•      The board members of the Canary Cooperative are experienced people who have come together to solve the challenge of safe housing. Many of us have built or renovated our own housing that meets our needs or the needs of our families with sensitivities.

•      Most of the Canary Cooperative board members also have experience hosting homeless MCS people at their houses or property, and thus bring an experienced eye to the challenges posed by having several MCS people living in one house.

•     We invite anyone interested in our project to call or email us to be personally introduced to our board members or attend board meetings.

•     Help us grow our team by volunteering! Our current needs are:

  1. People that can work onsite and have local connections for volunteers and donated supplies.

  2. Someone with public relations or fundraising experience. We are interested in a crowd-source or social media fundraiser.

  3. More board members. We meet by conference call, so can we have board members from across NY state, or anywhere in the United States. We have two board members from out of state who bring specific housing related experience.

Both the President and the Secretary of our board have professional-level building experience and are donating their time on our first site, working and overseeing any laborers we hire. We owe them a big THANK YOU!

Andy Reicher of Urban Homesteading Assistance Board has been our generous mentor in creating this cooperative.

Frank Cetera of Onondaga Small Business Development Center in Syracuse is our adviser and a resource person for the business side of our project.

We are now receiving free legal services through Legal Aid. We are the first Cooperative to qualify for free services under a new grant that Legal Aid has received for starting cooperatives!

We have a volunteer accountant who has MCS and can review our financial statements and process.