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Q.
The club involves a number of companies and others, can you explain these
A:
Sure. Lets start with a little history, that should help and then we will go onto look at how this club functions.
A very brief history
Approaching 40 years ago now, a group of writers got together and set up a project called 'The Choices Project', to look at paths and options through life. Over time this developed through a number of stages until it eventually become New Atlantis a company limited by guarantee, registered in the UK with no shareholders, is non profit, with lots of objectives around improving the quality of the life of its members and others. It is not connected with any religious or political organization and has a total equality viewpoint. Over the last 15 years or more it has run many clubs in the UK and elsewhere, and been instrumental in forming many other organizations some of which have become independent, amongst the organizations it has been instrumental in getting going is the WorldWide Library, working towards providing free ebooks of major works for everyone, which is another non profit company limited by guarantee registered in the UK, the Independent Inquiry Society and another non profit company limited by guarantee, Independent FactFinders.
From an early point New Atlantis had an interest in communities and construction, it has amongst its range of websites one on communities, to provide information for those looking at building their own communities, be it enclosed or open estates, retirement communities or others, and another website devoted to the worlds largest construction project to create a new floating country made from a spiral of islands in the center of the Atlantic ocean. This is not envisaged to be in our lifetimes, but has a very large website and accompanying research covers everything from, how this could be built to how it would be run, technologies from building homes out of seacrete, a material like seashells that is formed by passing electricity through sea water, to looking at the means of having unlimited free electricity, fresh water and power, as well as generating very large food supplies are covered, that would if implemented be able to solve all the problems of starvation, and more in the world. If you read this site, although most of the material covered uses proven skills and technology, and could be implemented, you should remember that commercial interests worldwide would not line up with its implementation at this time.
New Atlantis now is an international organization stretching well beyond the UK, and in order to be able to establish and allow clubs to flourish in many places, while still providing an ability to provide some help in getting everything organized, New Atlantis got together with others and set up an international support company called New Atlantis International Services Corporation. Via this means, it is possible for the concepts developed by New Atlantis to be supported and to flourish in many different places and many different ways. The method and structure varies between clubs and other projects; for example in the UK, you may have come across the Property Pension Club (company registered in the UK) that helps people interested in using property to build a pension, buy to let, and similar areas, as well as looking at overseas investments in property. If you look into this club you will see it has a wide range of services all provided through New Atlantis International Services Corporation, members pay no membership fee to join this club themselves, but individual services have quite high costs and the first service provider sponsors the new member, paying for a life membership for them. Another company you will see featured a lot amongst the non profit companies and clubs is Maximum Coverage Ltd, they provide administration services to this type of organization, which allows them to run without having to each employ their own staff and have offices and high overheads.
Most companies and organizations that are associated with or work with New Atlantis and any of the clubs have a status of being a New Atlantis trust. New Atlantis has a very high honor code that any entity has to match to be able to gain New Atlantis trust status. These companies and organizations when working together, work to a set of principles that would be impossible to live within, when dealing with others, who often turn out to be far less reliable, not always completely honest or truthful and where confidentiality cannot be guaranteed, and where advantages may be taken. Those with trust status are in effect a part of an honor bound family, where each knows that the others can be absolutely relied upon, it allows all sorts of things to be happen fast and reliably, as the word of any of these to another is more reliable than any contract. As the honor code applies to clubs, it also applies the way members are treated and the services they get. Individual members of the clubs are not expected to commit to this same ultra high standard, but the club rules do say that they must not do anything they know will harm other members or any of the trusts, or act dishonestly with the club or a trust. If they did they would be expelled, classed as unreliable, and then never receive further help form any club, organization or any part of our honor bound family.
The background to the Self Build Homes Clubs
When looking at setting up the Self Build Homes Clubs, the theory originally was that there would be many local clubs federated together, but this model would not allow a full range of services to be provided to members without involving them in a series of very high fees on a scale similar to the Property Pension Club. As this would limit who could take part to those who had already become wealthy, or had funds from other sources, this was not thought for this club to be an ideal arrangement. It was also felt that this club would function better if it had more members, and therefore methods should be explored which would allow more to be provided at a lower cost, as well as allowing the members to play a more active role where they wanted to.
The Property Pension Club, New Atlantis and others got together and worked out another model that would allow the mixture of an international sized operation with national flavors and local groups supported by teams of experts, and to use a model similar to that used some years back, for some other clubs involving a joining fee and subscription. This is similar in many ways to how golf and other sports clubs often run.
Self Build Homes Club Llc was therefore set up at the suggestion of a number of existing clubs including in the UK the Property Pension Club and of course New Atlantis, but is independent of them all, although influenced by all that has been done by New Atlantis and the other clubs. It was decided to set this club up in the USA for a number of reasons. We were concerned about the level of corruption in some sections of UK society, particularly because the motivation could exist where land may be revalued from three thousand pounds an acre to over a million pounds an acre can occur where planning consent is granted, the risk of interference from quasi public organizations motivated by corrupt dealings with others, and where no real attempt is made to eliminate corrupt officials in the UK. In addition, as we are involving international organizations, as the Property Pension Club had been based in the UK, the feeling was that this new club should be based elsewhere; the decision was made to base the Self Build Homes Club in the USA, as the risks to all involved in running this club is considered smaller and the security for members greater. Where it is based has no real impact on the members due to the transparent method of operation.
Self Build Homes Club Llc although not registered as a non profit company as such, has nothing within its objectives about creating profits, has no paid directors or staff and any surpluses that it does have will end up being used towards other New Atlantis objectives, in the same way that other funds created elsewhere were used to get this club going. Should we find that at some point we don't have enough funds to do what we want to, funds will be made available from elsewhere to allow us to meet our objectives, another advantage of being a part of an honor based family of clubs and organizations.
Members and the club
Most members are associate members, they are not in the legal sense shareholders or owners of the club and have no legal requirements or financial commitment beyond paying their subscriptions. Full members are the equivalent of shareholders and have financial and other responsibilities as to how the club is run. Affiliates are not members at all, but are affiliated to existing members, and while they get no member services it does provide a way that some people can become involved in the points programme and earn their membership, without spending any cash of their own.
When a person joins the Self Build Homes Club anywhere in the world, it is the international club, registered in the USA, that they are joining. For those of us in the UK, this is largely transparent in that the club has a range of contractual arrangements with others through New Atlantis International Services corporation to provide services for members in the UK. Subscription handling and admin being carried out by Maximum Coverage Ltd for New Atlantis International Services. Maximum Coverage Ltd is a company, that has specialized in providing support services to non profit organizations and clubs over many years, most of the other services members get are provided under contract by New Atlantis International Services Corporation, who we look at as the commissioning company, it provides very little itself, but arranges for many others to provide all that is required and checks that the quality is up to what is excepted.
Commissioned services include, websites developed by another specialist, another company involved in supplying publications, work books and the like, another involved in public relations, and of course those involved in locating and negotiating on plots and land opportunities. In addition the concept of local clubs has not been lost and throughout the UK local groups are being set up, and the cost of these are covered by New Atlantis International Services Corporation so there is no additional subscription required for this. This method of operation provides a lot of flexibility in that more services can be commissioned or existing services modified as the need or situation changes. It is also scalable, in that the club can take on more members, and as a result of this more services get commissioned to cope. In some cases a need will be seen that is outside this clubs brief, and rather than needing to become involved in this, and risk loosing its focus, a new club or supply company can be set up and commissioned to meet the need, and so growth in many directions become possible.
The concept of having some entity responsible for commissioning and others responsible for service provision you will find in many other areas, from TV production and hospitals to the provision of local council services in many areas.
At first, this may appear unnecessarily complex for a club, but in practice it is mostly transparent to the members. The admin company sends you material, and letters to the club and subscriptions and similar are organized through this admin company, so that you don't need a dollar account to pay your subscriptions, or need to communicate directly with the main office in the USA, unless you wish to for some reason, and usually then they would instruct someone in the UK to sort out whatever problem you had. A consultant instructed by the commissioning company will contact you and sorts out your own specific definition, and is your point of contact then in relation to defining your requirements and helping you to find the ideal plot for you. Other services that you may need and involvement in other aspects of the projects is likewise correlated via the consultant, or a provider that he or she has introduced you to. Remember that all of these are being paid by the commissioning company, and is supplying this to you at no additional cost. Where you are going to use other services not provided by the club such as a project manager, architect and the like then you will know what costs are involved before using them. In most cases the same consultant will cover the area, and therefore all the local members and the local branch. If it is necessary for some reason to change the area a consultant covers, or to supplement his or her efforts by adding another, then there would be a handover and you would get a new contact to liaise with. If at any time you don't know who to talk to, you call the admin company, who can also handle taking messages and passing them on to the right people for you. The plot finding and projects connected with creating opportunities for plots to become available are coordinated by H3 Search Ltd, who you may recognize as the top service provider for the Property Pension Club. We have arrangements with other companies that take options on sites to allow sites to be split into smaller plots and other arrangements as necessary.
Local groups are set up from collections of members in an area, and you meet as often as you wish or not at all if no one is interested. It gives you a chance to get in speakers on specific aspects if you wish, to compare notes with others in your area and feel that when you are helping out in some way locally that you are a member of a team, and can see at least some of the others in your local team. There are quite tight restrictions and rules on what local groups can do, so that individual members cannot get sidelined or opportunities discovered get sold off to local developers, those outside or others. Each local group has a small committee elected by its members, but this is not intended to be political in any way, just to organize local group business. Cost encounters are agreed through the consultant covering the area with New Atlantis International Services, who pay all the bills. Local groups don't have to raise funds, or be involved in recruitment, although they can help out with recruitment where they wish to.
There is one special commissioned supplier that is a UK company registered in the name of the Self Build Homes Club Ltd, this is not a part of the membership or supply chain as far as members are concerned, it exists for a number of special reasons such as protecting the clubs name in the UK, presenting a PR contact in the UK, and to meet another objective of the club in providing free information to everyone on self build. This is in part achieved through the tutorial section of the clubs public website but also by running from time to time free presentations open to everyone around the country. It introduces any prospective new members to the international organization, as other branches and individual members do. It is paid for the work it undertakes by New Atlantis International Services Corporation as other commissioned suppliers, it receives no commission or reward for introducing members, as this is as a result of commissioned expenditure or work, although some times it will be providing support to or run joint events with members who themselves run presentations and undertaking other actions that allow the members to get points under the points programme. It provides no member services, and is not an agent of the international club.
Many of the organizations, clubs and others referred to here have their own websites that shows the other activities they are involved in. The reference and links section shows the current collection of these, although you should never need to refer to any of them.
As you see, although at first this looks quite complex, it is just about transparent to members, you know who you are dealing with, who is responsible for helping you achieve your dreams and also know that a larger group of companies and others are there to make this all come about.
I hope this explanation has helped.
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Self Build Homes Club is an international club
and trading title of Self
Build Homes Club llc. Local services
to serve members are commissioned for the club by New
Atlantis International Services Corporation.
All major commissioned companies involved, have New Atlantis trust status.