2021
In January, I had a quarterly update with Gard, and consulted with him on how to proceed with fundraising for the Museum. Gard indicated that the first priority is to develop a concept to the point we can estimate the building and ongoing operational costs.
Gard asked me to prepare a donor’s deck. So, that is what I dived into.
I started by studying in depth Papers 194-196, and highlighting any paragraph that could help me distill the mission and vision of our projects.
One of the most profound quotes – the origin of our organization’s name – is from:
“The religion of Jesus is the most powerful unifying influence the world has ever known.” (194:3.17)
By the end of the month, the first draft of the deck was ready for comments.
Note that the names Jesus Museum and Jesus Metaverse are not there. I was using the terms “In person” and “virtual” experience.
I kept working on the donor’s deck until our next Advisory board quarterly meeting, on March 10.
During the month of February, I took a class on Conscious Capitalism. With two Israeli peers, we started to work on a stakeholder analysis for several CFU stakeholders. Effectively, this exercise requires that I put myself in the shoes of another person and imagine what their needs may be (with respect to our projects). Later this year, I started working on a Storybrand for a CFU donor with Elizabeth. These two exercises are similar, but have different goals. The Storybrand is a marketing exercise that results in very precise messaging to use with our target audience – in this case, a potential UB Student donor.
On March 10, the Advisory Board convened to comment on the donor’s deck (minutes, pp. 16-24). There were many great comments. Gard asked for an “imaginative piece that will blow donor’s minds.” So that was the next step. For that, I decided to enlist the services of Gary Tonge.
Gary and I started working on the video. This is the final version of the script that Andre, Paula, Jim, Gary and myself wrote.
We decided to have drone footage of the Beit Tamara property and also create a walkthrough of the Museum.
For that, we needed new talent, and I found Eran Kapal, a Cinema 4D artist from Israel. Eran read the script, took the barebones AutoCAD designs we received from Sefi’s son and set about to design the interior of the Museum.
We hung Mo’s paintings in it, and also designed a magnificent crystal centerpiece inspired by morontial art (at least, that was our intention).
The first version of the video was ready in early April. It took Eran, Gary, Jeremy (for the amazing original soundtrack) and me three more months until the first version was ready by June 16th. The latest version, with some minor modifications to the voiceover (to mention the Museum and Metaverse) is here.
To be continued….
