Watershed Fund

The product we at Neighborhood Economics will build to enhance the zero interest philanthropic investment platform is a field guide that begins by engaging new donors, many from the benefit dinners, start learning more about where to invest in the food system in your watershed. And that leads to a broader emphasis on learning how to apply the tools of venture philanthropy, of learning to give to invest in things where the benefit comes back when the investment is paid off, and then goes out into the world again. We can keep up with it and know where your dollars are now, and the additional good they are doing now. There will also be a version for faith communities. We hope to link with Abundance Capital’s pool of donors who believe in giving to invest for justice. The dinners will be promoted by jb media. We will produce the graphics and the content to accompany the promotion, they will do the social media, using our logos, etc.

For the Watershed Fund it is important to define the term Gratitude on tap That is the metric we use to see if that farm’s ecosystem could raise $10,000, often but not always, at benefit dinners.

I will start listing players and organizations and partners here and have each one be their own page, to start. I am excited that Veronika Gunter is our project manager from JB Media. She’s done big things and a diverse number of interesting and good things. Margaret Gifford, with her partner Mike Gatchell at Abundance Capital have the nation’s only locally focuses, justice focused donor advised fund platform. Margaret has deep knowledge of food investing.

Stephanie Swepson Twitty the CEO of Eagle Market Streets CDC, the fund issuer) is in this project, entering the market with their Watershed Fund with Neighborhood Economics. To start, besides hosting the benefit dinners, Neighborhood Economics will be producing an engagement field guide to the food system in your watershed to help new donors give to invest more in their local community using the portal of the benefit dinners for farm to table restaurants with their farmers. Eagle will do the due diligence and underwriting of the zero interest investment and will work with technical assistance providers with farmers. Neberecon will tell the story and engage people with the fund and the issues in the food system they could be engaged in. Being ever mindful that we need to produce a resilient food system that will be ready for the time when it no longer makes sense to ship in food. So this is a future proofing initiative that is also a collective climate change response. partners in the existing farm system technical assistance, business advisory, networking and connections, some funding