Before Starting, Key Questions to Ask What does success look like? What are the goals to achieve this success (short and long term) Executive Summary This section should summarize the entire management plan and emphasize its high points, including: What is the vision for success? What is the purpose of this plan? How much money are we raising, in what form, and for what purposes? What is the potential of our product/service or the goal … more →

Executive Summary This section summarizes the entire business plan, emphasizing its high points: What is the purpose of your plan? How much money are you requesting, in what form (equity or debt), and for what purpose? What is the market potential of your product/service? What are its significant features? What are your product development milestones? What financial results do you anticipate? I. Business Elements What is your business? What are your principal products/services? What are … more →

Here are 10 things your nonprofit can do to help defeat a bad ballot measure or proposition. (Please note disclaimer at the end of this.) 1. Email early and often. Email your board members, contributors, and other supporters regularly to encourage them to actively oppose the proposition by adding their names to the website campaign, contribute to the campaign, communicate with their friends and neighbors, and write letters to the editors of their local daily … more →

Sea Studios is a company of colorful distinctions. It is one of only a handful of video production companies nationwide that specialize in natural history. It is a visual arts organization that took twenty years to form. Even more unusual, though, it is the only video company in which all the artists are trained biologists. This mix of art, biology and video has led to some surprising exhibits for aquariums and museums, as well as … more →

Nature is both pervasive and elusive. It surrounds us, and in subtle and integral ways enriches our lives. But to capture those ways, to communicate the relationships between plants, animals, and their environments, is a profound challenge for the filmmaker. Nature doesn’t wait, pose, or follow scripts. It is as unpredictable and confounding as it is exhilarating. As an art form, natural history cinematography is unique because of the problems and opportunities it creates. In … more →

Why was I here? What was the connection? It was early afternoon on January 26, 1996, Superbowl Saturday, the day of the Santa Barbara Polar Bear. Here was East Beach, Santa Barbara, generally one of the most spectacular beach volleyball locales on the planet. But today, for the Polar Bear, it was wet – not overcast, or drizzly, or misty like a summer fog. It was raining, steady and cold, and I was one of … more →

How do you convince people to develop a new relationship with the environment, change their lifestyles, and adopt a different set of values? These are the challenges of environmental education – the lessons beyond natural history and science. Zoos and aquariums- even herbaria and natural history museums – are beginning to recognize their special responsibility to meet these challenges, to broaden their missions beyond husbandry and exhibits, teach environmental stewardship, and engage in environmental politics. … more →

Volleyball has always been more than merely a game for me, more than a matter of competition. But it starts there, the intensely personal experience of putting yourself up against yourself and up against someone else. Competition really is the measure of both things: how close you come to your ideals and how you rank relative to the rest of humanity. Whether you choose to compete more with one in mind than the other is … more →

Can the urbansprawl of San Jose or Los Angeles happen here? The increase in traffic. The rise in crime. The overcrowding of our schools. The air pollution. The relentless annexation of precious agricultural lands for low density urban uses? Well, consider this: in the next 22 years, Monterey County is projected to grow more than 40%, adding more than 160,000 people to today’s 340,000. Where will these people go? And what kind of communities await … more →

Monterey is the best of the best that America has to offer. Unbelievable natural beauty meets amazing history. Science infuses art. And the cultural diversity of yesteryear mixes with contemporary times. It is a supernova melting pot: Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Italian fishermen of Cannery Row; Italian, Japanese, Mexican and Central American farmers, farm workers, and vintners of Salinas Valley; world class scientists, artists and educators; Big Sur bohemians; and tourists from all over the … more →