The Transition Sponsored Businesses
The Transition takes an active role in the business decisions to help it become successful and supplies financing support, labour through community contribution if needed, website creation and support, and marketing. Businesses of this kind are established to create on-going income for both the individual and The Transition and maintain their association with and support of the community even if the business owner is no longer a community member. Capital for business building is created and maintained by all income streams of The Transition and allocated by community consensus.
To become a community sponsored business, members with business ideas present a detailed business plan to the complete membership of the community for consensus on viability and community sponsorship. If 100% of community membership agrees that a business is viable, The Transition will then sponsor the business and provide a grant or 0% interest loan and staffing (through community contribution) for the business creation. The criteria for business sponsorship are:
● Submission of complete business plan
● Consensus agreement to sponsor business
● Business must require only temporary community staffing support
● Business must be in alignment with The Transition's triple-bottom-line foundation
● Business model should take no longer than 1 year to be profitable AND repay supplied start-up costs
● Businesses with associated maintenance costs must maintain 1 year of business operation costs in a solvency account to be managed by The Transition
Some examples of possible businesses are:
- Real Estate & Finance
- Forestry
- Responsible & Sustainable Wood Milling
- Construction & Development of Alternative Environmentally Friendly Structures
- Education & Eco-tourism
- Local Services
- Art & Culture
- Electronic Businesses & Merchanting
- Value-Added Agriculture & Horticulture
Note: Businesses desiring sponsorship that requires community contribution staffing will not be available until there is sufficient infrastructure in place.