Merchant Park Community Garden

photo from the Library of Congress on Flickr's Commons

The purpose of the first meeting on October 5, 2010 was to see who was interested, answer a few questions, and see how we could get started with this new community project.

Tonight’s meeting – November 11th, 2010 – let us really get down to work. We divided up into two groups and took different committee topics to discuss.

Operations, Marketing, and Fundraising were all together at one table. For operations, we looked at examples from other community garden projects for rules, membership forms, financial accounts, and bylaws. We decided to keep everything simple for now to make this as accessible as we can the first year. Several people volunteered to look over the examples and provide simplified versions that will work best for us.

We’re also looking into partnership opportunities with local organizations that can provide great connections and advice. Ann gave an update on NeighborSpace and GreenCorps in particular, saying we may not be able to benefit from all their resources until we’ve proved we have a strong group of committed people who will keep this going in the future.

For fundraising, we decided, again, to start simple and local to help build interest. Different options were discussed, from grants to bake sales to special events. We decided to aim for a fundraising event in January at a local restaurant with a raffle and connect to local sponsors before then through our website and flyers. At our next meeting we hope to have more specific figures on possible startup costs, which will help us know how to focus our fundraising process.

This website was the focus of our first marketing and communication work, since we can use it to share information easily for committee projects, publicize the project locally, and connect to possible sponsors. This first incarnation is not the final design, but it does include the social features we want to use.

Beyond the website, we also need to keep reaching out to our neighbors to spread the word. We’ll be working on print handouts that can be shared in the neighborhood and making sure all our information is available bilingually in print and on the web. We also want to have print handouts that we can give to local businesses that may be interested in sponsoring us online or at events.

The other table handled Water, Plot Construction, and Maintenance & Fencing. I’ll be updating this post with notes from that table when I get them from my representative there.