New website + promotional video + some quick thoughts on short-term plans

New website

Have drafted a new website and the club has reached 37 member co-ops! As the new site is not yet live, the sign-up buttons don't work yet, and the very latest co-ops have not yet been added to the directory.  Let me know what you think of it within the next couple of days so that possible adjustments can be made before it goes live, and we can start doing big outreach.

The website now includes a lot more content (make sure to check out About page ;) ) and hopefully explains the basic ideas more clearly; had noticed that the earlier website led some people to misunderstand or confuse what we are all about.

A short promotional video is nearly ready

Also, created a short promotional video: last 5-10 second segment is missing, which will feature a screen capture of the website showing how people can sign up. The video also needs background music. Before going forward and adding music, it would be great to hear if anyone has any feedback, as it's difficult to edit it after syncing it with music. Also, let me know if you have some suggestions on what the background music should be :).

Outreach campaign

Once the new website is live, we will start an outreach campaign. Currently the plans include:

• Listing all the UK based coops with an email newsletter and reaching out to them. The list for North West based coops already exists and can be found here.

• Reaching out to US based coops via Start Coop accelerator, who have already indicated they like the idea and would be happy to help.

• Reaching out to Finnish co-ops with the help of Pellervo, the central organization of Finnish co-ops.

What would be great would be reaching out to coops in the non-English speaking world. I personally would be happy to pay rewards from my own pocket to those who help us find new cooperatives. Maybe a €50 (or $50/£50/etc.) reward for every cooperative recruited with more than 1000 subscribers on their email list/newsletter? In that case, if someone in Italy recruits ten Italian cooperatives with 1000+ subscribers to join the Coop Data Club, I could personally pay them €500. I am not sure about the details, but if anyone is interested (or knows someone who might be interested), let me know!

More active approach in getting coops to interact with each other

We realise that simply having a Loomio group and expecting folks to start interacting with each other is not enough, at least at this stage when our membership includes 37 co-ops; hopefully as we grow this will change. We will be taking a more proactive approach in getting folks to connect with each other, but will make sure this does not mean spamming or anything like that.