Ways to Support Your Market - Neighborhood Roots Update
Greetings!
As you may be aware, our organization contracted to one full time staff in 2021 and last winter the board took the difficult step of cancelling the 2022 Nokomis Farmers Market season. As an article in the Star Tribune laid out earlier this summer, we have been especially affected by the pandemic as well as challenged by both our staff leaving between December 2020 and March 2022. In re-hiring this spring, we chose to not re-fill the vacant Executive Director position, and instead focused our efforts on a full-time market manager and a part-time admin/development position. Please know that these structural decisions were not made lightly by the board. Indeed, we took the meaning of a “working” board to a new level as our five directors managed building a new website and selecting a new donation platform; solidifying relationships with the Minneapolis Park and Rec Board (our new Kingfield site hosts); running the last several winter markets of the season; and managing vendor selection and season prep for the 2022 Kingfield and Fulton markets without staff in place. We also successfully filled two long-term positions in time for the market season, Erica (full time Market Manager) and Mara (part time Development and Finance Manager).
As we close this summer, the board remains deeply committed and involved alongside our fantastic and hardworking new staff. We were glad to recently welcome former market manager Sarah Woutat to the board, and are looking forward to welcoming back Lizzie Strait from maternity leave this month. Alongside our staff, we have seen great increase in year-over-year individual donors and sponsors, and are pursuing grant applications regularly. Kingfield, in particular, has been a terrific success this year at its new location in Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, and we’re proud to have retained many of our long-time vendors as well as welcomed a significant number of new non-white and women-owned farms and businesses to our markets this season. We are also proud to share that we have rekindled a relationship with the HPDL neighborhood association this summer and will lead two fundraisers with them this fall to further our efforts to bring back Nokomis in 2023, and that we will return for a winter market season at Bachman’s starting in November.
We believe that the way Neighborhood Roots has evolved in 2022 will allow the organization to continue to rebuild and eventually thrive again. However, we are in a delicate situation at this time and we are looking to you, our veteran board members, for help.
Hiring multiple staff without a full bench of sponsorships has stretched our organizational finances.
Are you able to step up and make a one time donation or become a sustaining monthly donor? Our new donation platform makes this simple and has removed the burden of PayPal fees. Do you own a business in South Minneapolis or know someone who does? Consider becoming a farmers market sponsor! Sponsorships range from one-day markets, one market season, winter markets, or sponsoring all our markets!
We currently do not keep an office space and are searching for off-season storage solutions.
Do you have a corner of a basement or garage that could serve as temporary or long term storage, especially nearby one of our current market sites? Ideally, we would love to secure a portable, enclosed trailer to support our abundance of market supplies.
Neighborhood Roots is currently most in need of people power, both at markets and on the board to support our staff and plan a strong, vibrant 2023 season with all three markets.
We would love to see your name on an upcoming volunteer shift (especially a tear down shift at Fulton), or would welcome your renewed interest in joining the board. We are especially interested in connecting with anyone who would be interested in a leadership opportunity, joining our newly re-formed development committee, or participating in a Nokomis Market working group. Or if you have ideas about a potential new board member or volunteer, we would appreciate your reaching out to them with a personal ask.
If you have space in your life to give to these markets in any way, know that this is a crucial moment to step forward and ensure that these markets will continue serving our vendors and neighbors for years to come.
Sincerely,
Emily Ziring and Erin Swenson-Klatt, Co-chairs
Neighborhood Roots Board of Directors