Apply by April 18 for FBEN's Year-Long Organizational Leadership Cohort

The Farm-Based Education Network is offering a series of workshops to support those in leadership at farm and garden-based nonprofit organizations!

Apply by April 18!

Is this for me? Are you responsible for building a resilient team and a thriving organization? Are you thinking about the experiences, identities, and roles of your board members? Are you reflecting on compensation philosophies, work-life balance, professional growth, and a culture of care for staff? The cohort is designed for, but not limited to: executive directors, founders, board chairs and people interested in taking on these roles soon. This is for you if you're actively building and reflecting on organizational systems and practices related to the topics below. We hope to establish a cohort from a mix of urban, rural, and suburban farms and gardens and with diverse experience levels, social identities and lived experiences. The cohort will be no more than 30 people.

Facilitated By: This series is being designed by Vera Simon-Nobes, FBEN Coordinator and Rebecca Lemos Otero, Executive Director of HumanitiesDC and co-founder and former Executive Director for City Blossoms, an organization dedicated to fostering community well-being through providing safe, accessible kid-driven green spaces. 

How the Sessions will Work: Each session will introduce the topic through a brief presentation before welcoming perspectives and stories from guest leaders with experience in building trust and interdependence among staff, and creative, adaptive farm and garden-based organizations. There will be time for group discussion, and a limit of 30 attendees in the cohort to support your learning experience.

Dates & Topics (additional topics may be added): Many people weighed in on these topics in early 2025, and their feedback is helping shape the series.

- Creating a Successful Board: From Start-ups to Revamps, How to Help Shape Your Board for Success and Organizational Support (with guest presenter Rafael Woldeab, Executive Director, City Blossoms, Washington, D.C..

- Organizing Organizations: Ways We Can Arrange our Teams to Build Clarity, Cohesion and Collaboration (Two parts) (Part I with guest presenter, Jennifer Rothman, Education and Executive Director, Yellow Farmhouse Education Center, Stonington, CT)

- Staff Hiring, Retention and Compensation: Building HR Systems that Feel Transparent, Supportive and Fiscally Possible In Today’s Market

- Becoming More Financially Flexible: How to use budgets, diversified revenue streams, and multi-year financial planning to build a more stable and adaptable organization (Two parts)

- Advancing Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Fundraising Practices for Farm-Based

Non-Profits

- Growing Thoughtfully: Using Strategic Plans and Implementation Tools to Scale an Organization While Balancing Mission, Staff and Culture

-Navigating Liability & Balancing Risk- Sharing Leadership: What Can it Look Like to Change the Leadership Structure of Your Organization

- The Graceful Goodbye: How to Create a Transition Plan that Will Help You and Your Organization Feel Prepared and Successful

Expectations: We hope you'll attend at least 10-12 of our planned 12 sessions

Cost: Currently, this program is offered for no fee thanks to support from the US Department of Agriculture.  If grant funds are no longer available during the cohort, we will ask participants to contribute using a pay what you can model of $0 - $450. 

Why the Application? 

Because this is a pilot concept, we're hoping to curate the group so we can best determine if what we're trying is working. Applications will be reviewed by Vera Simon-Nobes and Rebecca Lemos Otero.

Timeline

- April 18th - Applications Due

- April 30th - Notification of acceptance

- May 29th - Tentative First session