Market Farming

["Carol Childress" <weaver01 AT semo.net>]

Title: [Market-farming] Ineffective market saga...suggestions? (long)

Sounds like a mess.  I am an Administrator for a small non-profit and I work for non-profits setting up by-laws, doing focus groups etc.  And I can make a couple of suggestions that I am sure others may have more along the same lines.  First off I would decide if I could make money like it is. If so don’t mess with the can of worms.  Yes the boards should have open meetings (sunshine laws)  unless it is about employees then they close the meeting.   As a member if it is a membership organization your by-laws should reflect a membership voting option,  you may just be a straight non- profit with a board.  Anyway the by-laws should say this, get a copy.  From what you said I would suspect that the farmers market was a “project” of this non-profit.  They should have filed 990’s with the IRs and you can see where their money goes, there just may not be any money there to do the other things http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finder/.  You might consider doing some of your own marketing maybe a group of you to share costs.  I have to admit with everything you have told me you are going to be very busy and like I said that may be better to wait and see what happens.  On behalf of your stress levels I can seriously suggest thinking this over big time.   Carol

 

From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Leslie Moyer
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 3:56 PM
To: Market Farming
Subject: [Market-farming] Ineffective market saga...suggestions? (long)

 

This is very long....apologies in advance.  It has been all I can do to not complain about the market I attend.  I've written about 10 emails and deleted them prior to sending.  Mostly because I think I know the answers to my problems, but I'm not ready to do anything about solving them yet. But here goes....maybe you all have suggestions I can't see from sitting so closely to the problem.

We have a TERRIBLE board at the market I attended last season.  I moved here 2 years ago and prior to that I wasn't a vendor, but I was the secretary of the board of a large farmers market (about 70 vendors--all grown/produced within the state, no resellers--mostly food, very few crafters) in a nearby town (about an hour away). I served as the mid-week market manager for that market for one season and was on the board for 2 additional years (3 years total), where I was very active and put out a nice customer newsletter for 3 years.  (As secretary, I did a monthly vendor newsletter as well.)  The market wasn't without its problems, but it functioned very smoothly and effectively and I learned a lot.  That market is now up to probably near 100 vendors.  I've also been involved with a statewide local food initiative (Buy Fresh Buy Local) and, due to that, I've worked with a lot of other market managers, vendors/farmers, and market board members across my state, including the peo
 ple who started THIS market. 






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