What is Dreamsfood and why you want to be involved

Statement of Purpose:

The unifying motivation of Dreamsfood.org is to feed people.

Dreamsfood will be a sustainable platform for the development of community experiences and resources, with a focus on investing locally and integrating the biodiversity of the foods of the locale and beyond that are threatened by industrial standardization.

Dreamsfood is a Not-for-Profit Cooking Cooperative whose primary goal is to fund cooks cooking.

Due to the prohibitive costs associated with experimenting with a new recipe, or trying to develop one, a cook can be deterred from actually cooking. Dreamsfood.org is meant to unburden the cook of the costs and shift the burden to a group (the other members of the co-op) of people. In turn, the cook prepares the food for them.

Dreamsfood will hold regular elections of recipe(s) submitted by Dreamsfood members; winning recipes will be funded.

Cooks who wish to submit recipes for funding will do so on a website designed to capture unique votes by other Dreamsfood members. These votes in turn will determine which recipe(s) get funded.

To begin, implementation of voting mechanism will be limited to one up or down vote across unlimited possible candidates. Future implementations may include angel votes where a member could vest additional funds in a particular recipe. Additionally, there may be special topic elections (i.e. desserts, food that looks like things, etc) where specific criteria need to be met. In general, no specific eligibility requirements need to be in place with one exception; as a general point of guidance, recipes submitted for election should be interesting and novel in some way.

Dreamsfood will collect funds for a "Dream Bounty" from members after selection of recipe(s) to distribute evenly to selected candidate(s).

Members of the community will invest in a round of cooks and their recipes. Members will determine and agree to a level of funding in advance of recipe election. This will initiate the recipe-bounty-dinner cycle.

Funds generated from the voting members will be processed through a central account. The central account will then distribute the monies to selected candidate(s) for the purpose of paying for ingredients, equipment, the cook's time, etc.

Confirmations and transparency of all transactions is vital to the sustainability of any company; before officially initiating any liabilities the community should have a plan in place to account for all monies.

Dreamsfood will host a dinner party for the winning cook(s) to celebrate the recipe(s).

Upon notification of completion by the winning cook(s), or a deadline for completion, or some other agreed-upon trigger; members who contributed to the recipe will meet up to host a dinner party to showcase the funded recipe(s). Members will coordinate to arrange a 'most-amenable' date and time and secure a space that is centrally located as far as is practical.

Dreamsfood is meant to foster not only the development of individual cooks and cultivate unique food experiences for the membership; it is anticipated that the group will be able to create a social network of cooks for both personal and community enrichment.

In the long term, a successful Dreamsfood will be able to step out from the basic implementation of the model (recipe-bounty-dinner) to embrace activism by contributing to the locale. Communities can cooperatively determine the form of contribution and recipients; ideas include monetary contributions from special Dream Bounties, or a percentile of all Dream Bounties going to an agreed-upon charity, or in the form of special Dreamsfood events where food is prepared by the member community for the community of the locale at large.

Update on Nov 2, 2011 at 3:03PM by mfg

How Can I Get Involved? Help spread the word, keep up to date, be excited. We want you to cook for us.

1. Head to nomfg.com/dreamsfood and check out the initial charter; feel free to leave comments
2. Head to www.dreamsfood.org and follow us (RSS/Tumblr)
3. Head to twitter and follow us @cookcoopcbus
4. Head to the facebook and like it. LIIIIIKE IT. You know you do, just tell the whole world why don't you?
5. Head to voting.dreamsfood.org to get involved with bounties and the community page