A simple outline process for a community toolbox
Land
- Will you buy, lease, or rent your land? Starting the process involves an informal agreement with the landowner which covers what exchanges will be made. Document all agreements and arrangements to officialise them later. When you are ready for something more formal you can begin with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOA). Then you can bring in the lawyers to form a contract to legally obligate agreed upon exchanges.
- You want a quality team of farmers or growers that can keep up with supply and demand, quality, customer service, and book work.
- Ensure that there is a crop planning process to have a steady, sustainable crop over the harvest season.
Community
- Develop a relationship with the community to determine what they want, From the start, involve the people who will be supporting the farm. Investigate what types of crops and products they want. Find out when they are available to become customers. When volunteers are available for the market.
- Keep up communication with the community through regular Farmer’s Market. Send out news updates, especially on social media. Have regular update/discussion meetings. This should be enjoyable. Developing relations with your community is rewarding.
- You can acquire more members via writing articles for your local paper or social media page. Do not be afraid to give talks at local events such as open conventions, churches, and schools. Remember to make your talk relevant to your audience.
Distribution
- Construct payment points for your produce. They should be secure, easy to find, and easy to use. Harvest To Order has an online payment system through Stripe. You can easily make transactions electronically from your phone.
- Creating an account on Harvest To Order will offer you a low-cost shopfront. A Harvest To Order account will allow you to easily manage registration, membership, order quantities and distribution.
Payment options
- Ask members to set up standing orders for regular veg shares
- The Harvest to Order system will allow for easy payment and easy payment distributions. It automatically pays everyone involved in the process.
- Membership cancelations follow up on why the user left the platform. Why are you leaving? What needs changing? This allows for improvements and better customer service.
