After much deliberation and discussion with members of the community and business strategists, Civic Fidelity has settled on a business strategy. Civic Fidelity is now incorporated as Civic Fidelity Inc. in the province of New Brunsiwck as a for profit business. In the long term we intend to evolve into a cooperative model. However, for the time being, the easiest way for us to move forward and build our infrastructure was to incorporate as a for profit business, with an Open Business model.

An Open Business is a business that operates completely transparently. So all of our financial and infrastructural information will be published on our wiki for public scrutiny.

We have published our business plan under a Open License, and you can read the whole thing here.

A lot more information will be posted on this blog and the wiki soon, so stay tuned.

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We made a mistake in our rush to bring Civic Fidelity into reality: we blundered in naming ourselves. Our intention was to become a not-for-profit Cooperative, because we like the idea of havening distributed democratic control for our organization. So we did a name search on “Civic Fidelity Cooperative,” and subsequently filed out incorporation papers with that name. We erred in that when we registered, it was as a not-for-profit business, not as a cooperative, as required in the New Brunswick Co-operative Associations Act.

After reading through the New Brunswick Co-operative Associations Act, and realizing we did not meet the requirements, we also realized that it is inappropriate for Civic Fidelity to call itself a Cooperative until and unless it is fully registered as a Cooperative. Consequently we have removed every mention of “Cooperative” on our web site, and we no longer refer to ourselves to the “Civic Fidelity Cooperative.” We wish to apologize for erroneously referring to ourselves as a Cooperative too hastely.

Further, a detailed reading of the New Brunswick Co-operative Associations Act, has also lead us to reconsider wether or not New Brunswick’s definition of a Cooperative is the best governing structure for Civic Fidelity. We are concerned that the definitions of a Coop are two rigid for the vast array of functions that Civic Fidelity intends to provide. We are also considering becoming a democratic not-for-profit organization, modeled after organizations like the United Way. Our goal is to maximize the number of freedoms our organization has. But we have not yet come to a decision, and we are investigating our options.

In the mean time Civic Fidelity will continue providing the same services, and work on achieving the same goals. We will post any developments on this subject to this blog.

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Kelly Ryan and Cameron Phillips of CBC’s national radio show Freestyle, will air an interview with John-Paul Arp about the Ci-Fi on Fiday October 27th between 3:30 and 4:00 PM.

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Ci-Fi was recently featured in New Brunswick’s Here Magazine in an article by Meghan Cumby.

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Hello, and welcome to the Ci-Fi Organizers Blog. We will be using this blog for news and announcements and press releases from the board of Civic Fidelity.

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