Fulcrum-Home-Page

NeahCasa was a project of Fulcrum but having obtained its 501c3 tax exempt status is now on its own as of January 2008. Started in 2005, NeahCasa has been raising the issue of housing affordablity in our local communities. The group held a Tillamook County Housing Summit in the Spring of 2006 and government/public policy outreach continues. NeahCasa also obtained over $25,000 for Student Family Housing Support in the NeahKahNie School District, is beginning a landlord support group, It is now operating as a Community Land Trust (CLT) and is well on the road to owning property that will be held affordable in perpetuity.

Nehalem Bay Healing Arts Guild Fulcrum (as NBCCI) sponsored grant requests for this group of local alternative healing practitioners to put out a cooperative brochure and coordinate a second annual Healing Arts Faire in September 2006.

Visioning Murals - Fulcrum will continue set up occasions to work on these cooperative community murals that help create visions for our common future. The original year long project was sponsored by the Lower Nehalem Community Trust with funding from the Arts Build Communities program of the Oregon Arts Commission.

North County Recreation District Gallery - Fulcrum (as NBCCI) donated part of the funding to the Lower Nehalem Community Trust in a project to renovate this community art gallery at the Rec Center. Here volunteers are hanging the first show - Art About Community - in November, 2005. Other funding came from the Manzanita Creative Arts Council and the Arts Build Communities program of the Oregon Arts Commission.

Community New Years Celebration - Giant dragon puppet created by the community young people for their first annual New Years Eve parade in Manzanita. The 2006 parade was sponsored by Fulcrum Community Resources.

"We will hold a vision of possibilities and seed or stir the pot to catalyze and manifest new pieces of that vision. "

From the 4/4/06 Fulcrum minutes

Fulcrum Exists To :

Initiate and Sponsor projects that assist transition of the Nehalem Bay community of coastal Oregon to a sustainable future.

Develop support services to simpatico local groups, projects, and events as an umbrella. These services may include access to bookkeeping, legal resources, liability insurance, bulk mailing and computer graphics capabilities and, someday, even office space.

Provide fiscal sponsorship (i.e. 501c3 tax exempt status) for funding for compatible groups and projects

Organize and network among local organizations, as well as connects us all to the outside world.

Projects We Originate and Coordinate:

EatLocalFoods.org -    Fulcrum is writing grant proposals to obtain funding to set up a food networking website to be created by Dawn Shears in conjunction with a Manzanita Farmers website.

    The website’s inspiration is the 100 mile Thanksgiving concept of creating meals with food that comes from within a specific range of home. Its purpose is to make it easier to integrate that idea into our everyday practices as well as to stimulate productive food-related economic activity in the area. The website will feature a searchable list of all local growers/producers as well as a linked, sub-site where the public (both commercial and non-commercial growers) can easily post to offer seasonal items (e.g., an overabundance of apples or when the hens are laying), loan or rent tools (e.g. a rototiller or a cider press), or exchange information about food related topics (e.g. how to find grains grown within a reasonable distance or recipes for elderberry jam). The interactive resource base will be easy to update by non-programmers.

              A small demo has been created for this project: http://EatLocalFood.wordpress.com
The demo shows one example of how community posting can be integrated into a local food resource website. In the actual project, we intend to separate the community posting from the commercial food producers’ information.

Neahkahnie Treasure Chest – The Treasure Chest is a dream of a local granting foundation for special projects. Barbara McLaughlin and Tom Bender are exploring initial funding through a dedicated credit card through TLC Credit Union.

$$ Investment Guild - Fulcrum paid occasional meeting room rent at the Rec Center for this open and informal group that is exploring new ways of making personal financial investments in local community efforts. Conversations in the Spring and Summer of 2006 centered on investing in community housing and micro-businesses. It is dormant at the moment.

Estuary Trail – In 2004, Tom Bender initiated discussions with the State Park, local property owners and local stakeholders for developing a community pedestrian and biking trail joining Manzanita, Nehalem Bay State Park, Nehalem and Wheeler. The project is on hold at the moment.

Visioning Projects - Building on and continuing the cooperative community visioning murals started in 2005, Fulcrum will be exploring a variety of creative processes for manifesting our future as a community. The murals are currently located at Alder Creek Farm between Manzanita and Nehalem.

History of a Community Resource :

Fulcrum was originally incorporated as 501c3 tax exempt organization named Nehalem Bay Communties Center, Inc. (NBCCI) in 1994.

In Spring 2005, Lane deMoll and Tom Bender from the Lower Nehalem Community Trust and and Lola Sorenson from the Manzanita Creative Arts Council discovered that the wall panels specified for the creation of an art gallery at the North County Recreation District were going to cost $400 each instead of the $40 each budgeted in their Arts Builds Communities Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission. What to do??

Mark Beach, President of the Nehalem Bay Communities Center, Inc. (NBCCI) heard of our plight and stepped forth, offering $4,500 to save the gallery project. The only condition was that we take over the dormant corporation and its remaining funds - about $3000 - to support other community projects.

NBCCI had been set up in 1994 as a legal structure for the North County Recreation District's building (NCRD) before it was a Special District. Founding members of NBCCI were Mark Beach, Richard Stein, Kay Covert, Harry Rinehart, and Dale Stockton. When NCRD received its special district status, the non-profit was no longer needed. It was used quietly a few times over the years to help other groups who were just starting out by providing tax-exempt status for initial donations for projects such as the Gene Schmuck Foundation and publication of the historical book about Neahkahnie, Under the Mountain, by Jane Comerford.

Following that generous offer in Spring 2005, a new NBCCI Board was formed to take over responsibilities from Mark Beach. New Board members were added: Tom Bender (President), Lucy Brook (Treasurer), Charlene Gernert (Secretary), and Lola Sorensen (Lola later resigned when she moved from the area).

In the Spring of 2006, we were ready to activate the organization to provide the kinds of community resource services that many small local projects were needing. Using some of the remaining funds for legal assistance from Tillamook County non-profit attorney, Deb Dyson, the name was changed to Fulcrum Community Resources and the Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws were updated. Lane deMoll, Barbara McLaughlin, and Greg Movsesyan were added as board members.

Onward and Upward! We'll see what happens next.....

This webpage was last updated on 3/1/08

Other Resources:

http://www.nehalembay.org/

A community webpage and calendar

BBQ - An eclectic community

list-serve

To sign up contact Chuck & Barbara McLaughlin

<bbq@nehalemtel.net>

Tom Bender's Community Photographs

Sustainability Definitions:

"Sustainable development is development that meets

the needs of the present

without compromising

the ability of future

generations to meet their

own needs.

Brundtland Report

"Think of it as extending the Golden Rule through time.

Do unto future generations

as you would have them

do unto you."

Robert Gilman

"A sustainable society is one

that lives within the

self-perpetuating limits of

its environment. That

society is not a "no growth"

society - it is, rather,

a society that recognizes

the limits of growth and

looks for alternative ways

of growing."

James Connor