Success at the 2010 Project Grow Plant Sale!
Project Grow's 2010 Plant Sale proved to be an enormous success. For the first time ever, we sold out of all the plants by the end of the sale Project Grow owes the success of the sale to not only everyone who bought plants but to a huge group of volunteers who grew the plants, transported them to the sale site at People's Food Co-op and then worked as salespeople during the sale. The gross sales were about $7500. The exact amount of all the expenses is not known at this time but the sale will certainly net Project Grow at least $5000.
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| New Budget Paying Off
During bad economic times, it sometimes feels like there is never any good financial news, so we wanted to share a small bit of good news about Project Grow finances. One of the more difficult tasks for the current Project Grow Board was coming up with a balanced budget despite losing $11,500 in grant money from the City of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County in 2010. The Board managed to create a balanced budget by only employing a single half time employee rather than two half time employees as Project Grow had in previous years. Thankfully, Project Grow had no employees in the fall of 2009, so no layoffs were necessary.
More than simply not hiring someone, creating this balanced budget required shifting significant responsibilities from staff to board members and volunteers.
It now appears that Project Grow is beginning to see some of the benefits of this effort. The organization will probably finish 2010 in the black due to the following:
- Better than expected results for the 2010 Plant Sale. The Board had conservatively predicted the Plant Sale would take in slightly less than in previous years. Despite new expenses this year, the plant sale should yield about a $5000 profit for 2010.
- As mentioned last month, Marcella Trautmann donated about 6 months of labor as Interim Managing Director for no charge. This donation saved Project Grow about $10,000.
- Continued interest in community gardens and the addition of three new garden sites (Brooks Street, Chapel Hill, Dicken) and about 30 new plots. These additional rentals resulted in about a 10% increase in plot fee revenue for 2010 versus 2009 despite no change in plot fees.
- The continued success of the WCC Organic Certification Program classes.
Final figures will not be available until the end of the year, but right now, Project Grow's financial situation looks very good. Congratulations to the entire membership on this significant achievement! |
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Status of Project Grow's Community Gardens
As of this newsletter being sent out, all the Project Grow community gardens are completely rented except Airport. In addition, the Discovery Gardens at County Farm are completely rented. |
Volunteer of the Month for June - Plant Sale Helpers
More than 50 people helped with the plant sale this year. This really says something both about how important Project Grow is to people and how much gardeners enjoy one another's company! The plant sale is a very complicated project. Volunteers grow all the plants (the first ones were started this year at the end of February). This involved seeding the plants as groups in 8 inch pots and then transplanting them twice, first into 48 cell per flat 4 packs and then into their final 18 pot per flat 3.5" pots. This year the seed starting team started nearly 3000 plants!
On the day of the sale, another crew of people works to transport about 2/3 of the plants to People's Food Co-op and organize the flats for sale. Finally, a large group of volunteers works as salespeople to actually sell the plants to customers and collect their money.
Needless to say, this important fundraiser is only possible because so many people are willing to help. At the risk of accidentally leaving out someone whose contribution was invaluable, here is a list of volunteers who made this year's sale such a great success.
Gerry Chaffers
Alan McWaters
Ana Serviente
Anna Matters
Becky Otto
Bob Werner
Brady Mikusko
Cathy Morgan
Chauna Black
Cherri Buijk
Chris Elkin
Cynthia Nicely
Cynthia Rutherford
Damaris Sufulko
Dara Leto
Dari Stuhl
Dave Jones
David Rosenberg
Diane L. Wilson
Ge Zhang
Jill
Jill Peek
John Matters
Joseph Harper
June Escara-Wilkes
Kathleen Strnad
Kitty Donohoe
Krista Takacs
Leah Shindelar
Marcella Trautmann
Mary Price
Matt Canter
Megan S.
Melissa Pike
Natasha Del Cid
Pam Schwarzmann
Paul Jones
Rachel Taylor
Rebekah Brown
Ron Shindelar
Rose Shindelar
Royer Held
Sam Zwetchkenbaum
Sue Budin
Thierry Rollina
Vicky Ellingrod
Dawn Johnston
Kirk Jones
Inge Ferguson
Beth Wichter
Robert Carter
Grady |
June Potluck and Garage Sale
Project Grow will hold the summer Potluck on Sunday June 27th from 5-7pm at Leslie Science Center. These potlucks have been a great opportunity for gardeners to meet ach other and board members. The potluck will be held rain or shine and everyone is invited. Please bring a dish to pass and we hope to see you there!
We're also cleaning house! Visit our Garage Sale while you're at the potluck. Items to be sold include Brill Razorcut 38 reel mower, rechargeable cordless mulching mower, worm box, a pile of 3' fence posts, 50 gallon water barrels, 2 matching bookshelves, laser printer new in box, laminator new in box, Project Grow T-shirts and gardening gloves, tickets for the upcoming Jack Johnson concert at the DTE Energy Music Theater and more!
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Sign Up Again for Kroger Community Rewards
Project Grow Takes advantage of two rewards programs run by local grocery stores. You can get a Hiller's Scrip Card from Project Grow that basically works like a gift card. You add money to the card and for every $100 you add to the card, Hiller's gives Project Grow $5. It is a quick and simple way to painlessly give money to Project Grow.
Project Grow also participates in a similar program with Kroger based on the Rewards checkout card you use to get sale prices at Kroger. However, because the Kroger program is essentially a gift from Kroger to your preferred non-profit, you must re-register every year. If your registered last Fall with Kroger to have your purchasesbenefit Project Grow, you must confirm that you want Project Grow to be the beneficiary of your purchases. If you do nothing, your Rewards card will revert to benefitting no one. To register with Kroger again, please follow www.krogercommunityrewards.com |
Hopefully the Last New Address
Rather than have our address change periodically, Project Grow will now receive all mail at a post office box. Our new address is:
Project Grow
P.O. Box 130293
Ann Arbor, MI 48113
We have placed and renewed post office forwards for our former addresses on Traver Road and Dixboro Road but to reach us most efficiently, please address correspondence to the post office box.
Our other contact information is:
Managing Director, Cindy Rutherford
Cindy's e-mail address is managingdirector@projectgrowgardens.org
The Project Grow phone number is still (734) 996-3169.
Our current volunteer volunteer coordinator is Marcella Trautmann who can be reached at Discovery@projectgrowgardens.org .
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Writing and Blog Help
Project Grow is looking for volunteers to help with some writing. Our peerless blogger, Joan Bailey, has been creating great blog entries for years but would like a little help. If you are interested in working with Joan, please e-mail her at joanbailey935@hotmail.com
In addition, Project Grow is also looking for people interested in helping with this newsletter.
Now that the newsletter has gone paperless, some of the more thankless newsletter jobs (selling advertising, managing advertisers and doing layout for the printer) no longer exist. This is great news for those of you interested in writing about gardening. Because a paperless newsletter does not have the space restrictions of a hardcopy, this is a great opportunity for people interested in getting some real life experience in writing.
Ideally, the Project Grow newsletter will not just advertise the organization and raise money. Rather, the focus of the newsletter is twofold. First is to keep those interested in Project Grow informed of what is happening with the organization (potlucks, board decisions and so on). This does occasionally involve talking about fundraising events, such as the plant sale, but our intention is never to have making money for the organization be the focus of this newsletter. Secondly, we want to share information about how to grow things in this part of Michigan.
In this age of tweeting and Google, it is easy to instantly learn how to grow corn, or whatever, but it is far more difficult to find the best variety of tomato to grow in Ann Arbor, or what is the best way to suppress weeds in a community garden, or what are the best slug control products for this area. To recycle a commonly used phrase, local is the new organic, and the goal of the Project Grow newsletter and our website is to keep this kind of local, useful information at your fingertips.
To make this really work, we would like you to contribute your experiences and ideas. If you are not comfortable writing, you can still be involved by sending just a few sentences describing what works or hasn't worked well for you. We hope to also gather this kind of information by occasionally sending e-mails which require only a single line response, such as "what is your favorite tomato?", or "what food do you most look forward to in spring?". We will collect these short answers and print them here as well as hopefully on the website. If you would like to be involved with producing the newsletter please contact Kirk at Kirk@goodscentsgardens.com |
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