To help our communities understand the effects of the current economy and stimulus efforts on the nonprofit sector of our region, please complete this short survey. It is very important and will only take 5-10 minutes. Your answers will provide key information to NorthSky Nonprofit Network to help it best characterize the impact of the economic situation on the nonprofit sector in our 10 county region.
In order for this information to be powerful enough to be considered seriously, we need to have a great response rate. With this in mind I ask you to please take the few minutes needed to complete the survey and submit it by Saturday, February 21, 2009.
Simply follow this link and complete the short survey:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228SJUBXCMJ
Many thanks, in advance, for your assistance with this request for information. We really appreciate your help.
Warmest regards,
Debbie McKeon,
Executive Director
If you have questions or need assistance, please contact me in care of NorthSky Nonprofit Network by phone at 231.929.3934 or email dmckeon@northskynonprofitnetwork.org.
Post your comments about the current economic climate here.
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Hi Debbie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the opportunity to respond with "comments on the current economic climate here" as I have already done - please see below for a revised version that is better composed - it can be difficult to keep track of all the text in these small boxes!
THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CLIMATE! Before the birds come out to sing again!
I have lived for 31 years on a continent, Europe, where folks have fought and died in great numbers because they wanted a better future for their children. Those battles have yet to be fought here because there are certainly some here who feel that they can deny us rights that we should not dream of possessing - the right to a minimum wage, to a decent education, to the calm and clean streets that designers like me want to provide in towns and cities!
It's curious because I come from a well educated family; why should I feel resentment toward an oppressor here? But, what do you do about those who feel that they have all the rights, like asking me to work 60+ hours a week and then skipping out from paying ALL the overtime payments (I got them back!), or the boss who paid me irregularly for work that I loved (in San Francisco, selling electric scooters) and then swore at me as he dumped my things on the sidewalk outside, leaving me homeless. Why, as a university graduate with an excellent work record in Europe, do I tell you this?
Very simply because "Honest Abe" Lincoln's party, and a significant percentage of the wealthy class here (my own family was well-to-do in Europe) are crooks, unscrupulous, lying, cheating crooks! Why were the $700 + $787 BILLION DOLLARS in TARP and Stimulus funds that the government has just approved needed in the first place. Where did the capital that it replaces go? There was money enough to make the economy work before the crisES! Where did it go - to absolutely crooked banks, brokers and investment houses, that's where! And, not one of them has put their hand up to apologize for taking such absurd amounts of money, or offered to give it back!
I am absolutely astonished that actions that have led to revolutions in Europe, Russia, China and elsewhere have not yet attracted our wrath and directed it at Crawford, Texas and all the other gated communities!
I am sorry, for I am a peacenik, someone working for the long eternity of peace and understanding here on Earth, but if those who perpetrated the recent crises had instead gone around ripping everyone's clothes off, it would certainly have been no more outrageous than what they have done!
And, what will "they" use the $700 billion that disappeared from the stock markets for? More wars, of course! Many here are prehaps unaware that the current war is all about oil, so when these last greatest reserves in Iraq are used up, you can be sure that there will be other wars to acquire whatever is next needed, which also has to be financed - it takes a lot to run the 13 Carrier battle groups that the US currently fields (which is equivalent to the energy used by Japan, the world’s second largest economy), as well as the rest of our “defense” establishment!
The Canadian, European and Japanese markets were not brought to the point of collapse this time as they were in 1929, because they have solid, ethical market rules and watchdogs who were not asleep! I hope that my grandchildren will live to see the day, to be born and to survive, as I work ceaselessly to make the world more sustainable!
So, in the current economic climate, with credit as difficult to get for even established businesses as it is, I believe that there is only one way forward, use the design skills that I have honed over the past 32 years to propose 100% sustainable technologies, knowing that some, or all, can be ripped off, and I have a lot of them to propose! But, do I keep them in a drawer, undisclosed, because I don’t have the money to patent even one, or release them open-source so that future generations can benefit?
Life is a bit like a game of cards, we play one after the other, hoping that one will pay off. And, it’s certainly unwise to keep them all in our hand, forever, because our children will also need them all, even of only parts of them are offered from the gloved hand of someone “above” them who is wealthy enough to still be standing!
You know my story, that I have fought back from a cardiac arrest of 10 minutes. Having been reduced to such a primitive state, I think that I can better see into people’s souls, what their real desires and motivations are, and I see a lot of trouble brewing before the birds come out to sing again, but sing they will, for some of us!
Thank you for the question, and please send us all the questionnaire.
Yours sincerely,
Kim Gyr