The Resilience Hub’s model is only possible due to the generous participation and support of our growing permaculture network. Support in the form of participation, showing up for events and permablitzes, chiming in on our message boards, offering to teach workshops and host open houses are all critically important forms of “capital.”
Our operating financial capital is derived from three categories of support:
- Event Fees – We organize and host more than 70 educational and community-building events per year. The cost of participating in those ranges from $0 up through whatever it costs to produce the event. Participants pay for things like workshops or design courses and the budgets for each of those events includes the true costs of producing quality programming as well as about 10% of event revenue that goes toward the ongoing work of running The Resilience Hub.
- Fee-for-Service Work – The Resilience Hub is one of the few permaculture design educational organizations that also DOES design work! We believe that by offering design services for homes, farms, schools, churches, campus, etc. we stay sharp as designers (a prerequisite for teaching a design discipline!). And, to stack functions, we use our design gigs as opportunities as on-the-job training for our students. Our design fees also include a small percentage that goes toward the overall mission of The Resilience Hub.
- Gifts, Grants, and Fund Raising – We deeply appreciate the contributions of our members who help keep The Resilience Hub running! Occasionally we organize fund raising efforts like group orders for things (books, gallon jars, trees, specialty tools) with a few points going into the common fund. Lastly, we receive very generous support from a selection of foundations and private donors for work that cannot easily be funded via #1 and #2 above. Gifts, grants and fund raising represent approximately 1/3 of our overall operating revenue.
We have received additional financial support over the years from private donors, Broad Reach Fund, Verbena Foundation, Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, and Maine Community Foundation.