Last night I was riding my bike home and my head was full of ideas. I actually pulled over, whipped out my iPhone, and jotted 3 of them down so I wouldn’t lose them.
That lead me to post on Twitter: “I really wish I had 4-5 people to sit around with regularly and share ideas. I could actually meet almost every day.”
That tweet launched a conversation about if such a group was really plausible.
Here’s what I’m thinking. This is completely open for discussion. So leave a comment if you have ideas or feedback.
And yes, I’m pretty serious about this.
Good ideas cohort
- It’d be a group of people who care about investing in an idea enough to see it through.
- It’d need to be a group of people somehow vocationally tied to youth ministry, but the ideas shared wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with youth ministry.
- There’d be a $500 buy-in per person, so everyone would have a dog in the fight. (We’d hold the money in an escrow account.)
- Annually, we’d fund one idea with our seed money. Other than that no one would profit from the cohort.
- Everyone in the group would sign a non-disclosure agreement as well as some sort of an agreement that ideas shared would belong to the person presenting them.
- Everyone would get the opportunity to share their idea (quickly) each time we met. If nothing less, this cohort would teach you how to pitch an idea for action.
- We’d commit to a one-year cohort for the purpose of sharing ideas, learning from one another, etc. If the group wanted to keep going beyond that, it’d be up to them. (But they’d have to put up $500 annually)
- We’d have something like a private Ning group to regularly share concepts, ideas.
- We’d meet quarterly online via some form of video conference.
- We’d meet annually for 2 days somewhere. Location would depend on the people in the group.
- This would be an all-for-one and one-for-all type of thing. No one would have more power in the group than another.
- Ideally this would be entrepreneurial. The idea of somehow donating the money to a charity doesn’t give me a lot of energy. Instead, I’d like to see the measurement of the idea be “what’s the best idea” as opposed to some other measurement.
- Seems like 10 people would be about the maximum per cohort. But I can see doing an East Coast and West Coast version.
- The reality is that $5000 (group of 10) isn’t a lot of money. But it could be the seed money an idea needs to get going. And who knows from there?
- Ultimately, this would be informal enough to be fun yet formal enough that everyone would agree to take it seriously.
Good ideas friend group
As I thought about this more. I like the idea of the cohort a ton. But I would also love to have a group of Southern California friends to get together with much more often in a way more informal way. To maybe share ideas, bounce around solutions to complex problems facing the church today, and generally just be friends brought together by a common thread of wanting to see change happening and perhaps having one slice of the pie at their disposal to see change happen.
Thoughts? Ideas? Refinements? Just crazy enough to be for you?
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