March Advisory Board Letter
Welcome to the Farming Hope advisory board!
If you’re on it, you know who you are, and as an advisory board member will be asked to help with the question at the end of this update. The rest of you reading from off the board: I want you to know what we’ve accomplished since starting, how you can help us succeed, and how to share our story to inspire and inform similar community work elsewhere.
This letter is a freakin’ fiesta. Please revel in this long list of major accomplishments JUST SINCE JUNE:
- Founded Farming Hope locally, at the Stanford Design School/FEED Collaborative summer incubator
- Partnered with Bountiful Churchyards for nonprofit status
- Formally added cooking to our employment model with our Palo Alto pop up series, thanks to Pam Chesavage
- Hired three homeless individuals to start gardening at the University of San Francisco community garden and Tenderloin People’s Garden
- Launched our second city team, San Francisco, now employing six homeless individuals
- Started our six-month cohort model
- Partnered with Feastly to begin bi-weekly pop up dinners in San Francisco, earning revenue from ticket sales and feeding 40+ people
- Increased our total grant money raised to $92,000, thanks to a new grant from Wheat Ridge Ministries
- Hired a part-time Volunteer & Event coordinator, our third staff member Melody Lan
- Started weekly Farmers’ Market lunch stand in San Francisco
- Launched our Support Team model, to reward and include committed volunteers and monthly donors
- Formed our advisory board!
In this work, we’ve found our soul. Amidst the messiness of creating something new, we’ve both learned and designed where we are needed in the fight against homelessness.
The need is for employers. Homeless individuals, service providers, gardener managers, everyone tells us that transitional employment, especially life-giving work like ours, is a great and immediate need.
Our unique space, providing transitional employment, fills a need on the ladder of services up and out of homelessness. It’s based on our main finding: Our team members need to feel needed again in their community. Purposeful work, growing food and feeding neighbors, makes it clear that you are necessary in your neighborhood.
With this knowledge and early experience, it’s time to grow. We want to keep learning while building, with the goal of opening two more city teams in the next two years. Here’s what’s next on our accomplishment timeline:
- Start a rooftop garden at a homeless shelter in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood (just received our first grant of $5,000 for this)
- More of our popular pop ups at homes in Palo Alto
- Train two of our homeless employees to be peer managers as part of our next cohort
- Finalize approval for a massive landscaping shift, building an edible churchyard around an entire church campus in Palo Alto
- Share stories of our employees’ setbacks and accomplishments, to elevate their voices
HOMEWORK
Dearly beloved advisory board members: I’ll close my monthly letters with The Call for help from you. Don’t worry, I’ll bother you about your progress in the next few days.
My question today:
- Please refer me to one corporate group who would like to host a team-building and community-building pop up dinner with us. This is an effective way to create more transitional employment for our teammates, utilize our produce, share our work with new people, raise funds to offset expensive gardening costs, and hold events with a truly “family” atmosphere.
¡Thank you for being an ambassador for team Farming Hope!
