Making the Case: $$$$ to sustain educational programs

    Welcome back to the table!

     After a healthy interlude to digest our incredible time at Shelburne Farms, I suspect we're all faced, once again, with the challenge of finding the funds to keep our programs going and growing (like healthy children more than GNP models).  I also suspect that if we find this discussion useful, any loose ends we may have left hanging in the air of the Coach Barn will grow back.

     To start, I will pose a question that just occurred to me as I was parsing Michael Roman's instructions for setting up this discussion. It was prompted by an article I just read about the rebirth of rural Greensburg, Kansas as an entirely "green" town,  after it was destroyed by a tornado in 2007. When the townspeople tried to borrow a million dollars to finance the construction of their new green "incubator" business district, the banks laughed in their faces. Undaunted, the folks raised over $900,000 from their own ranks (population under 1,000 and shrinking!)

     Certainly there are out there sources of non-local funding that have been gleaned from our communities and citizens in various ways that make them now available to the most articulate supplicants for doing great works, but I wonder...

     What is the case we can make to our own community members (read local farmers, eaters and learners) that will inspire a heartfelt and consistent stream of support for programs that we believe will improve many aspects of their lives as our neighbors?

     Anyone?....