The Curbside Chronicle- Sell Magazines! Oklahoma

The Curbside Chronicle

The Curbside Chronicle is a social enterprise magazine that provides the homeless community of Oklahoma City with both a voice and a means of income.

Mission

The mission of The Curbside Chronicle is to create a publication that is written and sold by the homeless community of Oklahoma City. This model is used to provide the homeless with both a voice and a means of income, empowering them to rise out of poverty.

Company Overview

The Curbside Chronicle is a product of The Homeless Alliance in Oklahoma City. The Homeless Alliance is a nonprofit that seeks to alleviate homelessness within the Oklahoma City community. The Curbside Chronicle is a "street paper" meaning that articles written by, or about, the homeless community of Oklahoma City are published into the magazine. Each paper is then purchased by our homeless vendors for $0.75 and sold for$2. Each vendor is considered self-employed, so whatever profit they make from the paper they keep!

Description

This magazine will function as a nonprofit social enterprise, pursuing a social mission while creating a more sustainable organization through the sale of its product. Our organization will be tax-exempt and seek money from grants, foundations, and general donations. However, vendors will be required to purchase the magazines that they wish to sell at $0.75/issue. This small expense will h...elp cover printing expenses, providing the organization with a more stable source of funding. This $0.75 vendor fee also creates ownership, responsibility, and empowerment in the vendor position since vendors are personally investing in the paper.

We aim to provide the homeless community with a voice by allowing them to write articles for the paper on a variety of topics of their interest. These topics will range from homeless issues to local, state, national, and global news, thus allowing the homeless writers to speak about issues that concern them. This will provide a new view on a diverse variety of issues and topics as well as help educate and assimilate homeless persons.

The second prong of our organization’s mission is to provide our homeless vendors with a legitimate means of income. Our model consists of vendors purchasing the magazines from us for the price of $0.75 per copy before selling them for $2.00 each plus tips, keeping the profits.

The benefits of this paper are numerous. Other social benefits include 1) confidence and morale boosts for the homeless vendors, 2) decreased stigmatization of the homeless community, 3) increased social awareness for vendors and consumers, 4) increased education and training for the homeless, and 5) decreased drug and alcohol use. The economic benefits include 1) jobs for the homeless and a decreased unemployment rate, 2) increased spending power of the economy, and 3) a decrease in tax dollars going to homeless issues.
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General Information

According to the 2010 census the population of Oklahoma City is 579,999 with a 2012 point-in-time homeless population calculated to be 1,303 with 230 of these being chronically homeless.

Last year the largest street newspaper in the country, The Contributor, sold 1.3million copies at an average price over $2. This means that last year alone The Contributor helped provide $2.275million in wages to... the homeless community of Nashville, Tennessee. This is more than Oklahoma City received in federal funding from the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program in 2010. The Contributor employs almost 400 vendors, 1/3 of which have gained housing through the sale of the paper.

We hope to grow The Curbside Chronicle to the size of The Contributor, significantly reducing the number of homeless persons in Oklahoma City while simultaneously saving tax payers money and stimulating the economy. See More