I am unconvinced that making Bivio into a non-profit would actually solve the stated problem. Rather it might hasten the end of Bivio. It seems clear to me that Bivio is much appreciated by the users as-is. For sure. 

It might be a good path to think about the many ways to monetize 1600 investment clubs each with a daily update from their brokers. 

Among other ideas; how about for a fee, allowing customers to see what the top clubs are holding & their trades. Clubs that would rather remain anonymous could opt to keep their names private. This sort of data could become a never-ending source of marketable services. 

Another idea: Perhaps there could be Bivio price tiers based on AUM, or number of members, or based on % returns, or some combination of that. 

Knowing what I know now, I would not agree to be treasurer of any investment club without Bivio. If Bivio discontinues, I will fold our club rather than try to do what Bivio does for us. On the flip side consider that small clubs already pay a higher cost per member for Bivio. Bivio is obviously a very valuable service, but small clubs, or clubs with less $ in play can only pay so much before getting priced out. 

I'm personally OK with printing & filing paper taxes rather than e-filing, but that could be another possible revenue producing add-on service. 

 Best,

 Dave Nathanson

 Hawaiian Shirt Society

 

On Aug 2, 2022, at 9:23 PM, barbara 5siegels.com via bivio.com <user*29435100001@bivio.com> wrote:

Bivio has been a wonderful help to our club - it has made my job as treasurer appear easy to my members. The one additional item that would be very helpful is e-filing of taxes (federal and state). It has become increasingly difficult to do paper filing with the increase in the number of pages to print and the difficulty making sure stuff gets to the IRS. I'd rather pay Bivio more than paying fedex or USPS to ensure paper delivery.

Barbara Lounsbury

San Diego Women's Investment Club

From: club_cafe@bivio.com <club_cafe@bivio.com> on behalf of Randy Purvis via bivio.com <user*37247600001@bivio.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 9:09 PM
To: club_cafe@bivio.com <club_cafe@bivio.com>
Subject: Re: [club_cafe] Non-Profit Bivio

Prior to using Bivio our club used multiple spreadsheets to do our accounting. It was set up years before using Lotus 123 by one member who was a CPA. I took over from him and used his system for about two years. It worked but it took about 4 hours a month to maintain the records. I am also a CPA with over 40 years of experience. I LOVE BIVIO! I agree that it is worth much more than is currently being charged. If the price goes up I will still recommend that Bivio is the right thing for our club. 

Randy Purvis

D & C Investment Club 

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 2, 2022, at 11:18 PM, Robin Heller via bivio.com <user*24731500001@bivio.com> wrote:



I agree with John that Bivio is indispensable to our club and the fees are too low. Doubling the price would still make it viable for us and provide cushion to those managing it. I have some of the same concerns over distributed management mentioned earlier.

Please keep up the service; we rely on you all!

Regards,

Robin

Diamonds & Dividends 

Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything that could have been worse than losing her sight. Keller replied: "Yes, I could have lost my vision."

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 9:17 PM Carole Jansen via bivio.com <user*8441200001@bivio.com> wrote:

I'm with John.  Except for doubling the price.....maybe not that much 😁

Carole Jansen

Wise Investment Club

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 7:41 PM John Munn via bivio.com <user*223700001@bivio.com> wrote:

Bob... I never gave thought to bivio's corporate finances and clearly, there's not enough revenue to support the expanding service requirements.  But I don;t see how becoming a NFP would solve the revenue problem. I can't imagine that donations would come pouring in to support a service that essentially enables for profit partnerships to manage their operations.  My thought is that the revenue model needs to change and that the annual subscription price needs to at least double. It doesn't matter to me whether bivio is a NFP or privately owned. What I care about is that the accounting software meets our partner's needs and generates our annual tax filings. I think the service is worth much more than the current cost. bivio's software replaces countless hours of our manual labor and accounting and tax expertise for each member club. Our partnership is entirely dependent on your software and would fold without it. Our partnership is indebted to bivio and its service; I think its subscription cost is underpriced. These thoughts don't address your question, but bottom line for me is I need bivio's service and I fear that geographically distributed management would place the service in jeopardy and not solve the fundamental issue of insufficient revenue.

John Munn

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:

Hi All,

Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.

So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).

Why

When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community. 

By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.

Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.

Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.

Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.

Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.

Plan

The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.

We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.

We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.

A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.

The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.

The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.

Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.

Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.

We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Thank you for using Bivio.

Sincerely,

Robert Nagler

CEO

Bivio Inc.

100% agree with DrDave's statements about small clubs.

K Edwards

CWIC

On Aug 3, 2022, at 1:07 AM, DrDave via bivio.com <user*34979900001@bivio.com> wrote:



I am unconvinced that making Bivio into a non-profit would actually solve the stated problem. Rather it might hasten the end of Bivio. It seems clear to me that Bivio is much appreciated by the users as-is. For sure.

It might be a good path to think about the many ways to monetize 1600 investment clubs each with a daily update from their brokers.

Among other ideas; how about for a fee, allowing customers to see what the top clubs are holding & their trades. Clubs that would rather remain anonymous could opt to keep their names private. This sort of data could become a never-ending source of marketable services.

Another idea: Perhaps there could be Bivio price tiers based on AUM, or number of members, or based on % returns, or some combination of that.

Knowing what I know now, I would not agree to be treasurer of any investment club without Bivio. If Bivio discontinues, I will fold our club rather than try to do what Bivio does for us. On the flip side consider that small clubs already pay a higher cost per member for Bivio. Bivio is obviously a very valuable service, but small clubs, or clubs with less $ in play can only pay so much before getting priced out.

I'm personally OK with printing & filing paper taxes rather than e-filing, but that could be another possible revenue producing add-on service.

Best,

Dave Nathanson

Hawaiian Shirt Society

On Aug 2, 2022, at 9:23 PM, barbara 5siegels.com via bivio.com <user*29435100001@bivio.com> wrote:

Bivio has been a wonderful help to our club - it has made my job as treasurer appear easy to my members. The one additional item that would be very helpful is e-filing of taxes (federal and state). It has become increasingly difficult to do paper filing with the increase in the number of pages to print and the difficulty making sure stuff gets to the IRS. I'd rather pay Bivio more than paying fedex or USPS to ensure paper delivery.

Barbara Lounsbury

San Diego Women's Investment Club

From: club_cafe@bivio.com <club_cafe@bivio.com> on behalf of Randy Purvis via bivio.com <user*37247600001@bivio.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 9:09 PM
To: club_cafe@bivio.com <club_cafe@bivio.com>
Subject: Re: [club_cafe] Non-Profit Bivio

Prior to using Bivio our club used multiple spreadsheets to do our accounting. It was set up years before using Lotus 123 by one member who was a CPA. I took over from him and used his system for about two years. It worked but it took about 4 hours a month to maintain the records. I am also a CPA with over 40 years of experience. I LOVE BIVIO! I agree that it is worth much more than is currently being charged. If the price goes up I will still recommend that Bivio is the right thing for our club.

Randy Purvis

D & C Investment Club

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 2, 2022, at 11:18 PM, Robin Heller via bivio.com <user*24731500001@bivio.com> wrote:



I agree with John that Bivio is indispensable to our club and the fees are too low. Doubling the price would still make it viable for us and provide cushion to those managing it. I have some of the same concerns over distributed management mentioned earlier.

Please keep up the service; we rely on you all!

Regards,

Robin

Diamonds & Dividends

Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything that could have been worse than losing her sight. Keller replied: "Yes, I could have lost my vision."

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 9:17 PM Carole Jansen via bivio.com <user*8441200001@bivio.com> wrote:

I'm with John. Except for doubling the price.....maybe not that much 😁

Carole Jansen

Wise Investment Club

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 7:41 PM John Munn via bivio.com <user*223700001@bivio.com> wrote:

Bob... I never gave thought to bivio's corporate finances and clearly, there's not enough revenue to support the expanding service requirements. But I don;t see how becoming a NFP would solve the revenue problem. I can't imagine that donations would come pouring in to support a service that essentially enables for profit partnerships to manage their operations. My thought is that the revenue model needs to change and that the annual subscription price needs to at least double. It doesn't matter to me whether bivio is a NFP or privately owned. What I care about is that the accounting software meets our partner's needs and generates our annual tax filings. I think the service is worth much more than the current cost. bivio's software replaces countless hours of our manual labor and accounting and tax expertise for each member club. Our partnership is entirely dependent on your software and would fold without it. Our partnership is indebted to bivio and its service; I think its subscription cost is underpriced. These thoughts don't address your question, but bottom line for me is I need bivio's service and I fear that geographically distributed management would place the service in jeopardy and not solve the fundamental issue of insufficient revenue.

John Munn

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:

Hi All,

Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.

So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).

Why

When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.

By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.

Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.

Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.

Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.

Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.

Plan

The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.

We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.

We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.

A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.

The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.

The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.

Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.

Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.

We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Thank you for using Bivio.

Sincerely,

Robert Nagler

CEO

Bivio Inc.

I am confused.

One of my clubs uses myICLUB from BetterInvesting, it costs $87.99 per year for the accounting package. If you want the Tax Printer package is costs $99.99 for a total of $187.98.

Two of my clubs use bivio.com. It costs $179.00 per year.

Where is the claimed price of myICLUB seven times higher than bivio.com?

Joe

Everyday Investment Club

20 year treasurer

I am also confused. And Joe's numbers agree with what I found when I looked up myICLUB.

Do you have to be a member of Better Investing to use myIClub?

I am very happy with Bivio and do not want to switch, but need to be sure we are covered for accounting software. It looks like joining Better Investing would add another $52. for the club, plus $45.00 per member per year, assuming that is required. Maybe that is where the seven times higher amount comes into play?

Has anyone used myICLUB and what did they think?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Karen

The Gazillionaires Club

On Fri, Aug 5, 2022 at 12:07 PM Joe Farrell via bivio.com <user*14102900001@bivio.com> wrote:

I am confused.

One of my clubs uses myICLUB from BetterInvesting, it costs $87.99 per year for the accounting package. If you want the Tax Printer package is costs $99.99 for a total of $187.98.

Two of my clubs use bivio.com. It costs $179.00 per year.

Where is the claimed price of myICLUB seven times higher than bivio.com?

Joe

Everyday Investment Club

20 year treasurer

--

Karen E Buccos

34 Lafayette Dr

Rancho Mirage, CA 92270-3709

616-450-8548

karen.buccos@gmail.com

On Aug 5, 2022, at 3:08 PM, Joe Farrell via bivio.com <user*14102900001@bivio.com> wrote:

Hi All,

Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.

So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).

Why

When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.

By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.

Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.

Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.

Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.

Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.

Plan

The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.

We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.

We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.

A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.

The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.

The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.

Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.

Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.

We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Thank you for using Bivio.

Sincerely,

Robert Nagler

CEO

Bivio Inc.

So it has been 10 days since Robert sent his email about a new corporate structure; I really don't care what it is. Bivio had been doing an excellent job for our investment clubs. But, I care a lot that after 5 months Schwab and Bivio still can not work together. So is there any real hope for the near future?

Thanks

Dan Cohn

Virus-free.www.avg.com

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:

Hi All,

Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.

So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).

Why

When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community.

By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.

Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.

Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.

Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.

Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.

Plan

The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.

We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.

We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.

A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.

The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.

The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.

Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.

Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.

We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Thank you for using Bivio.

Sincerely,

Robert Nagler

CEO

Bivio Inc.

--

Dan Cohn
404 862 5640



Dan--I missed some of the emails.  Our club works with TDA and so far no observed problems with the merger with Schwab.  Were you with Schwab to begin with and now having problems, or did you just now switch to Schwab and have problems?  

Peter Dunkelberger

Sumner Stock Selectors Investment Club

On Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 5:19 PM Dan Cohn via bivio.com <user*32501700001@bivio.com> wrote:

So it has been 10 days since Robert sent his email about a new corporate structure; I really don't care what it is.  Bivio had been doing an excellent job for our investment clubs.  But, I care a lot that after 5 months Schwab and Bivio still can not work together. So is there any real hope for the near future?

Thanks

Dan Cohn

Virus-free.www.avg.com

On Tue, Aug 2, 2022 at 6:51 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:

Hi All,

Bivio is a small, owner-operated company. Paul and I would like to move to a model where the community would be more involved in running Bivio. We are big advocates of open source software for this reason. Much of the software behind bivio.com is already open source.

So, we are soliciting your feedback about turning Bivio into a not-for-profit corporation, that is, a charitable, members run organization (501c6).

Why

When we started Bivio back in 1998, we thought of it as a way of democratizing finance. That Bivio would be at the crossroads of investing and community. 

By the summer of 2001, we realized that this vision was more of a dream, unfortunately. The reality is that Paul and I have had to work other jobs since 2001. We spun off some of our technology as a software consultancy, Bivio Software, Inc., which continues to operate. Since 2013, we have been helping out at RadiaSoft LLC. This has worked pretty well up until recently.

Tax software is getting excessively complex. You all will have noticed this on last year's tax returns. In addition, email, broker interfaces, and the software industry in general have gotten more complex. Most of our time is spent fixing things behind the scenes, just to keep bivio.com running.

Becky & Joanne have been a great help, and before them, Laurie was a godsend. They are doing a fantastic job supporting our loyal customers.

Bivio is a community of 1,600 investment clubs with a revenue of $340,000 in 2021. This is not enough money to operate a tax and accounting software service. We pay our support people, accounting team, data providers, etc. Paul and I discount our services so we can keep Bivio running, that is, Bivio is actually running as a not-for-profit.

Therefore, we think the ethical thing to do is to make Bivio a real non-profit run by the community for the community. This would give us a corporate structure to allow us to apply for grants, hold member events, and to accept tax-deductible donations.

Plan

The plan is simple. Non-Profit Bivio would be modeled after Recreational Equipment Inc (REI), which is a non-profit where all members get a say in how it operates.

We are big fans of open source software, and much of bivio.com uses open source (see our GitHub repositories). As a part of moving to a non-profit, we would make all our accounting software open source.

We also love The Great Game of Business, and we run our company quite openly now. As a non-profit, we would run with our books completely open to the public.

A not-for-profit is not owned by anybody. There would be a charter, which would describe how the company would operate, in perpetuity. Paul and I would relinquish all financial interest in Bivio Inc. Our existing board has agreed to this idea.

The not-for-profit would be run by you, the Bivio community. We would love to see a diverse group like the REI board of directors running the company.

The board would also look for people to help run bivio.com. There are many people who have a lot of different skills who might want to contribute to bivio.com's operations. There are many software engineers in our community. Some would like to help.

Bivio would continue to charge a fee. Customers would not have to be members. However, just like REI, we would offer members a dividend from any excess fees collected.

Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback. You can email them support@bivio.com or reply publicly to the Club Cafe.

We are very excited to consider this next step in Bivio's evolution. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Thank you for using Bivio.

Sincerely,

Robert Nagler

CEO

Bivio Inc.

--

Dan Cohn
404 862 5640