- Raising initial money –

Get umbrella status and try to raise money by getting tax donations from Thai companies for land and an adobe gallery in Chiang Mai. Also in the initial phase we will show well known documentary film in the gallery in the evening and ask for donations. We will also hold fund raising print auctions.

• Supporting ourselves long term -

After we become more established we will have money coming in from our fee workshops, memberships, “find a photographer” program, online stock gallery, gallery print/ postcard sales, and occasional rental of our center for similar minded organizations.  We are also looking for partnerships with local businesses to reduce our costs, such as photo printing.  We may still sometimes try to get tax donation money for specific projects.

• how we plan to be known and continue to provide services -

  As word spreads through our website, NGO networks and word of mouth of our free and low cost workshops and photography services we are reasonably assure there will be no lack of requests for services. We are also quite unique in our goals, so that in itself may help us become known in a wide area quickly.

  For meeting demand. With the large number of students, artist, activist and travelers staying in Chiang Mai we think there will be enough amateur and veteran photographers, film makers and writers to keep a steady flow of workshops and projects going. As we grow we hope to be getting students from and doing projects all over SE asia and Asia.

• Expected Costs -

  The price of land in Chiang Mai is a big variable. We are looking for .5 or 1 rai in or near the old city for the most exposure to everyday people. The building will be adobe and will be mostly free materials and volunteer labor. Depending on our budget we would like to run the center on solar power estimated 30,000 baht.

  Other initial costs include a projector and desktop PC 50,000 Baht

  We will send out 100's of emails to publishers and photographers requesting free copies of their documentary photography books and documentary movies to fill our library. Depending on the response we may also spend some money on these materials.

With our mentorship program we will give free membership & training to people who volunteer for the center. We hope to avoid most staff costs this way. Eventually if we have the means one full time staff would be good.

The website needs some improvements, but is functional and has free hosting from strangecode.com The domain name is paid 2 years in advance, after that just 15$ a year.

• Already accomplished goals and plans for the near future.

  We have already photographed one assignment & taught 2 workshops for Documentary Arts, Asia. At rainbow camp, an international kids camp in Issan, we took photos for them for 3 days and taught a few hour workshop on basic camera skills and composition to children and activist.

  At Earth Rights International we taught a 2 day workshop to 20+ Burmese activist who will be going back inside to do projects and to document the current situation in Burma.

  In November we have been invited to Kachin to teach a workshop to youth activist and we have some donated cameras to loan out long term for them. Tim Patterson, the second member of DAA will be joining me to teach writing and we will both be documenting what we experience in our month stay for a future show when our gallery is built. Documentary Arts, Asia can not fund us yet, but we have found other funding to cover our costs.

              During a recent stay at Moo Baan Dek while taking photos for a book about them to be published by the ashram we were asked to teach            photography for some of the older students. No dates now, but we plan to go back and teach a workshop there.

This is a brief summary of what we are planning to do and how we plan to do it plus some details not mentioned on other parts of this website.