A League of Wonders

I’ve been doing a little bit of research over the past couple of years, and I see some examples of other organizations that are “like” what we are doing here. Some are in other fan communities, others in art communities, others may be in religious communities, and others are in the non-profit space generally.

This sort of activity isn’t even entirely unprecedented within the Twin Cities fannish community, even if the scale is bigger than before.  The Gordon R. Dickson Memorial Scholarship Fund has been running for several years, and is probably the closest example in our community.   The Minnesota Fan Alliance also ran for several years in the late 1990s, but that has been dormant for several years, and the scope of our plans here are much larger than calendar co-ordination.

• Massachusetts Convention Fandom, Inc.
• Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc.
• Mindbridge
• Intermedia Arts
• mnartists.org
• Twin Cities Maker
• Minnesota Council of Churches
• Minnesota Council of Nonprofits
• Metropolitan Regional Arts Board
• United Way

One of the things that fan groups (at least in my experience) tend to mainly look to other fan groups and so they say something “can’t be done” when other groups do things like this all the time.  I am not exempt in that particular form of tunnel vision and want to cast my net wider.

What other groups are you aware of that are “similar” to what we are looking at putting together here? We’re looking at groups that aren’t just focused on one event; organizations that are coalitions of other groups.