I've joined the fundraising committee for the community garden. I raise money for a living, but for a very different type of organization.

The garden is quite established (25 years old, city-owned & preserved property, and 50-100 gardeners). Next month, we are doing a flea market/plant sale as a fundraiser.

I'd like any input on fundraisers and methods that have worked for other community gardening fund seekers.

Thanks, Carrie

I am also involved in a Community Garden in Philadelphia. One good fundraiser that we did last year is selling bulbs for the fall. Dutch Bulbs (http://www.dutchbulbs.com/) has a fundraiser for this that is great. If you go to the link, you will see a tab for Fundraising at the top. They send you all of the required materials. It works sort of like girl scout cookies - people can bring the flyers into work and people sign up for the bulbs which will be shipped at planting time. You could even bring the flyers to your flea market. The best part is that FIFTY PERCENT of the price of the bulbs is profit for the garden. Another nice thing is that they have bonuses for how much you sell total, so you can use these bonus bulbs to plant in the community garden.

Good luck!

-Laura

Anyway back to fundraising.

2 ways they do it:
1 - Buy bunches of packets (your pick) and get the volume discount, sell at regular (or slightly higher) price. The example they give is buy 250 packets at 80 cents each minus a 15% discount you spend $170. Sell them for $1 each, and you make $80. They give an additional 10% off for schools, but I see nothing regarding community gardens.

2 - Buy seeds in bulk and repackage. This is obviously a little more work. Their example is to buy 1# of (black seeded simpson) lettuce seed for $10 (there would be discounts based on total order), repackage into 200 packets of 2 grams each and sell for 60 cents (catalog price is 50 cents). This gives and income of $120 for $10 in seed plus whatever little seed envelopes may cost.

e-mail off list with your address if you'd like. I'll photocopy several relevant pages and mail them to you.

I'd also send them a catalog request through the mail. The website is linked below but they do not take orders on-line. Here is there address:

Fedco Seeds
P.O. Box 520-A
Waterville, Maine 04903

Ken