Mano Farm, the organic farm I’ve been involved in creating over the past year is undertaking a $10,000, 60-day fundraising drive in support of our Community Supported Agriculture program and food justice. We’re doing this through Kickstarter — a relatively new web site that facilitates grassroots fundraising for arts and community projects. Follow this link to our page, which also includes a short video about the farm: http://kck.st/dee7KU
Food justice is a pretty broad term so I’ll recapitulate some basics: because the wealth of most societies is distributed unevenly, those with smaller food budgets rely on cheaper food sources, frequently sacrificing fresh fruits and vegetables due to price. Food justice movements seek to alleviate this through the redistribution of nutritious food sources. Healthy food means healthy people, and this equation acts as preventative medicine for many, circumventing expensive health complications later in life. Because our farm has been growing more food than ever, we want to offer low-income families and invididuals free shares through our CSA (a weekly box of vegetables that includes a share of what the farm is growing in a given season). Here’s where you come in.
$10,000 is a number that might be ambitious to some or small to others. We’re hoping for some generous individuals to make a few sizable donations from that will help us reach our goal. Note that Kickstarter works in an all-or-nothing manner: unless we reach 10,000 dollars of pledged donations, we get nothing. We have offered a number of incentives to those who pledge funds — farm merchandise, some of our arts and crafts, a workshop on the farm, and a farm-cooked dinner. Check out http://kck.st/dee7KU for details.
Please distribute this far and wide, and if there is any way that you can help us get the word out, via your own network of friends, the media, etc., that would be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, feel free to email me: jadecricket@gmail.com.
with gratitude and respect,
quin
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Is this tied to a 501c3 non-profit?
lisa,
unfortunately, it’s not, and i know that tax deductible donations would have been a major draw for lots of folks, so that’s hard. however from what i understand, it’s hard to do a CSA under the aegis of non-profit status. if you have any suggestions for a workaround to this, please contact me directly.
quin
Handing over money to a 501c3 gives the donor more than just a tax write-off. They feel more secure knowing where the money is going, and that their dollars will support something that will be around for a while. A quick and dirty search shows that there are some established non-profit CSA’s who can probably guide your efforts: http://www.google.com/search?q=csa+non+profit&rlz=1I7GGLL_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7
Lisa,
Thanks for your perspective. As i mentioned, we chose to avoid nonprofit status because it is incredibly difficult to form a CSA as a nonprofit, rather than initially a nonprofit with different goals and then having a CSA under that umbrella.
I quote from the book “Sharing the Harvest” by Elizabeth Henderson:
“Donations to a nonprofit must be spent on acceptable activities such as educational programs and religious or scientific activities open to the general public. A CSA whose primary goal is to feed and educate its own members would have a hard time qualifying as a 501(c)(3): The benefits have to go to society at large, not to a limited group” (131).
Since our central goal at the farm is feeding and educating our own members, trying to become a nonprofit would require our farm to alter its organizational structure and stated mission. We’re not willing to do this right now.
In regards to your comments about people’s perceived longevity of our project, they are duly noted. I suppose I could say we’ve been here a year-plus and we just signed a lease on our land. We’ve been feeding folks in our CSA for the past eight months. We want to immediately redistribute the food resources on our farm. With our fund raising efforts, we can immediately offer free shares for members.
Lastly, I would hope that our character as people and farmers will be a central factor in folks deciding to fund our project. I am reminded of the Wendell Berry passage, “Character is the internalization of responsibility. What we are talking about when we talk about a local food system or CSA is a food system that relies more on character than it does on legal, bureaucratic, or commercial procedures.”
-Quin