Naturist Legacy's self-reliance

Countless hours of "outside the box" thinking and planning produced a solid business plan for a naturist park that inspired enough confidence in our members to both fund it and build it. We owe money only to ourselves, with not one thin dime owed to any external bank or lender. Everything we have, including our new land, is fully ours — paid in full. Except for the help of a few necessary tradespeople, every hour of labour that has gone into our park has been volunteered by our own members. It goes without saying that these enormous efforts have yielded great pride and satisfaction amongst us all!

We must build within our existing skill sets. Straying outside of our skill sets would mean that we either pay people to build for us (unaffordable) or attempt construction techniques that are beyond our experience and training (potentially disastrous).

Some of you have asked me why we don't "do this" or "rent that" or "pay someone" to get certain tasks completed. I also often get "can we have this" or "when will we build that" type of requests from members.... What can easily be overlooked when looking at the big numbers shown in "Our Fundraising To Date" reports in these updates and on our Web site is the fact that the money flows out as well as in. Man oh man, does it flow!... I hope you can now see why we are hand digging stumps and trenches, why we are raking roads by hand rather than by machine, why we're using paint brushes and not spray guns, and why we're generally going manual with brute strength grunt work everywhere we can because, quite frankly, we have to! We have no other real choice. There is no money to allow us to pay for someone to come in and do the hard work for us, even though that work would get done so much faster and easier.

Now that Naturist Legacy Park had electricity, we could begin building structures. I began a routine that I would repeat again and again over the next few years. I created a detailed project materials list, shopped retailers for the best prices, hand picked the best lumber I could find (when lumber was part of the project) and then transported everything from Winnipeg or Selkirk to the park at my expense using my own truck (only the large clubhouse project needed commercial deliveries). This voluntary routine would save members of Naturist Legacy Inc. a substantial amount of money during the years I was building for them.

CJ Electric Ltd. of Beausejour returned to wire the [washroom/shower] building and install a temporary 200 AMP circuit breaker panel near where the new clubhouse would eventually stand. I again acted as a labourer on behalf of the park, saving members a couple hundred dollars that would otherwise have been paid to an electrician's assistant. I mounted electrical boxes, pulled and stapled wires, attached light fixtures and did whatever else I could to help.

An aggressive fundraising campaign for Naturist Legacy Park's new clubhouse had been underway since January. We were pleased to inform members in May that our funding target had been achieved, and that construction would proceed. I drew the plans for our clubhouse. The board estimated that doing this drawing "in house" may have saved the corporation as much as $2,000.

The clubhouse would rest on three concrete strip footings, each being 2 feet wide and 60 feet long.... I was immensely gratified to see the huge turnout of volunteers who arrived to help with the pouring of the concrete. We had originally planned to hire a contractor to put in these footings for us but later decided that we could do the work ourselves. I and the many other volunteers who helped dig, form and pour these footings ended up saving the corporation almost $3,000!

Once I had the other half of the clubhouse kitchen framed up (see the revised floor plan PDF), I began mounting electrical boxes according to the board-approved clubhouse electrical plan that I had drawn.... I again acted as a labourer alongside the electricians. I drilled studs, pulled and stapled wires, mounted additional boxes and did whatever else I was asked to do. I estimated that I saved members about $900 by doing the work that an electrician's helper would normally have done. After the wiring had been inspected and passed, we began doing plumbing rough ins. I meticulously shopped numerous retailers in both Winnipeg and Selkirk to get the best prices possible on all the materials needed for the clubhouse plumbing. I was happy to once again assist the club's "resident plumber" on this project.... Our collaboration over the course of several days saved members a substantial amount money on plumbing costs!