Where will COIF sit in the future organisational landscape of the Community?

Overview

This draft proposal is submitted by the COIF Core team: Cornelia Featherstone, Janet Shaw, Keith Armstrong, Leona Graham, Liza Hollingshead, Richard Elen, Sue Hall, Suzanne Farmer

It aims to feed into the discussions around asset transfers as the Findhorn Foundation Trust (FFT) winds down. COIF presently sits within the New Findhorn Association (NFA) (legal ‘owner’), is greatly supported by

  • FF Trust/SCIO: through appropriate permissions to publish and access the digital archive,
  • Park Ecovillage trust (PET): through a grant to support our work. This fund was raised from individual supporters in 2022, and is replenished through donations generated from the Donate button on the website (minimal at present).

Objective

To find the most appropriate organisation to ‘own’ the COIF website and all the associated activities in future, including the Community Archive project grant.

Considerations

COIF Activities

  • Website:
    • platform WordPress
    • developer: Val McLennan of Digitalroutes, Lossiemouth
    • hosting: Krystal – top level – this allows hosting of several websites (joined-up working could offer cost saving opportunities)
    • Functions:
      • about 1500 posts
        • with Members stories
        • Documents, including large files such as dissertations
        • Wikipedia style hyperlinking to allow delving into a specific aspect
        • Different media, including video (approx 150 posts – links to our own YouTube channel as well as other publicly available videos)
        • Ebooks library
      • YouTube Channel – presently 115 videos and 147 subscribers
      • COIF members – 385 at present
      • Members Directory – in the password protected Members Area members have access to email addresses of those who have agreed to share their details with other members
  • Newsletter (from 2022 just COIF, since Dec 2024 joint NFA newsletter for subscribers from COIF website, Visit website and NFA members; endeavours to involve Ecovillage Findhorn CBS (EF CBS) have been inconclusive to date)
  • Community Archive project grant (This grant is in support of the COIF proposal to be involved with the archive which is presently held by the Findhorn Foundation, as well as the proposal to support Community organisations to archive their organisational history as it pertains to the Community’s history. The fund is to be used for a scoping exercise/feasibility study which will probably lead to a Lottery Heritage Fund application.)

Grant applications

There are several conversations – at present not joined up – about Heritage Lottery Funding
– an application for a heritage centre around the original garden
– an application around the Universal Hall
– Community Archive Grant Project: COIF has received a £10K grant to work up a major grant proposal to secure all the different archival assets within the Community (from FF as well as all the other Community organisations)

To have a chance for this to lead to a successful application, these conversations need to be joined-up as each one adds essential mutually enhancing elements to make a strong application, and importantly competing bids would be detrimental to all.

Legal structure

NFA ‘owns’ COIF due to a decision taken between FF Management and NFA Council in 2021. The question is whether NFA in its present legal configuration is the best fit. As the organisational landscape shifts within the Community this is the time to review where COIF will sit in the future. As COIF is also holding the focus for the Archive Grant project, it seems at this point sensible to have both those aspects covered in this consideration.

What Archival Assets are we talking about?

The following list applies to all relevant Community organisations – past and present. Obviously the Findhorn Foundation has the greatest volume but all the other organisations are essential parts of the Community’s legacy. Sadly a lot of historical material has already been lost as organisations cease or evolve. As it is not their focus to preserve Community legacy, there is a great risk that we continue to lose significant aspects of our history.

Abbott Chrisman’s 2020 Archive Proposal is the most comprehensive review we are aware of at present.

  • Actual historical material – files, photographs, media (such as audio and video recordings) and other items
  • Digital: any digital material from any platform – hard drives, cloud storage, apps such as YouTube, websites etc.
  • Findhorn Foundation Online Archives: the initial 100GB which Keith Armstrong put together and which were semi-public until 2020
  • Actual digitised Archive in excess of 3 Terabytes of material.

The Findhorn Foundation  also has stored a lot of material in the National Library of Scotland.