I spoke with Scott Lingrell at the SW PC as well as Mark who is the current Marketing Advocate for them. They are closely working with Decipher and Warren Holland right now.
Here are some things we need to do:
Having a message board is fine for right now, but we also need sort of a behind the scenes board where those only interested in helping can see, so that we can talk privately.
We shouldn't launch a website or really go forward with anything else before Decipher gives the heads up.
The SW PC is working on their charter to present to Decipher and become a full fledged Non-Profit. We need to work on our charter and hopefully be approved by Warren Holland and Decipher.
After getting approved we can get our Website set up as well as a Non-Profit status. The non-profit status means that anything the Decipher helps us with, can be considered a tax write off for them, which only encourages them to help us some. It also means that companies like Microsoft can have an employee encourage their company to donate money to this non-profit and have it help out the organization.
We should look more at the way that the 501st work with Lucas, where they are able to sell new product that doesn't hurt copyright or the brand, while anything made either goes to help another charity or help our own non-profit organization grow.
I will talk to Neal a little more about getting info from all the former LOTR group members on Decktech.net.
I say our first goal is getting that Charter looking nice and seeing how the SW PC is doing on there's and helping each other out.
I hope that this is helpful for everyone and please contact me with anything else I can help with. I'll see what other info I can glean here and there.
Scott