Despite these uncertain times, The Local Crowd Monadnock (TLC Monadnock), a community-based crowdfunding program, will continue its work to empower you to support the businesses, organizations, and initiatives that grow wealthier and healthier communities in our region.  We’re also exploring innovative ways to best leverage our program to keep our community healthy and resilient. 

“Crowdfunding is a great chance to keep forward momentum, to keep up the spirits of your community, and to make immediate positive economic impact locally,” said Emily Best of Seed & Spark Crowdfunding. 

TLC Monadnock launched two campaigns this month.  One campaign is for Food Connects, which distributes local food to wholesalers like the Monadnock Food Co-op.  The other supports Keene Housing Kids Collaborative and helps mark their fifth year in our community.  Learn more about these two campaigns and support them today.  Whether you give $5 or $500, it all comes together to help make our community more local, green and fair!

Food Connects

Food Connects is an entrepreneurial non-profit on a mission to create healthy families, thriving farms and connected communities. They partner with local farmers and food producers like Frisky Cow Gelato, Echo Farm Puddings, and Picadilly Farm.  In all, they source meat, dairy, produce and baked goods from over seventy producers throughout southern Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

With the help of Food Connects, these businesses share their bounty with schools, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants and other businesses across our region.  Overall, Food Connects wants to create a vibrant food economy and make local food accessible to all community members. To achieve this goal, local farmers and food producers need access to larger markets to scale up production and increase their revenue.

Expanding wholesale markets is challenging, especially when it comes to meeting the unique requirements of each wholesale customer.  “Many large-scale, wholesale customers in the community can only purchase from a limited number of approved vendors,” says McKenna Hayes, Food Connects Food Hub Operations Manager. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for a small-scale, family-owned operation to become an approved vendor.”

Food Connects is working to solve this problem by becoming an approved vendor for larger customers, allowing schools, grocery stores, hospitals and restaurants to easily purchase from local farmers and producers who sell through Food Connects.

That’s where you come in!  Campaign supporters will empower Food Connects to develop formal food safety procedures and purchase the supplies they need to obtain a third-party food safety certification.  Join us and make it easier to buy and sell local food in our community.  Food Connects “Growing Local Food Markets in the Monadnock Region” crowdfunding campaign is well on the way to meeting its fundraising goal of $10,000.  As of today, their fundraising total surpassed $7,500!

Visit Food Connects’ crowdfunding page.  Give at certain levels and claim a great reward (or two) while they last.  Rewards include Brewbakers Café gift certificates, Frisky Cow gelato and more.  This crowdfunding campaign ends on April 18. Or you can round up your change for this campaign at the Monadnock Food Co-op until March 31.

Keene Housing Kids Collaborative

The Local Crowd Monadnock’s second crowdfunding campaign supports Keene Housing Kids Collaborative.   Keene Housing Kids Collaborative gives kids living in Keene Housing households the chance to participate in activities in our community that will help them succeed. 

“The children in our community are the next generation of workers, parents and community leaders.  But not all kids have an equal start in life because their families struggle financially to get by,” said Liz Chipman, executive director of Keene Housing Kids Collaborative. “Investing in children is investing in the future of our community.”
 
Our community benefits when all children have an equal chance to be an active part of that community.  Help Keene Housing Kids Collaborative celebrate their fifth birthday by supporting them with a contribution of $5 or more. By giving a little, you can help out a lot.

“We believe kids, wherever they live, should be part of the community, not apart from the community. That’s why we don’t have centralized programming on-site at Keene Housing properties,” shared Liz. “Instead, we partner with community organizations that are already providing excellent programming for kids.”

Visit the “Helping Kids Access Success” campaign page.  This campaign also offers fantastic rewards for giving at certain levels like lessons from Kickboxing Keene and True Hope Therapeutic Horsemanship.  This crowdfunding campaign ends on April 2.

Watch for more crowdfunding campaigns at tlcmonadnock.com.  Be well, everyone!

TLC Monadnock is a community-based crowdfunding platform that empowers individuals to support the businesses, organizations and initiatives that grow wealthier and healthier communities in our region.  Crowdfunding, or the practice of raising funds from a large number of people to support a local project, is a viable alternative to recruiting businesses from outside the region to boost economic activity.

TLC Monadnock is currently hosted by Monadnock Food Co-op and supported by the Greater Keene Chamber of Commerce, Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce, New Hampshire Small Business Development Center and Monadnock Economic Development Corporation.   Have questions?  Please contact TLC Monadnock at jen@thelocalcrowd.com or 603-283-5401.