Seedling Life

The only way we can tackle global challenges is by finding like-minded people and mobilizing action. What if we combined the best elements of modern social networks and classic newspapers?

This is the Seedling Life newspaper concept:

• 🏛️ Organizations publish sections of the newspaper, containing articles, events, listings and other content.
• 👍 You follow organizations you care about from local and global sustainability communities and networks.
• 📰 You receive a personalized newspaper printed and mailed to your home based on the organizations you follow.
• 💸 Organizations get financed by their subscribers, since subsrciption fees are split fairly between contributors.
• 🗓️ Monthly circulation keeps the publication relaxed for everyone and ensures quality over quantity.

⚠️ Note that this is an early stage nonprofit project . I'm currently looking for 4-5 organizations willing to participate in a pilot program.

Why is this concept interesting for the civil society? Fundraising for nonprofits is challenging, whether through grants or donations, its hard to keep a steady stream of financing.

Good news everybody! Seedling Life is designed to help:

• ✨ Physical products engage people making it easier to convice them to support you with donation.
• 📈 Monthly subscriptions mean continuous funding can help alleviate the stress of grant applications.
• 💰 Subscription fees are not capped allowing subscribers - inlcuding foundations - to donate as much as they want.
• 🌈 Joining forces is essential since sending a newspaper alone is junk mail while sending it together is a movement.
• 🔎 Ink on paper increases attention over pixels on a screen, allowing you to deliver messages more effectively.

Since the minimum it takes to participate in seedling is publishing two pages every month, there isn't much to lose. You can probably recycle the content from your website anyway!

As citizens we care about a sustainable future, and about being part of a meaninful community. But modern life is overwhelming, and trying to keep up with everything is hard.

What could Seedling Life offer you?

• 🔭 Discover communities and organizations you care about in the local and global sustainability scene.
• 💚 Support multiple causes with one donation since your subscription will crowdfund all the projects you follow.
• 🌴 Get unplugged but stay connected with a relaxing monthly newspaper instead of daily social media binges.
• 📅 Keep up without stress with a personalized event schedule listing events from your favorite communities and organizations.
• 📝 Engage mindfully by writing thoughtful letters to the editor instead of reactive comments in polarized threads.

Staying engaged shouldn't cause us anxiety. We shouldn't have to stay glued to a screen or keep track of dozens of donations to make a difference. Let's make participation simple!

I'm currently planning to print through printnewspaper.com, a company based in France offering inkjet-based newspaper printing.

• 🌲 The paper seems sustainable and sourced 50% from recycled paper and 50% from certified forestry in Europe.
• ✉️ Shipping to around 40 countries is included, and I plan to figure out a way to ship to the rest of the world.
• ⬇️ Prices are reasonable, e.g. a 24-page tabloid shipped globally costs max. €3.10/copy starting at 2000 copies (tax incl.).
• 🖨️ Inkjet technology makes personalized newspaper printing economically viable.
• ⚙️ Automation is possible based on tentative comments from the company's technical lead.

The company seems promising and support was helpful when I inquired about this concept. If there are issues, we could always replace or supplement their service with other printing presses.

Assessing the impact of paper-based communication vs. digital communication is very difficult. Still believe digital is the way to go? We will offer the option to receive the newspaper in digital form for those who prefer it.

Calculating profit from publishing in Seedling Life depends on a variety of factors. This interactive calculator forecasts the profits for your organization. You can explore various scenarios and adjust the settings to suit your expectations.

scenarios

assumptions

My name is Matan Bendix Shenhav, I'm a web developer and designer based in the EU. I'm a generalist with a broad skillset. You can read more about me, my skills and my experience on my professional site.

I'm passionate about discovering and engaging with community and sustainability orientated culture, but find it challenging to do in practice. I've been trying to figure out how to help evolve institutions to enable a more sustainable culture.

Interested in cofounding or
advising a nonprofit startup?

I could use some support getting this project off the ground. Whether you want to be a fulltime cofounders or only an advisor (a.k.a future board member), you are very welcome.

I am especially seeking people to complement my skills with expertise in one or more of the following domains:

• 🫶 Nonprofit & Civil Society - including foundations, associations, not-for-profits and cooperatives.
• ✍️ Journalism - in particular experience with editorial work, print publications and small-scale and local newsrooms.
• 📒 Finance & Fundraising - especially for nonprofit organizations, including bookkeeping and grant application writing.
• 🖥️ Software Engineering - passion for digital typesetting required, and knowledge in my stack is appreciated but not required.

Drop me a message at matan@shenhav.fyi!

A good tech strategy should be progressive enough to keep up with the times, yet cautious enough to avoid using immature technologies. It should also balance ethics with pragmatism.

Here is an outline of my proposed tech strategy:

• ⭐ Open-source licensing is a given - the project will be released under an open-source license, likely MPL 2.0.
• 🔌 Decentralized through federation using the ActivityPub Protocol (endorsed by the W3C) powering the Fediverse.
• 🌐 Web standards complient ensuring portability and accessibiity best practices and a sustainable technology
• 🛠️ No-nonsense stack that is modern, proven, and easy for developers to grasp:
  • ✅ Svelte/Kit, TypeScript, Supabase, Pandoc
  • ⛔ Blockchain, Esoteric Languages, Closed Dependencies

With this approach we hope to be able to develop with reasonable velocity while maintaining the kind of codebase we love to work with.