Intro to Business

This is Kris typing. As you'll soon figure out, this blog and/or experiment we are jumping into is very much a strange mix of interests: entrepreneurship, friendship, music, philanthropy, time management, outreach, ministry, humor, and the list could go on. You'll find that we are doing this for a Christian ministry but even if you are not a Christian your $.02 on any of the above issues (or others) will still be appreciated/needed.

Here is the goal: raise $20,000 for the ELCA World Hunger Appeal before June 24, 2007. Various methods of fundraising will be employed to reach that goal (breaking knees is not one of them), but this page will primarily deal with the method of fundraising through the performances of The Normies.

Off the top of my head, here is a list of things we'll have to work on in the immediate future:
* Coordinating our schedules for practices and performances
* Finding our target audience
* Getting congregations to host us
* Figure out instrumentation of songs
* Figure out how to play our songs
* Getting the right equipment
* Making sure we use every resource for its full potential

In this post I'm going to briefly cover the business parts of the above list.

Our target audience will most likely be Lutherans in the Piedmont area of North Carolina. "Why?" That is a very astute question and I'm so glad you asked. First, the World Hunger Appeal is a ministry of the ELCA, which is the predominant Lutheran body in America, and people tend to come out and support their own ministry. Second, Thrivent Financial will supplement our fundraising (if we coordinate it properly) and nearly all Thrivent Financial members are Lutherans. Third, we have Lutheran connections. We will definitely try to tell of the appeal to people that aren't Lutheran but, to be frank, Nick and I need the Lutherans to help organize the communities so others will know about our performances.

To get congregations to host us is where the above idea comes into play. A congregation will help arrange the performance, advertise in the community, and get their local Thrivent chapter to supplement funds. I will have a meeting this coming Monday with various synod-wide (our "synod" happens to be all the Lutheran congregations in the geographic area of North Carolina) leaders; I hope that I can get some interest brewing for congregations that will host us. Also, I am working on other means of communicating our need of congregations' support, which I'll share more about when the times arise.

Using every resource to its full potential means just that. With these performances we will have one shot to fundraise in each community. The icing on top of this is that Thrivent has a specific process to supplement funds. We need to make sure we have our ducks in a row at the right time so we can walk away from a performance saying, "Yes, we raised as much here as we possibly could." Honestly, a goof here or a slight overlook there could easily mean $500 we don't raise. That $500 could have been a high-yield cow in Kenya or complete pre-natal care for 63 women.

Getting the right equipment. Currently, between Nick and I, we own two guitars, one amp (with only one input), a keyboard, and a harmonica. We borrowed equipment for our last performance (which was greatly appreciated - most people won't loan expensive music equipment) and I'm not going to ask permission to truck the same stuff all over North Carolina. So this thread will share our process of trying to find the right equipment for The Normies at a reasonable price; one of us is a honeymooner, both recent college grads, and both work for institutions of the church (non-lucrative jobs).

As a reader of this blog, we hope you enjoy reading about our journey. Words of motivation help; thoughtful input is appreciated. We hope you keep checking in to see what whacky antics The Normies are currently up to.

"Ugh...it feels like accountants are cranking add machines in my head."

~Make a joyful noise to the Lord