FamilyFarmed.org is a revolutionary system connecting consumers and trade buyers with a network of organic farmers and artisanal food producers. Consumers meet their farmers and re-establish connections with their food, community, and the land.
We need a philanthropic partner to invest in a strategic plan and multi-year program to actualize our potential. With such an investment we will hire a skilled project manager to develop the plan and budget to take us to the next level.
We need an evaluation of our current technology and a plan to use state of the art technology to build a truly interactive web community.
As part of our strategic planning process we need to develop a communications plan that addresses branding, media outreach, search engine access, and many other key needs to help build web traffic, newsletter subscriptions, and regular use.
Vision Statement
The recent Time Magazine cover story on Local and organic food made it clear. People want healthy food they trust grown by local and organic farmers. FamilyFarmed.org is a revolutionary system that connects consumers and trade buyers with a network of family farmers and artisinal food producers. FamilyFarmed.org is the place where consumers “meet” their farmers and re-establish connections with their food, their community, and the land. The benefits of local and organic food are numerous and increasingly being recognized by the media and philanthropists. Buying food from local producers improves the environment, increases access to healthy food, creates jobs and economic development, prevents sprawl, supports family farmers, and combats global warming.
FamilyFarmed.org is helping to create a sustainable food system by building a community of buyers and sellers of local and organic food. The system is designed to promote more transparency and accountability from producers while simultaneously creating many more opportunities for buyers and sellers to meet—both on line and in person. FamilyFarmed.org uses three tools to effectively link organic farmers with new sources of business and to educate consumers about the value of supporting local farmers: the FamilyFarmed.org website, FamilyFarmed.org EXPO, and networking/knowledge-sharing.
In the US, Organic food sales have grown nearly 20% a year over the past two decades. FamilyFarmed.org currently works with producers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, and Misouri. Sales of organic food in these states exceeds $2 billion annually, yet research indicates that more than 90% of this is grown and processed outside of the region. Our goal over the next 10 years is for midwestern farmers to produce 25% of the organic food consumed in the region. This will give producers a tremendous boost in income while promoting rural revitalization, job creation, and economic development.
Sustainability
FamilyFarmed.org has become a regional leader in this movement and has achieved a series of successes that are national models. Its revenue sources come from a number of vehicles including foundations, corporations, and earned income from the FamilyFarmed.org EXPO. In a major new development, FamilyFarmed.org received a major strategic philanthropic commitment from Whole Foods Market to support this work. This partnership is a tremendous public/private partnership to source and promote local and organic food and will provide significant operating support to expand the project.
The FamilyFarmed.org EXPO, is a unique and successful show that brings farmers, distributors, retailers, and consumers together to network, learn from each other, and build marketing relationships. The 2007 EXPO had 120 exhibitors and drew over 3,000 people, 50% more than 2006. The show is profitable and is geared towards building the business of local food producers as well as highlighting leading organic and sustainable businesses. Sponsors include many leading regional and national companies including: Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, Green Festival, Chipotle, City of Chicago, Goodness Greeness, Conscious Choice, Nature’s Path, Earth Friendly Products, Tallgrass Beef, LaSalle Bank, and Michael Fields Agricultural Institute.
The goal of FamilyFarmed.org is to fully develop the site into an interactive web community. Content expansion will include improved farmer bios and product descriptions, a photo “album” or video tour of the farm instead of a single photo, and an “Ask a Farmer” column. Producers will also be given the oppportunity to manage the content on their site. More advanced changes will focus on building community by creating an environment where visitors can not only find information, but also share it. This could include the opportunity for consumers to rate and give feedback on the farms and artisinal food producers in our network.We will also develop blogs for farmers, users, and familyfarmed.org staff and may add regular news feeds and other means to keep site content fresh in order to encourage more traffic and participation.
Potential Obstacles
FamilyFarmed.org was created as a project by the non-profit organization, Sustain. FamilyFarmed.org was launched with little capital and philanthropic support at a time when Sustain was struggling due to a downturn in funding for its core business, environmental communications. As a result, Sustain’s balance sheet is weak and this is sometimes a impediment to funders. To deal with this Sustain went through a reorganization process which brought on a new board and closed its environmental communications division. Now the organization is strictly focused on FamilyFarmed.org and building regional food systems and is implementing a plan to improve its balance sheet.
Resources needed
FamilyFarmed.org is ready to go to the next level by fully developing its capacity as a web community. We seek funding to fully develop content, social networking capacity, and a sophisticated marketing campaign. Content expansion will include improved farmer bios and product descriptions, a photo “album” or video tour of the farm instead of a single photo, and an “Ask a Farmer” column. Producers will also be given the oppportunity to manage the content on their site. More advanced changes will focus on building community by creating an environment where visitors can not only find information, but also share it.
Secure funding
Hire project manager
Develop strategic plan including:
Technology Vision
Technology needs
Marketing plan.
Implement plan
Project Summary
The recent Time Magazine cover story on Local and organic food made it clear. People want healthy food they trust grown by local and organic farmers. FamilyFarmed.org is a revolutionary system that connects consumers and trade buyers with a network of family farmers and artisanal food producers. FamilyFarmed.org is the place where consumers “meet” their farmers re-establish connections with their food, their community, and the land. Buying food from local producers improves the environment, increases access to healthy food, creates jobs and economic development, prevents sprawl, supports family farmers, and combats global warming.
FamilyFarmed.org is helping to create a sustainable local and organic food system by building a community of buyers and sellers of local and organic food. The system is designed to promote more transparency and accountability from producers while simultaneously creating many more opportunities for buyers and sellers to meet—both on line and in person.
The FamilyFarmed.org EXPO, is a unique and successful show that brings farmers, distributors, retailers, and consumers together to network, learn from each other, and build marketing relationships. The show is profitable and is geared towards building the business of local food producers as well as highlighting leading organic and sustainable businesses.
FamilyFarmed.org is ready to go to the next level by fully developing its capacity as a web community. We seek funding to fully develop content, social networking capacity, and a sophisticated marketing campaign.
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Comments
Support
Just noticing the dates of the previous comments, (and how long ago they were made), I am interested in 1) knowing if this project is still forward moving and 2) encouraging the collective "you" to keep pursuing it.
I discovered your site through a college course I am taking, which looks at harnessing internet technologies for social change, but I come from a small town in western Washington, the surrounding area of which used to flourish with small, local farms, now largely non-existant. Small-scale farmers desperately need the support of their communities, and from my understanding, this project has great potential as a tool to re-establish that.
I, for one, will continue to look for ways I can contribute to this project. Thank you for being here.
RE: Supporting Familyfarmed.org
Hi Patrice,
If you send me your contact info at bbravo@techsoup.org, I would be happy to put you in touch with the FamilyFarmed.org folks.
Britt
Britt Bravo
Community Builder
NetSquared • A Project of Tech Soup
www.netsquared.org
bbravo@techsoup.org
Skype:bebravo
good luck!!!
Hello! I am one of those people who support and admire this kind of project. I know a website that helps these types of projects get funds/ budget to start-up. ( without having to pay back) It’s interesting how it works. TCheck out www.micro-capital.com
PS. I really liked your idea. :)
Rio
W.K. Kellogg Foundation?
Possibilities for collaboration
Hi Erin,
I think this is a great project! We're going to include it in the Grassroots.org staff picks in the emails we're sending out this week.
We may also be able to support the project in some ways; Grassroots.org is developing a set of integrated tools for nonprofits that enable the kind of online communities you are envisioning. The toolbox will be free, and will include Drupal-based content management, blogging, online discussion forums, image galleries, EGroupware, telephone internet marketing consultations, and integration with Democracy In Action's Salsa platform for Moveon.org-style e-advocacy campaigns (NetSquared project: Grassroots.org Nonprofit Toolbox) It sounds like this project might benefit from some of these; let's talk about it some more.
Good luck!
Next week
Thanks for including us in your staff picks! We can absolutely talk more next week~