GreenFunder: Waikinalani farm project

What is GreenFunder?

GreenFunder is a global fundraising site for socially responsible projects and businesses. To GreenFunder, green is 'anything with good intentions'. Projects range from simple student field trips to complex green business start-ups. The site is designed to help anyone - entrepreneurs, nonprofits, teachers, kids - get the funding they need.

Individuals and organizations can test, market, fund, and sell their projects, products, or events - all risk-free, and retain 100% ownership. Projects are featured as campaigns, each with a funding goal and a deadline. Each campaign offers rewards to their funders - products, experiences, and/or recognition - at different funding levels.

Every person has ideas to help make the world a better place. We are excited to offer a tool that allows people to see these ideas through to fruition.

How does GreenFunder work?

Share your project.
Launch a campaign with the wow to turn viewers to funders. Don't worry, we'll help you out!

Spread the word.
Boost your campaign with our cool social networking tools. Your fans will love them too!

Reward your supporters.
Offer unique products and experiences to your supporters for their funding. How can they resist?

Reach your goal.
You keep 100% ownership of your project. Score!

Why GreenFunder?

Traditional ways to raise money are full of risk and uncertainty. If you're lucky, you get loans, debt, grants or investors
- all before knowing if your concept will be popular or sell.

The GreenFunder way is risk-free. Have sales and users before starting your project or spending money.

No red tape, compromise or debt. You own it 100%. Instead of paying back loans, you offer
products and experiences to your funders.

No project too small. To us, 'Green' is any project with good intentions.
A project that helps the community or environment. If it does both, it's even better.

Your success is critical to our success. We're going to work extra hard to help you reach your project goal.
Greenfunder gets 5% of funding of fully-funded projects - and the satisfaction of being able to help!

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Campaign Tips

Tips for a Successful Campaign

These tips will help the success of your project while it is on GreenFunder and afterwards.

Enchant us. Guy Kawasaki, Apple's marketing champ, calls the response to an amazing product "enchantment". How is your project unique and special? Why should we love it? Tell your story. Show us. Get personal. How does your project benefit us and the world? Help us all experience your enthusiasm and vision.

Give us great rewards. Show how we can personally benefit and change the world at the same time. Give us something to tell our friends about. Add a photo and give us a shopping experience.

Get face to face. Start with friends and family, then reach out to alumni groups, local and online clubs, professional associations, your church. Speak to groups. Show a power point. Listen to what people say about your project. Learn. Improve your message. Don't expect us to ante up the first time. It has to sink in. Give it to us in as many forms as possible and then remind us.

Gather a great team. Two voices are better then one. How about an organization who believes in your cause? Tell them about our project and educate them on the sharing tools for your campaign. Having more people involved means more advocates, more credibility, and more exposure to potential funders. You can still have a successful campaign going at it alone, but it's great to have some help.

Get in the news. Weekly and daily newspapers, community calendars, blogs and e-zines, association websites and newsletters, and more. You have a great story. Build personal relationships with writers. Put out well-written press releases with lots of attached visuals and, as your story develops, put out more press releases.

Make us your advocates. Keep your funders up-to-date and excited. Show us how we've been right to support you. Tell us about your successes - new funding, new partners, new ideas - so that we have something new and exciting to tell our friends. And maybe we'll fund more.

Make it easy for us to spread the word. Tell a great story, offer great rewards, get published and grow support. Tell us what's happening so we can tell our friends. Keep it brief, clear, simple, and when possible, visual. Use networking tools - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, and more - so we don't have to work at it.

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Waikinalani farm project

By Malio Oddie - Haiku, United States

Maui's small aquaponics cooperative needs your help to become a model for food security.

There are 7 billion people on the planet and more every day-- with ever dwindling amounts of fresh water and arable land. We need new solutions. Aquaponics is one of those solutions.

Using aquaponics we can grow food practically anywhere! (Depleted or polluted land, rooftops, deserts, parking lots) Adopting aquaponics can help reduce people's impact on the earth. Imagine if we didn't need to burn more rainforest and fell trees to make space for agriculture? There's enough abandoned lots and concrete pads, old highways, neglected land and fallow spaces to produce bagillions of pounds of produce, if only we could introduce aquaponics! We could see less tilled acres, more wildlife, thriving natural eco-systems and open space. We can build back our depleted soils AND grow twice as much food, four times as densely, while using 10% of the water of conventional farming.

So, when we ask for your help, yes we are asking on behalf of our selves -but we are also asking on behalf of our local bees and butterflies. On behalf of the songbirds and salamanders and on behalf of the next generation, so we can start to fix this mess that we find ourselves in.

Local food production ANYWHERE is important. Growing food locally here in Hawaii is so incredibly crucial! We are only a matter of days from starvation if all goes quiet and the ships and planes stop arriving. 90% of our food comes from thousands of miles away. As Green Acre Organics likes to say, "our food gets to travel more than we do!" If there was an emergency- like another tsunami, earthquake or geopolitical crisis- we could be in big trouble. We rely on oil based transportation to bring us food, in a place with a 365 day growing season. Plus, when we buy our food from across the ocean, it can't possibly be fresh. To add insult to injury, all the money we spend on this un-fresh food leaves our islands, and undermines a sustainable local economy.

Buying fresh local food changes all that. The food is healthier and so is the economy. Please help us help Maui be a stronger more resilient community!

Who We Are

Malio grew up on his mom's farm here on Maui. He also happens to be a technological wizard and a ridiculously hard working fella. He built our dual axis solar tracker from scratch. Malio is the electrician, the plumber, heavy equipment operator and engineer.

Mike has a Master's degree in Ecological Design. Mike has a magnetic attraction to good ideas and never stops researching them!

Marina was born to entrepreneurs, has a BA in Ecological Agriculture and is a Certified Permaculture Designer. Marina has lived and worked on many farms and traveled to Africa to teach Ecology to rural villages.

Our Funding Needs
We've worked really hard to get this far, and we still need about $19,000 to get our half finished farm operating and producing. Here is a quick breakdown of how we will appropriate the funds we receive from you.

$4,100 for the water pump, air pumps, air stones, specialty fittings, filters, piping and valves to plumb it all together. $1,200 to finish construction of our 80 foot long sprouting table. $2,600 for the Organically certifiable plastic liner to line the 2,600 square feet of growing troughs and 512 square feet of sprouting table. $1,500 to bring in electricity. $5,000 in material to build a 'vegetable only' processing facility so we can offer a 'washed and ready to eat' product. $1,200 to buy the 10,000 plastic net-pots that will hold all the lettuce that float in the rafts. $2,000 in material to construct the 'assembly line' which will be the area where we very efficiently harvest about 300lbs of produce per week, process the rafts and net-pots, then reseed about 2,000 plants each time. We also need $600 for high quality paint to protect the styrofoam rafts and finally $800 in cinders for our potting media, and gravel for the pathways.

Thank you so very much! Mahalo nui loa!
From our hearts to yours,
Marina, Malio and Mike

Additional Ways To Help

Please spread the word!
cut n paste http://gfnd.me/s onto your facebook page! This links to our site on greendfunder. (The share button at the bottom of the page just links to the greenfunder homepage.) Tell friends and family about us! Help connect us with anyone who can help share and support these projects/ideas. Feel free to contact us at waikina.farm@gmail.com

Are you good at promoting? Writing? Making a better facebook page, designing a website? Do you know a school, a retailer or a wholesaler who is looking for organic aquaponic greens? Let us know!

Malio Oddie

Posted Jun 29

We now running trials on BUTTER LETTUCE! Whole Foods is selling organic butter lettuce, flown in from California, for $4/head. We think we can improve upon that! Organic, aquaponic butter lettuce for under $3, anyone?

Malio Oddie

Posted 722 days ago

We're in the Maui Weekly today, May 26 2011! Local News Design Your Success with GreenFunder Maui research and tech professionals hold workshop on “crowdfunding” to prepare innovative minds for GreenFunder’s launch. “We’ll support any project with good intentions.” Trisha Smith POSTED: May 26, 2011 Save | Print | Read comments | Post a comment Bookmark and Share Photos Conscious cultivation. Malio Oddie (left) and Marina Galvan of Waikinalani Farm in Ha‘ikū hope to use fundraising platforms such as GreenFunder.com to help finish their aquaponics farm. Along with Mike Drescher—who attended the recent GreenFunder.com discussion—these partners maintain a natural aquatic ecosystem in a man-made container that naturally grows local food—and one day, fish—without using harmful chemicals and much less water than conventional methods. The eco-conscious trio is now marketing the produce as Kama’Āina Greens, and looks forward to utilizing GreenFunder in the future. Advertisement After six years of designing swimwear in California, Maui native Molly Rasmussen was frustrated to realize how environmentally unfriendly it was to manufacture and that production tended to move overseas. While pondering whether to develop her own product line, the Cornell graduate discovered how costly and unpredictable start-ups could be, as customary practice involved coming up with an idea; making a business plan; obtaining loans/investors; actually creating the product; and then seeing if people want to buy. Molly and her co-founder, online entrepreneur Stason Strong, felt a better solution was necessary for success and created GreenFunder.com, a Website that “eliminates the expense and risk while helping the environment and local communities.” The fundraising site was created for socially responsible projects and business ideas, and the partners have provided a risk-free resource that helps all eco-conscious and creative community projects get off the ground amid current economic conditions. According to a recent company release, projects can range from simple student field trips to multi-faceted green business start-ups, and the user-friendly Website is designed to assist everyone (i.e., entrepreneurs, nonprofits, teachers, artists—even children) get the funding they need. GreenFunder.com actively sought proposals for its new project funding launch on Wednesday, May 25, offering individuals and organizations a unique, risk-free avenue to test, market, fund and sell their projects or events while retaining 100 percent ownership. The Maui Research and Development Center hosted the free group discussion, “Crowdfunding Your Project Idea: A Workshop for Preparing for GreenFunder,” last month to introduce this exciting new opportunity. GreenFunder.com is geared toward local green projects and products, and is “Hawai‘i-centric” yet available worldwide, according to Molly’s mother, Lynn Rasmussen of Icanology LLC, during the April 26 introductory event. “Crowdfunding” is a form of “crowdsource” financing. Rather than seeking financing from institutional resources such as a bank, coordinators use online platforms to attract funding and look to the community to support the project in a distributed fashion. GreenFunder believes this method can accomplish goals by pooling money from a vast group of people—everyone from your neighbors to global consumers. Lynn is extremely proud of her daughter’s endeavors, and likes that the site adheres to the project developer with a community perspective who might not necessarily get the boost they need from such worldwide funding platforms as Kickerstarter.com or IndieGoGo. Unlike these sites, GreenFunder offers perks when projects open, and visitors of GreenFunder are able to both peruse projects and shop for rewards. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are built into GreenFunder, and projects are highlighted and recommended by location, giving interested funders a way to help friends and neighbors while supporting their local economies. “We’ll support any projects with good intentions,” said Molly. “We have features that will promote Maui projects, and people everywhere will be able to shop for perks offered on Maui by Maui people.” “People don’t want to give money unless they think the project is valuable, and perks you define will help,” said Lynn. Award-winning business consultant and educator David Fisher of Maui Venture Consulting hosted the recent gathering with Lynn. He was happy to see some familiar faces in attendance intrigued in what GreenFunder has to offer creative entrepreneurs. “There are very interesting challenges as to how to flesh these ideas out and make viable,” said Fisher, owner of www.CoolProjectsMaui.com and a leader in the movement to create a local stock exchange. “This site [GreenFunder] is a unique way to get people moving on their ideas and gain community support.” The workshop included vibrant artistic minds such as Gabe Mott (acolorbox.com); idea men like Jerry Isdale of MauiMakers.com and Jim Jacobson of Functional Nutriments; and progressive women and community educators like Melanie Stephens and Lehn Huff, who bounced thoughts off each other in a friendly, brainstorming environment. Isdale hopes to use GreenFunder to pay for a centralized, permanent container space from Community Work Day Program in Pu‘unënë, where members can come together and experiment with technological ideas like “The Chill Box.” (See www.mauimakers.com for more information.) Veteran teacher Huff is committed to sustainable agriculture and health education on Maui, and hopes to use GreenFunder to raise $4,000 to pay for an expert to write an appendix of nutritional curriculum for Department of Education schools across Hawai‘i, which supports using school gardens as a “creative nutritional living laboratory.” (Visit www.mauischoolgardennetwork.org.) “Instead of developing a business plan, looking for investors and loans, producing and then testing the product, GreenFunder allows you to test and market your product before spending a dime,” said Molly. “We love GreenFunder because anyone can use it—individuals or groups, businesses or nonprofits—to get their ideas off the ground.” Pave your road to success by jumpstarting your project and funding good intentions with www.GreenFunder.com. “Every person has ideas to help make the world a better place,” said Rasmussen. “I’m so happy to offer a tool that allows people to see those ideas through to fruition.”