The Chandler Guild was established to be a self-organizing alliance of independent small candle makers. There are no staff, there are no dues to pay. The Guild is here for the participants to build themselves. It has been stated from the beginning that building such an organization will take time. At this stage, the Guild is not yet an incorporated entity.
For the one hundred or so small independent candle makers who came from 28 states and Canada to participate in the first annual Chandler Congress, such an alliance has great potential. What we saw at the Congress is what a fully mature Guild could offer.
Getting to the point where the Guild operates 365 days a year rather than just 3 days as a great annual event is a huge challenge. This challenge is an opportunity, but we must all work to achieve that mutual vision for a meaningful Guild.
The Guild was never put forth as a ready made "package," rather something for the Guild participants to build from the ground up. We agreed at the Congress that we would engage in 2004 as an experimental and exploratory year before we set up a formal organizational structure for a fully operating guild. It is now clear that many participants are wanting and needing a formal Guild structure.
At this point, the Guild has no operating budget and no staff. The funds for this web domain name for 2004 were donated to this effort by Michael Richards of Soyawax. Prior to this, Jim and Timlynn of Sohodojo have paid all domain name expenses and they continue to pay all monthly web server hosting fees to make this web site available to the community. In addition, Sohodojo Jim has donated extensive time to set up and manage this website, and to nurture this on-line community. To build a more extensive Guild will require staffing and funding to carry out more extensive Guild operations.
Ultimately, the Guild will be what we collectively want it to be. We are pleased to announce that Sohodojo, the non-profit R&D lab supporting solo and family-based entrepreneurs in rural and distressed communities, is ramping up a significant effort to create the business plan that will allow us to capitalize the Chandler Guild and take our community/business to the next level.
We will post additional information about this planning and funding process soon. In the meantime, please be assured that this will be an open and participatory process. We'll need your ideas and we'll need to learn a LOT more about who you are, and what you want from the Guild.
In the meantime, take a moment to reflect that the Guild has moved forward, and that you are part of it. Over the next few months, we'll be taking some significant steps to make the Guild a significant microenterprise and small business network enterprise. We hope you will continue to be part of our community as we move forward.
More soon,
--Chandler Guild Admin*--
* Sohodojo Jim and Soyawax Mike, as 'first movers' in launching the Chandler Guild, have posted this message on behalf of the Guild community. As we re-energize the Table of Twelve, the Guild's elected executive committee, such announcements and activity will channel through this group.