In discussion about OFN the other night with the CLFC president, the Co-Op Cred Program (http://www.coopcred.org/) was brought up, and she was wondering if there would be a way for it to work within OFN.
We’re looking at a partnership with our local Native Friendship Centre (I’m VP of the Board there.) and some cooking programs they are going to be operating. The hope would be to include another partnership in a neighbouring community to connect transportation issues at the same time, since it would grant us access to funding tied to transportation - which has long been a struggle in a large geographic area with smaller populations in our region. The hubs we have been serving cover over 1,550km if one were to drive it as a full circuit. Google Maps pegs it at almost 18 hours of non-stop drive time. (https://www.google.ca/maps/)
Anyway, the questions she raised were:
- Is there a way to offer credit within OFN? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen threads on this. (Like this one. Although this would be slightly different, as the accounts would be issued credit from the hub … who would receive it through donations from other members or outside agencies.)
- Can we create opt-in fees, which would allow shoppers to donate credit to the program? It could NOT be mandatory. I’m thinking there might be a way to allow shops to include it as a fundraiser fee on their products, but we’d also want to be able to add it as an opt-in at the hub shopping level.
- We would need to be able to track any amounts collected separately in reports.
- Would it be possible to add a prompt at checkout, asking shoppers to make a donation to the program? I don’t see anything like that now, but would envision an option to either add a dollar amount, or do a “round up” to the next dollar like a lot of businesses do for fundraising activities. (IE: My order is $31.43, at checkout, I’m prompted to round up to $32 - or enter my own amount.)
- I also thought it could be easily set up as a product from the hub, with a $1 value, and people can just “purchase” a quantity of credits to donate. But the question would be how do we ensure that those products are always on top of the list of products available for sale each OC? Would it be possible to create “sticky” products that always appear at the top of each page of products, for visibility?
Anyway, just wanted to throw the idea out there and get some feedback - especially if anyone is already doing something similar elsewhere. Cheers!