As you no doubt can imagine, developing and building a community like Vanguard Landing is a huge undertaking. Thankfully we have wonderful supporters, board members, volunteers and prospective residents and their families, all of whom contribute to our future success.

This month, we’d like to provide an update on our progress, as well as provide some insight into the multiple, parallel efforts that are designed to get us to, and through, construction.

Our efforts are focused in three key areas: building awareness of who we are and what our Mission is, getting admissions packets fully approved, and raising sufficient funds to start Phase One of construction. Our initial financing offers are based on these key elements all working together, so that once we are completely built with all phases complete we will be self- sustaining via our business model and won’t need constant capital fundraising to support our operations. We, like any other non-profit, will always have signature events for fun and community interaction.

Our fundraising has been focused on educating people about the need and building our non- profit and covering some of the myriad of expenses involved in bringing Vanguard Landing to life. As you can imagine, even with gracious support and in-kind donations there are large costs coming for construction, plans, permits, impact studies and other pre-construction needs. But the time has come for a big movement forward! That’s where your donor support helps — getting us to groundbreaking!

So what’s next? Our Phase One capital campaign has begun, which will get us the bigger dollars needed to start construction. Through a combination of substantial donations and bank financing, we hope to soon start construction. We have lenders signed on (based on the volume of applications we’ve already received!), but our goal is to limit how much we borrow to get construction started. Every dollar we borrow today has the potential to limit our services in the future, so the capital campaign is crucial.

How can you help?
Well, certainly we’re looking for large corporate and individual donors. We also need help spreading the word, and continuing to support our interim funding needs. Soon we’ll ask for help in identifying and reaching influential people throughout the country who understand the need and will lend their voice, their money or their energy to the effort. To date, 124 other Intentional Communities have been created and built by donations, and we need help just like they did to get started!

We are launching the Capital Campaign to Fund Vanguard Landing!