Become a Monadnock Buy Local business member by October 13th and get one free ticket (worth $35) to Hannah Grimes Center's CONNECT Event on November 7, from 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm. Best of all, your renewal will not be due again until April 1, 2019. Tickets are limited — so become a Monadnock Buy Local member today.
Join Today!
Need help with the process? Email us today.
The Hannah Grimes Center, The Keene Sentinel and Machina Arts are once again combining their energies to present CONNECT, our premier networking event of the year on Tuesday, November 7th from 5:30pm-7:30pm! Over 400 people attended last year’s CONNECT event, we expect tickets to sell out. Get your tickets early, this is an event you do not want to miss!
The event includes GREAT music, DELICIOUS local food, drinks and more. Get a sneak peak of Green Energy Option’s NEW retail building on 37 Roxbury Street, our event venue, slated to open in 2018. This year’s keynote speaker will be Greg Tehven (or Greg from Fargo). Machina Arts, which specializes in melding art, lighting, and mood, is working with several groups to display downtown ideas generated at a Hannah Grimes “Idea Jam”. Ideas range from increasing public art, building Keene as the solar capitol of NH, encouraging more walking, Downtown Keene as a conference center, and more sidewalk and pedestrian space on Main Street. Monadnock Buy Local’s installation will feature local economy-building ideas for the future like a local stock exchange, local currency and online marketplace for locally owned businesses.
Join Monadnock Buy Local and The Local Crowd Monadnock at the Hinsdale Farmers Market's October Festival on Sunday, October 15 from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at River Park in downtown Hinsdale. Enjoy fun family crafts and delicious locally grown and made food.
RSVP today!
Come celebrate the harvest and learn more about the Hinsdale Beautification Committee and Hinsdale Police Department's efforts to bring their town together to build a stronger -- and more beautiful -- community. SEE how they want to use TLC Monadnock's crowdfunding platform transform Main Street crosswalks into safer ones. Give a great idea in Hinsdale a lift and check out their Safe Streets demo at this event. Stop by our table and learn more about how individuals, organizations and businesses are raising funds using TLC Monadnock, an innovative locally based crowdfunding platform.
Here we are at the Winchester Pickle Festival in September -- hope to see you in Hinsdale!
Saturday, September 30th at the Monadnock Fall Festival, Tiffany Mannion will be appointed the first Bicycle Mayor of Keene. In this role she will represent cyclists in the region and bring together those who need to be involved to get more people in the Monadnock region on bikes. Tiffany is a regular bicycle commuter and explorer and expects to ride close to her goal of 3000 miles this year. By becoming the Bicycle Mayor of Keene, Tiffany will join a worldwide network of Bicycle Mayors, called the Bicycle Mayor and Leader Network. Working with the Monadnock Alliance for Sustainable Transportation, she will focus her two-year term as a Bicycle Mayor on three areas: education, connection and creation. As the Monadnock Region’s only certified cycling instructor, she will set up educational programming and work toward adding other certified cycling instructors in the region. She will connect college, university and businesses with the benefits of bicycle -friendly programming and connect the great work of our region that points to a shared future of confident riders and supported infrastructure. And she will create an online hub connecting our region of riders with opportunities to know your neighbor with events and initiatives such as bike kitchens, bike shares and community rides. The Bicycle Mayor and Leader Network is initiated by Amsterdam based startup CycleSpace, which has the aim of getting the next billion people on bikes in order to accelerate the shift from car-centric to human-centric cities. It supports and advances the local needs of cycling in the respective communities of the Bicycle Mayors and encourages the Bicycle Mayors to connect and share experiences to create a global movement with a local impact. The program started in Amsterdam with the election of Anna Luten as the first bicycle of Amsterdam in 2016. Last year Bicycle Mayors from Mexico-City, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Baroda, India joined. Tiffany Mannion will be the first Bicycle Mayor in the United States. In order to be appointed as the Bicycle Mayor of Keene, Tiffany received endorsement letters to bring this global initiative by the Monadnock Alliance for Sustainable Transportation, Pathways for Keene, Mayor Kendall Lane, The Monadnock Cycling Club, and the Swanzey Police Department. The appointment will take place at 1:00 pm at the Gazebo bandstand at the Monadnock Fall Festival.
From left to right, the Bicycle Mayors of Amsterdam, Mexico-city, Sao Paulo, Baroda India and Sydney
CycleSpace is making the shift from car-centric to human-centric cities possible through acting as a catalyst for breakthrough solutions around cycling. We create and accelerate ideas, kick start collaborations, and launch global innovations and programs. We have an ambitious goal - for 50% of all city trips to be by bike by 2030. We call this ‘50 by 30’ and we believe it will lead to fundamentally healthier, happier and more prosperous cities. Cycling is more than transportation. It is transformation. In all our work, we never stop asking ‘Where can the bicycle take you?’
TLC Monadnock's third online crowdfunding campaign reached its goal of raising $5,000 to support Monadnock Buy Local's Placemaker Local Rewards program. Fifty-nine supporters contributed $5,150 -- voting with their dollars to bring Placemaker to the Monadnock Region.
September 30, 2017 - 10 am - 7 pm in Downtown Keene, NH
Check for updates at Monadnock Fall Festival's Facebook Page
RSVP on Facebook
MUSIC (Rain Location in parenthesis)
Bicycle Mayor of Keene Appointment: Central Square Gazebo 1:00PM
VENDORS Include:
Ash Hill Center for the Arts in Swanzey is holding an event in partnership with Monadnock Buy Local and The Local Crowd Monadnock. It's a fun and festive event called "Faire-ly Creative" Event. We invite artists, creative businesses and food & drink vendors to consider becoming an event vendor. Event Details: October 22 from 11am - 4pm at the Ash Hill Center for the Arts in Swanzey The Local Crowd Monadnock will partner with the Ash Hill Center for the Arts "Fair-ly Creative" event. Artists and creative businesses from the Monadnock Region will demonstrate their skills and crafts. Cost: $20 exhibitor space fee Exhibitors may sell their work, but the focus should be on demonstrating what they do or developing an activity to engage the public (especially children). Interested? Have questions? Please contact Pam Dexter at Ash Hill Center for the Arts at phdex.nest@gmail.com.
Button Up New Hampshire, the popular home energy savings workshop series, is coming to Keene, NH. The City of Keene’s Cities for Climate Protection Committee, the Monadnock Progressive Alliance’s Climate Action Team, the Monadnock Sustainability Network and Southwest Community Services are hosting this free workshop for residents. The workshop will take place on Saturday October 7th at the Stone Arch Village Senior Housing Community Room at 835 Court Street in Keene, NH. Doors open at 9:30am with the presentation from 10:00am-11:30am. The workshops are being sponsored by NHSaves and coordinated by the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative (PAREI). To check out the workshop flyer, click here.
The Monadnock Alliance for Sustainable Transportation Carsharing Subcommittee is gathering information about interest in Keene and the Monadnock Region for Carsharing. Please help us out by taking this short survey:
Take the Carsharing Survey
Want to learn more about carsharing? Read information on MAST's website, read MAST's carsharing report, or come to the next MAST carsharing subcommittee meeting. All responses are confidential, and information will be used for planning purposes only. THANK YOU!
Originally Published on January 4, 2014 (Updated September 10, 2017)
It’s challenging to know how a business really does business: How do they treat their employees? Do they try to reduce their impacts on the environment? Are they striving to contribute more to their community? A certification process called B Corp makes answers to these questions more transparent. “[It’s] like the Fair Trade label but for a whole company, not just a bag of coffee,” says Jay Coen Gilbert, B Lab Co-Founder, the nonprofit that certifies B Corps businesses.
There are currently 2,251 Certified B Corps (the B is short for Benefit) from 50+ countries — and we’re lucky to have one in our own neck of the woods: W.S. Badger Company, Inc. in Gilsum, a locally owned company that makes healing balms, lip balms, sunscreens and other personal care products. Since 2011, Badger is “measuring what matters” as a Certified B Corp. Sure, Badger is measuring profits — but to them, money is the fuel, not the end goal. According to Rebecca Hamilton, Badger’s Director of Product Development, they had many motivations for pursuing B Corp certification. Badger’s products are already certified organic and fair trade, but they wanted a more holistic way to measure how well they do business. B Corp certification helps Badger benchmark their progress towards sustainability, showing them clear and real opportunities for positive growth and better ways to do business.
Another part of Badger’s motivation to become certified was to ensure the company continued to “do good” while experiencing growth — even if leadership suddenly changed. “As a small company, we knew at our core what was right; but little structure was in place to document these as policies,” shares Rebecca. “We wanted to build these practices into the DNA of the company.”
Mary Cabot, CEO of another B Corps, Dansko Footwear, sums it up nicely with this quote: “Just like you want your child to grow up healthy and outlive you as a parent, we want our company to as well. B Corps help us have faith that this can happen.”
View how Badger ranks as a B Corp at www.bcorporation.net/badger.
So, what about you? Let’s say you’re not a business owner – how can you support B Corps and encourage others to explore this different way of doing business? Tell your boss about B Corp Certification. Any business can fill out the B Impact Assessment online for free and see how they rank. More than 25,000 businesses use the B Impact Assessment to benchmark their performance and help them set goals for continuous improvement.
To become a Certified B Corp a business must earn at least 80 out of 200 points in the B Impact Assessment and pay a certification fee. It took Badger about one hour to fill out the assessment and then the fact checking process took a couple of days. The certified company receives a full report with recommendations from B Lab. Certification must be renewed annually, and standards are stringent and continually revised to make sure companies are really “doing good.”
Another way to support B Corps is to ask your favorite locally owned businesses to carry B Corps Certified products. Browse companies on the B Corp website (www.bcorporation.net) and share your favorites – perhaps King Arthur Flour or Seventh Generation? You can also help by taking a look at what office products your workplace uses and encouraging your company to switch to products from Certified B Corps.
And finally, one of the ultimate ways to help is to advocate for the state of New Hampshire to recognize a new type of business – the Benefit Corporation. While B Corps is a certification offered by the nonprofit B Lab, a Benefit Corporation is a legal status run by the state. Benefit corporation laws are already enacted in many states, including New Hampshire.
Your support of Certified B Corps and B Corporation legislation helps companies grow and become more successful by doing good, encouraging other companies to follow their lead.
For the fifth year, Monadnock Buy Local shines a light on local food, farms and our entire Monadnock Region food system during New Hampshire Eat Local Month, a month-long celebration of our state’s harvest.
Our food system includes all the pieces needed to bring local food from the farm to our plates: the soil, farm workers, transportation networks, markets and more -- everything needed to grow, harvest and distribute these goods to us. These pieces come together to form our local food system.
In honor of reaching the five-year mark, we’re traveling back to 2012 to acknowledge how much our food system has grown and where some of the gaps remain.
Now let’s dig in around what’s new in our Monadnock Region food system this year.
The Cornucopia Project partnered with the Monadnock Conservancy to create a brand new program called “Kids Connect! Farm, Field & Forest” at Four Winds Farm in Peterborough and Tracie’s Community Farm in Fitzwilliam. This five-week summer program connects kids to the land with farming, gardening and cooking. Stay tuned for next year’s program.
For the first time this spring, the Monadnock Food Co-op’s Farm Fund awarded grants to three farms: Manning Hill Farm of Winchester, Flying Cloud Dairy of Alstead and Archway Farm, of Keene. Manning Hill Farm will install an energy efficient cooler to increase the storage capacity to store their grass-fed milk. Flying Cloud Dairy will install a freeze-free water system that more efficiently gets water to their cows. Archway Farm will build a walk-in freezer to store their pasture-raised pork products. Learn more about the Farm Fund.
Monadnock Menus, a local food delivery service previously managed by the Cheshire County Conservation District, recently merged with the Food Hub managed by Food Connects in Brattleboro, VT. This merger brings two aggregation and distribution food hubs together under one roof to establish a cross-state network of food producers and wholesale buyers -- creating a simpler way to buy local food. Food Connects, an entrepreneurial nonprofit that also provides educational and consulting services aimed at strengthening the regional food system, will manage the two branches of the food hub while continuing to grow the local reach of each. Currently, the Food Connects hub aggregates products from over 30 area vendors and delivers orders to 75 buyers, four days a week in its refrigerated truck. These buyers include institutions like the Cheshire Medical Center; local business such as the Monadnock Food Co-op, WS Badger and Summerhill Assisted Living; and school partners like Keene, Conval and the Monadnock School Districts. Discover more.
Cheshire County’s Double Up Veggie Bucks Program expanded and is now part of the Granite State Market Match program. This program, managed by the Cheshire County Conservation District in our region, doubles SNAP/EBT benefits for fruits and vegetables at participating farmers markets, CSAs and farm stands, helping low-income households purchase more fresh fruits and vegetables while supporting local farmers. Participating locations now include: The Farmer’s Market of Keene, TEAM Jaffrey’s Farmers’ Market, The Winchester Farmer’s Market on Main, Picadilly Farm CSA in Winchester, Hillside Springs CSA in Westmoreland and the Keene Housing Buying Club. Stay up to date. Thank you to all the individuals, programs, policies and initiatives that continue to build stronger local and regional food systems in our corner of the state and throughout New England. Together, we’re cultivating healthier citizens, communities and economies.
The Local Crowd Monadnock - Keene, NH
