the women.
-Other community programs fail because of lack of accountability on the participants' end. We must think of ways to make our women accountable to prove that our program will stay afloat and is worth Weaver St.'s investment. Suggestion: we can say our program will really seem worthwhile to the women because they know (and we'll keep reminding them) that single mothers commonly succeed in catering and the food industry.

When talking to them about funding, Chris thinks we don't really need to have sources nailed down; he thinks it's important that we just have a *clear* budget, a sense of how much things'll cost, and *possible* sources for the funding. I guess it's good you're prepping for the meeting, Melanie, 'cause you are the one working out the costs already. The resource strategy we give them should figure out costs for the next year...

Funding/costs in general:
Suggestions to get this funding: Duke (of course), corporate sponsors (possibly from the food industry); look at similar projects and see where they got funds
Look closely at for what we really need money: after all, we have the facility covered (hopefully). This means we can get *many* of our resources covered by in-kind donations (food, supplies, etc.). Our best bet is to get people to donate things other than cash.

Using case studies on single women (Priyanka's question): we could have a quick snapshot about single women from one case study (possibly in the intro). That's good. If you want to use more than one case study, put them in an appendix.

Other stuff:
Grameen Bank/joint liability as loan collateral for women...is there any way we can use this idea?
David says: could we find a way to get some kind of chef (or something) certification for the women (this would probably be a for-scaling-up goal)?

BUSINESS PLAN STUFF:
-Forms in plan (that confused us) just were never put up on Blackboard...they're going up now.
-"Key Program Strategies" resource descriptions and such...they should deal more with possibilities. That's why we have the "Current Levels of Support" section, too.