Urban Abundance is still a small, very grassroots non-profit; in 2018-2020, VISTA was the only paid staff. As such, the BOD and staff maintain and leverage healthy community relations that support the organization’s work.
Urban Abundance harvests and tends backyard and community orchards in Clark County, WA. With just one staff person for outreach and programming, it helps to be intentional and realistic about marketing strategies, and leveraging community partnerships remains paramount to outreach efforts.
Urban Abundance has historically been funded by a recurring charitable donation, but maintaining donor relations with individual donors, corporate sponsors, and fruit donors is paramount to ensuring program sustainability..
Urban Abundance helps harvest and tend backyard and community orchards in Clark County, WA. Urban Abundance volunteers help with orchard maintenance, harvest, and outreach..
Donor Relations for the OIC are split into two sections: material donations and food donations. The short but sweet first half is donations for the community garden. OIC Garden’s main donor is Lowes, and their contact person is Ryan Milton or Josh Rowhes..
Harvest Against Hunger VISTA’s first year in Yakima was establishing and showcasing the projects and goals through community engagement and partnership development by starting to let people know what the program is by word of mouth, emails, flyers, information booths, etc..
In Yakima, the program has three types of volunteers: out-of-town groups, in-town groups, and individual volunteers. Our recruitment and management strategies are different for each..
Food pantry gleaning programs are mutually beneficial for food pantries and farmers. Gleaning allows for unmarketable produce to be given to someone who needs it instead of going into a landfill. Like most people, many farmers do not know that some food pantries will ecstatically…
At IRC Seattle, a food system orientation is a service provided for newly arrived refugees, asylees, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, and other immigrants. The purpose of the orientation is to help IRC clients navigate the industrial food system in the United States..
Like any other in-kind or monetary donors, the farmers giving the food bank fresh produce need to feel that the (literal) fruits of their labor are appreciated. Just because a farmer donates once to a food pantry does not necessarily mean they will donate again….