Welcome to a special edition of the Fresh Earth Farms newsletter! Not often we have two newsletters in one week!
We recently received an order from a very kind person for two CoupleShares to “Pay it forward”. She wanted these shares to go to low income or food insecure families. It made me wonder if there are more of you who would be interested in sponsoring a share or partial share for us to give to families or organizations that feed those who are economically disadvantaged. It seemed to me that the C in CSA stands for Community and this would be a good way to support our local community. And as an incentive, for every CoupleShare we sell through this program we will upgrade it to a FamilyShare until we are sold out.
To be clear, this is completely optional and I don’t have any expectation that we’ll get any takers but since this thoughtful person got the ball rolling I thought I would throw it out there anyway. Since we are not a non-profit (or whatever the correct term is), I don’t think it would be tax deductible — but feel free to consult your financial advisor to be sure. But if you have a big pile of cash laying around looking for a place to spend it, this might be the answer to your dilemma. I would say it’s even better than “rounding up” to the nearest dollar when you buy your burrito at Chipotle!
Once we get a sense as to how many shares are funded we will look into organizations that could benefit from these shares. If there is a large number of shares we will find a local food shelf that can take a bunch of fresh produce. If we have just the two current shares or a similar small amount we’ll look for a small, local community kitchen that could use the produce. If you have any suggestions for either of these types of organizations please send them our way. And if anyone wants to pick-up and deliver the produce to the organization please let me know as well. Otherwise we will most likely find a place that is nearby or along our delivery route.
So how do you contribute? I created a new item on our store called DonationShare. The item allows you to pick among several payment amount options or you can enter your own number. No amount is too small.
Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts. This is a work in progress so any suggestions or ideas are appreciated.