Mountain Roots Food Project

Meeting of the Board of Directors

November 2013

Director & Program Reports

DIRECTOR’s REPORT

Grants

We have been writing grants like crazy. There are pending applications for $48,000 and upcoming submissions for more than $50,000.

Awarded recently – CBCS PTA $500 for F2S Living Classroom.

Pending Applications: Clif Bar Foundation $25,000; Jared Polis Foundation $10,000; Town of Crested Butte ($5,000); CB Rotary ($500); Lowe’s Toolbox for Education $2,500

Upcoming Submissions: Subaru Healthy Sprouts – school garden - $500 (Lauren); Fiskar’s Orange Thumb $5,000 – Bill’s Park (Lauren); El Pomar Foundation Nov 25 - $25,000 General Op (Holly); UNFI Foundation Nov 18 - $20,000 General Op (Holly); Colorado Health Foundation – February – big ; Kellog Foundation – spring – big.

2014 Budget

We still have not approved a 2014 budget. How should I proceed with funding applications and program planning? Best guess?

Farm Projects Update

It is really amazing to me to think that last December, we sat together and envisioned a future with a Mountain Roots community farm, and almost a year later, we are in the planning and design phases for two farm projects. Both projects have very solid partners, both projects are committed to moving slowly and strategically, and keeping the long-term vision in mind. Farm Projects Year One, then, has been a phase of developing strong partnerships, seeking funding for planning, and beginning the planning process. The way I see it, this is exactly how we should be doing things, and I’m proud to report this progress.

a) Alpenglow Farm (Niccoli Ranch) We have hired a permaculture design team led by Kris Holstrom (including Wind Clearwater, Patricia Frazier, and Ian Oster) to complete the farm design by Dec 31. I am working with Danielle Beamer, stewardship coordinator at CBLT, to develop partnership agreements through CFGV’s STEP program and business plan through WSCU’s business development program.

It is our goal to be able to present the design plans to both boards in January or February, seek feedback and incorporate. After that, we will hold a public forum during which we present the general idea to the public and key stakeholders for more feedback. After that, we’ll be seeking funding for implementation.

b) Van Tuyl Community Farm / Ag Incubator - after securing funding from a Region 10 economic development grant and a public RFP, the stakeholders have hired consultant Lucy Waldo (also associated with the Gunnison Ranchland Legacy and ColdHarbour) to complete a farm design by Dec 31. The forthcoming design / plan will also determine the next steps.

CB Municipal Composting Update

Mountain Roots and ORE are fringe partners (mainly, just staying in the loop) with the Crested Butte / Mt CB Municipal Composting project. Originally Maya Silver and I gathered the stakeholder group, initiated these discussions and started the ball rolling, but the team up there has really taken it and run. Phase I included securing funding for planning (all drawn from city/town/wastewater) and hiring a consultant to do a feasibility study. That is complete, and we are in Phase 1 ½ , during which Town of CBis piloting the process in the existing biosolids indoor facility to better understand the process in action.

Fundraising

Last year, between Oct and December, we brought in $7,157. Mainly this was from our holiday campaign (personal letters, newsletter drive, and personal e-mails). We can do this !!

Here are the big “pushes:”

Holiday Fairs: we’re going to have a wider assortment of sustainable gifts for sale and we’ll be at both the Sugar Plum and the CBCS Bazaar. Last year the CBCS Bazaar brought in $612. We’re going to try to double that. Gifts include: soup mix jars, mushroom growing kits, cheese making kits, AquaFarms, soup and bread (CBCS only), and our T shirts. These gifts will be offered online as well.

What you can do:

“talk it up” amongst your friends & neighbors. Tell them how great it’s going to be, that we'll have a booth there with some really cool sustainable gifts, etc.
Buy some gifts from us for your own Christmas list!

Cocktail Party Fundraiser

The cocktail party is going to be GREAT . Pam Christian is excited to host, not shy at all about inviting “deep pockets” and saying so, and seems to have just the right mix of casual and fancy. She brought in a CB friend, Veronica Giuganti, as co-host to help draw the CB crowd. Invitations will go out this week. We are shooting for 30-35 people attending. Dana Zobs will cater with local and organic food. Board members in black and white serving attire will serve passed apps, mingle, and talk up the organization. Wine will be donated from Wet Grocer, possibly a batch cocktail from Montanya Rum. The “talk” part will be a slide show for the duration of one song (no talking) and then with the last slide on the screen, Holly and Michele will give a very brief overview and make the ask. Folks who donate then and there will be entered into a drawing to win a bottle of rum (Pam’s idea). When they leave, guests will be given a tote bag, rolled and prettily tied, with a short thank-you-for-coming-and-here’s-how-to-donate take home. Our goal for this party is $20,000. It looks like we’ll spend about $1,000 - $1,200 to throw it.

What you can do:

Guest List – we still need a good guest list so if you know any potential donors that should / could be invited, please let Holly know ASAP.
Serve at the party, speak about your passion, remember why you love Mountain Roots and share it!
Make your board donation so we have some money to work with to throw this party.

Holiday Giving Campaign

Last year, our personal letters, personal e-mails, and the newsletter drive brought in almost $7,000. This is a pretty important piece of fundraising! This year, we’re doing all that plus Lauren’s facebook push. With 12-14 of us all asking just a few friends, family, neighbors, etc, as well as social sharing, it should be easy to double our money this year.

What you can do:

Send out 20 personal letters (actually in the mail) - use the template we provide or write your own letter. These are good for older folks, people a little further out in your “circle of contact” (like your parent’s next door neighbors, or your old boss, your dentist).
Forward the e-mail letter to everyone in your e-mail contact list (including old high school friends, your mortgage broker, your cousin, etc.
Keep sharing the Facebook “asks” on your own facebook page. TWICE A WEEK until Christmas.

Sponsorships

This aspect of fundraising has indeed taken a long time to get “ready” to go, but in hindsight it’s given me time to really shape it. I’ve developed a good list of sponsorship opportunities that can be presented to any business OR donor and are, I think, easy to “sell” face to face. This will be ready to go walking around town after the Holiday Giving campaign, but these options are live on the website now, so they can be avenues for you to steer any of your potential donors toward if they are the type to like to have their name on something or to have something very concrete to give to.

Events

I’d like to recommend we form a small team to re-vamp the Events plan, rather than try to tackle this with 11 board members. I’m willing to lead the team, but I need at least three people to support this and help develop a new plan that actually can be done. I have a lot of great ideas (gathered from all over, volunteers, organizations like ours, donors, etc.) I'd like to have a initial meeting in December between the 11th and the 20th, then revisit in mid-January. Re-vamping the events plan does not commit you to hosting every event. I need thinkers right now. We’ll build the Action teams as each event happens. Please let me know if you can be on this team.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing platform where anyone and everyone can post a project, public or private, and issue a funding challenge to the world. You set a funding goal and a deadline, start the clock, and people make pledges to donate to you. If you reach your goal, you get the money. If not, no one is charged. You have to have a video, and provide very donor at every level with some little reward.

Lauren has been working to build our Kickstarter Campaign and it, too, is going to be great. We’ve decide to Kickstart the Gunnison Rec Center garden expansion, which will take it from 900 ft2 to 10,000 ft2. Ian has a great design. Lauren has been working with Sarah Rodger, film student at WSCU, to make a 3-4 minute video about Mountain Roots – required for Kickstarter – we have great clips and interviews and she’ll mix in photos as well. When it’s ready to go, we’ll need all of you to do some major social sharing.

Community Food Systems Intern – coming in January

I have offered a Community Food Systems Internship to Melanie Yemma. She will begin in January and is committed until June. Melanie is a graduate of Colorado College, where she ran their college farm, and has been WWOOFing in Nicaragua for most of this year. She is expecting to work 20 hours a week, unpaid, for the duration of the six-month term. We have offered her housing (at Butch Clark’s) through April as an incentive. I will be crafting a skeleton for her specific projects prior to her arrival, and, since our internships are student-centered and community-based, she will be part of the internship design when she arrives. If you would like to see her resume and application, let me know. You can also look her up on Facebook.

“On Deck” (Projects that will be getting more attention in the near future)

Volunteer Recruiting , Retaining, Recognizing, Rewarding - rethinking our strategy
Donor Database and Volunteer Database Management
Sponsorships – actively seeking
Fundraising - more
Events – re-vamping the plan
Website overhaul – to reflect new branding, also new developing platform
Second Year VISTA – creating the VAD (job description and duties) in Jan and fielding applications in Feb

Program Reports

FARM TO SCHOOL, Kirsten Frazee

Events

Sat Nov 16: We will have a booth at the Gunnison Sugar Plum Festival for the first time this year, (in the non-profits room).
Sat Dec 7:We will have a booth at the CB Christmas Bazaar with several items to sell and a kids’ craft. We still need volunteers to a) make a crock pot of soup and b) work the booth shifts (9-11; 11-2; 2-4) If you have nay friends you could ask, please do so. Please “talk up” the holiday events amongst your friends and colleagues!
Dec 5 : Holly and I have been given a space in the School Board’s Dec. 2nd meeting agenda to give an overview of the Farm to School program.
Nov 12 : I am on the Gunnison PTA meeting agenda for Nov. 12th to give an overview of F2S.

Local Foods

After being on stand-by for the last couple of months, the ball has begun rolling for our Local Foods conversations with the schools. Holly and I met with Stephanie Juneau on Monday, Nov. 4th. We sorted out the beef question and need to confirm our financial contribution. She thought we were all working with the idea that ‘Local’ meant anything within a radius of 400 miles. If a Gunnison Valley ranch/farm can meet the price and volume parameters, she is open to changing the beef purchasing. We decided to change the label on the school menu from ‘L’ local to ‘CO’ Colorado for now.

Other positive outcomes from the meeting: learning that the chefs are frequently choosing Colorado Proud foods off the USFoods order and are making meals from scratch more often than we were aware of; learning that an a la carte improvement policy will be in effect this spring that they would like our help implementing soon.
Holly and I will meet with the CB head chef, Kim, either on Nov. 18 or 21.We will clarify the positive changes they’ve already been making that we can promote on the menu and in the community. We will look at their order forms and invoices to see which items they order most frequently or with the highest volume to see if we can source them locally. And, we will explore other ways we can work with them and support positive change.
I will contact the Gunnison head chef, Laura, to set up a meeting with her by the end of Nov. or first week of Dec.

Education

Classroom lessons haven’t happened in the last month, but other program building is happening. Teachers have been informed that we are poised and ready to help them implement the new health standards in the classroom. We have been reaching out to the community for volunteer support (a survey went out to all Gunnison elementary and middle school families). It is curriculum building time.

In CB: On Friday, Nov. 1st, the 10th graders planted garlic in the garden and mulched it. This was the last garden lesson of the season.

In Gunnison: On Oct. 22nd, we created a nutrition table at the 9th grade health fair and polled students about what vegetables they enjoy eating, raw or cooked.

On Oct. 23rd, I met with the Lake Preschool teachers to explore ways we could bring Farm to School there. We may start by covering one of their snack days once/mo. and have a hands-on food lesson be a part of the snack experience.

Youth Gardens

In CB: We broad forked ¾ of the beds by hand on Oct. 26th, and decided that the remaining ¼ (the southern beds) would be good candidates for the ‘lasagna’ no-till method and for cover cropping. The garlic was planted on Nov. 1st with 10th graders.

In Gunnison: Holly and I have our first planning meeting scheduled on Nov. 20th to discuss the school garden with representatives from GCS. We now have two grants pending for this.

Summer Camp

In CB: We are waiting to hear the enrollment and financial report from Lauren from CB Parks and Rec to reconcile our expenses. We will revisit our program review this winter (Jan-Feb) to begin the planning for next summer’s camp program.

In Gunnison: We will review this program this winter (Jan-Feb).

Outreach

Lauren is piloting an after-school cooking class designed for middle school students. When the pilot is running successfully, it will be transferred over to the Farm to School program to manage.

GARDENS PROGRAM, Ian Oster

Tools have been collected from the gardens, stored in the office basement, and will be organized and ready to distribute to each garden for the spring.
I have begun contacting Landowners (Elk Ave., Cottonwood, City of Gunnison) to re-sign the land use agreements on behalf of MRFP.
I will evaluate the entire program after debriefing with Alec Solemao (harvest lbs., volunteer hours, inventory, finalize expenses) and share this information in the next board meeting program report.
Designs of the Gunnison Rec. Center Community Garden and Bills Park Expansion have been created (see attached). A volunteer will digitize these for granting purposes. I will meet with Dan Ampietro (Gunnison Parks and Recreation contact person) the week of the 11th to go over MRFP’s design.
I have drafted and am working with Holly for a final product of;

-The Garden Program ‘management plan’ that delineates an approach to phasing gardens from intensive management to less MRFP involvement. The Board will have a chance to provide input to this document at the next Board meeting.

-A plan for the Speaker Series which includes; timeline, potential speakers, potential topics per month, general description, advertising, and a pre-made flier.

-An Urban Agriculture S.W.C.C. Internship orientation and general manual / organization handbook.

-And an Orientation Manual for the garden coordinator that includes a: calendar, list of key players in the community, key resources, organization history, and orientation check list.

BILLS PARK GARDEN

Successful season, garden put to rest.

ELK AVE. GARDEN / DEMONSTRATION GARDEN

Successful season, garden put to rest. Artwork removed. Signs removed.

NBAC

Successful season, garden put to rest except for a few minor chores (removing one last row of Swiss Chard, removing NBAC sign, taking goji berry plants). Garden beds have been tilled and smoothed.

COTTONWOOD COMMUNITY GARDEN

Successful season, garden put to rest.

NICCOLI RANCH (ALPENGLOW) PROJECT

Four soil tests have been collected (three on the home site one in the lower field). All results are as predicted (low in Nitrogen).
Kris Holstrum, Wind Clearwater, and I met onsite on the 1st to work on the design and delineate tasks. We are working well under the approved Design Plan.

IAN’S LAST HOURS