Financing Our Foodshed (30 page)
Read Financing Our Foodshed Online
Authors: Carol Peppe Hewitt
We set a date for our Slow Money NC gathering, sent out a press release, and got out a newsletter. Andrea Weigl, food writer for the
Raleigh News & Observer
responded with a wonderful column:
Slow Money NC reminds me why I love the Triangle’s vibrant local food scene. The demand for local food is so high that we add farmers markets every year. Farm-to-table restaurants thrive as well as farm-to-table food trucks, and you can sign up for weekly deliveries of local vegetables, meat, cheese, seafood and even soup. People aren’t just supporting the scene with their appetites; they are opening their wallets even further.
Andrea is such an asset to the local food movement in our region. And she’s right. People are supporting their local food scene. And it’s making a difference.
The
Durham Herald Sun
did a full-blown cover article in the business section that ran the day before our event. Frank isn’t smiling in their picture, but after the gathering he certainly was.
Most of the people who came that night already knew Frank. The press coverage, email blasts, and phone calls had pulled in a full house.
On the sign-in sheet, there was a place to check whether you were interested in being a potential Slow Money lender or a borrower. It was heartening to see several checks in the lenders column.
We mingled for a while, then filled our plates, and found seats. We went around the room letting everyone briefly introduce themselves. In addition to the 20 or so people from Durham, people came from several surrounding areas: Alamance, Chatham, Wake, Cabarrus and Franklin Counties, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and even as far as Charlotte, about a three-hour drive away.
Credit: Bett Wilson Foley.
I spoke briefly about Slow Money, and Frank and Frances described their vision for the new deck. Marc Dreyfors, from Greenway Transit, told the group about his plans to repurpose a couple of used Duke University transit buses to help promote local food. And Collier and Maryah gave us an update on Homegrown City Farm, their new urban farm on the east side of town. Bryan McGannon, from the American Sustainability Business Council (ASBC) in Washington, DC, gave us an update on their activities. Then we broke up for more mingling. Bringing such a variety of people together — people who share similar sensibilities and have the same passion to make a difference — makes for a lively party.
Over the next week, Frank and I followed up with the people who had shown an interest in the deck project. One by one, they came by and worked out the terms of a short-term affordable loan, filled in a Promissory Note in triplicate, and left with their copy (and, no doubt, a loaf of bread or two).
The terms they worked out, however, are probably a good example of how
not
to do a Slow Money loan. In the end, there were five lenders, four different loan amounts, and two different term lengths, which makes for a complicated payment schedule. Luckily, Frank has a capable business manager who can make these payments all happen on time.
The deck is finished now, and it’s beautiful! They have hosted several parties, and it makes for a lovely option for outdoor eating and drinking in downtown Durham.
One of our new bff’s (that’s “best friends forever” in texting language) is the Fund 4 Democratic Communities (f4dc) in Greensboro, NC.
We try to run the leanest and meanest non-profit we possibly can, but when they came to us in the fall of 2011 with the offer of a small matching grant, we were grateful. I desperately needed some paid administrative help if I was going to keep up the momentum Slow Money NC had gained.
But we didn’t have much time to get the donations. So we sent this letter out to folks on our email list that we thought would be interested, and we waited:
Dear Friend of Slow Money NC,
This has been an incredible year for Slow Money NC. We helped start or expand four bakeries, two restaurants and a cheese shop that all feature local foods, as well as four farms, a butcher shop, a year-round farm stand, and a trucking company that is adding cold storage trucks to transport local produce.
Twenty individuals have made loans ranging from $500 to $5,000 to 15 local food entrepreneurs. You can see their pictures and read about them on our website.
On November 1st, 2011, 16 folks from our area refinanced the bank note at the Chatham Marketplace in Pittsboro, NC, raising $400k to bring the co-op’s monthly payments down by a third. That brings our total to $465k! We are making loans as fast as we can, and we are making history.
Recently, Slow Money NC was approached by the Fund 4 Democratic Communities, a local foundation that recognizes the great work we are doing. They want to give us $5,000 in matching funds to help us keep building our project. But we need to raise the same, in donations of no more than $100 per person, before Dec 31st.
This work is so exciting it keeps me awake at night. I know this can make a difference in helping local sustainable agriculture survive and flourish.
What we’ve done, entirely on volunteer hours, is almost miraculous. But we need money now to pay basic expenses, including paid part-time staff to help me follow up with potential lenders and loan applicants so we can keep making new loans.
Can you help us with this match?
Please help us accept this generous offer with whatever you can spare. Your foodshed will thank you. As do we.
Carol, Lyle and Jordan
Co-founders, Slow Money NC
Then Lyle took it up a notch.
He sent out an email to a few people he knew well. He talked about the good work we were doing and asked them to “help Carol.” We all get so many requests for donations, especially at the end of the year, that the overwhelmingly positive response was extremely validating.
Donations of $50 and $100 poured in. People were very generous, and we made that $5,000 match; we even beat the December 31st deadline by a few days. As we closed out 2011, we counted 27 Slow Money loans to 17 different food enterprises, totaling about $475,000.
In 2012, F4DC offered to renew this $5,000 grant, so we are back in another round of fundraising. Our numbers have grown to 59 loans to 30 food enterprises, and the total has now passed $600,000. We do not charge any fees for helping catalyze these loans, but instead invite folks to “pay it forward.” Their donations mean we can keep this project going.
My personal goal is to move two million dollars into farms and food businesses in North Carolina. I had hoped we might do that in two years. We’ve passed that date, but I’m confident we can still get there!
| Epilogue |  |
I sometimes wonder if everyone wants to make a difference — to be able to look in some direction and see that they have had a positive impact on the world we live in. To find that they have made people’s lives go better, or have left behind a healthy stand of trees for the next generation, or figured out how to lighten their carbon footprint.
It seems to me that this is a universal human desire.
I know it is what both drives and infuriates me. If I am not deeply engaged in community organizing, I am disappointed in myself, and when I am — as I survey my progress, it never seems I am doing enough.
Nonetheless, as I write these words Aaron is winterizing his farm store, Jackie is making more cakes faster and easier with her big new Hobart mixer, and Angelina has much less debt to burden her as she cheerfully cooks up Greek food day after day for our enjoyment. But there are others who need loans and haven’t found them yet. In the hope that there might be someone who would loan them the money they need, they have called or sent an email. But making people hopeful is cruel without follow-through. Which means I have work to do. Sleep can wait.
I greatly admire these industrious farmers, these people who feed us. I need only look out the window at the greenhouse on the hill to be reminded that small-scale sustainable farming is hard work.
Given the margins, the unreliability of weather, predators, the growing deer population, and the competition from agri-business, it is something of a miracle that anyone is willing to stay at it day after day, year after year. I am immensely thankful to the many who do.
By the time this book comes out, we will have made many more Slow Money loans and eaten many more pounds of delicious, locally raised food. Some loans will have been paid off, and hopefully our borrowers (and lenders) will all be thriving in their various brilliant local food endeavors.
As more folks hear about Slow Money NC, they approach us to learn more about how to access community capital. We’re getting back in touch with them as fast as we can. Some will no doubt get Slow Money loans. Or they will find other sources of capital. Most will put together a patchwork of funding sources as they start and build their businesses.
Credit: Bett Wilson Foley.
However they work it out, I hope they all succeed.
Like me, many others have been inspired by Woody Tasch’s concept of Slow Money. It’s grown into a vibrant movement with 16 chapters throughout the US, and one in France. In each location, it begins with just a few people spearheading the effort to move money into their local foodshed. Some form investment clubs (there are now six clubs, and others are in formation); many hold events to connect investors to food entrepreneurs. They are all creating powerful, lively networks for people who care about soil fertility and who want to “put their money where their mouth is.”
You can read about these groups on the Slow Money website (
slowmoney.org
) and by signing up for the national Slow Money newsletter. If you agree that “I want to be a good person too!” (as someone enthusiastically wrote in the subject line of an email to me recently) just track down your local Slow Money network and get started. If there isn’t one, you can reach me through our website (
slowmoneync.org
) and I’ll help you start one.
When you visit the Slow Money website, I urge you to sign
The Slow Money Principles
and contribute to the newly launched
Soil Trust,
a long-term non-profit fund that will continue working to rebuild local food systems for generations to come. And check out the new
Credibles
program (at
credibles.org
), a clever new way you can fund the food businesses of your choice by prepaying for what you intend to buy in the future. The re-payment of the funding of small, sustainable food-related businesses is in-kind — edible credits, or
Credibles.