SUPPORTING
Supporting the Funduq
What is asked for today does not fund a feasibility study. It funds a position on an operation whose building has been identified, whose owner is a single person willing to sell, and whose price has already been stated.
The current phase has a precise object: to obtain contractual control of the property for eighteen months, and to produce within that term the five elements without which the next phase cannot be funded.
- 1. A purchase option or a long-dated preliminary contract, locking the price and the availability of the property for the length of the next fundraising.
- 2. A bill of quantities for the restoration, replacing working assumptions with a verified cost.
- 3. The legal entities constituted, with statutes, internal rules and arbitration rules drafted and filed.
- 4. The preliminary design and the building application filed, with the authorisation timetable started rather than still to start.
- 5. The written commitment of the first two masters, which is the only proof that the model is acceptable to those who will have to live in it.
At the end of the phase the building is bound and not merely studied. That is the difference between this request and a consultancy engagement, and it is why the main item of the budget is the deposit or the price of the option.
The phases and the timing
What each phase produces, and what decision is taken at the end of each.
What would count as a verdict
The five conditions fixed before anyone has an interest in the answer.
Who carries the project
Who wrote these documents, with what background, and what position he will have in the house.
In what forms
- — Phase contribution. Structurable in three alternative ways, to be defined with whoever subscribes it: conversion of the amount into a share of the acquisition vehicle on preferential terms; priority repayment at closing with agreed remuneration for the risk of the initial phase; a right of first refusal on participation in the next round, or alternatively in the guesthouse vehicle, which is the part of the operation with revenue and a way out.
- — Support for a single element. The equipment of a workshop, the first year of a master, the rebuilding of the dry-stone walls, the water system of the courtyard.
- — Commissions. Ordering real work from the workshops from the first year is worth more than a contribution of the same amount, because it tests the only thing that decides whether the house lives.
- — Skills. An engineer, a restorer, a lawyer, an Arabist, a client who opens a door.
What is not asked for
No exemption is asked of any administration, and the project is not built on public incentives. A network that depended on them would no longer be independent of government, which is precisely what is being shown to be possible.
Funders are not offered, and could not be offered, powers over the assembly. The resolutions of the assembly are not subject to approval, confirmation, veto or reform by the funders, and no additional voting rights or special category of members is provided for. Whoever seeks control of the project will find here a structure that denies it to him by statute, and it is better to know so beforehand.