FarmRaiser

When I was a kid our school sold magazines and my scout troop sold fireworks to raise money. No doubt your kids or grandkids have sold everything from popcorn to greeting cards and wrapping paper. A new effort hopes to change that school fundraiser according to Japhet

Koteen,

KOTEEN: I think the first one was in Flint, Michigan so they worked with a Flint, Michigan school to get local Michigan apples, bought them in bulk and packaged them up in brown paper bags and sold them at basically the retail price of apples but you get farm fresh quality and the kids learn about the agriculture system and how it works and where the apples come from. Then they can go sell something that they can really feel good about.

It’s a great idea to source local products and use them as fundraisers plus Koteen says they are moving into the technology realm.

KOTEEN: Just in the last few months they’ve developed a new tech platform that makes it much easier. Rather than just pen and paper and going door-to-door they can actually use social media and email to sell.

So far the FarmRaiser program has focused mainly in Michigan, Washington DC and Seattle but he says anyone can recommend a location.

KOTEEN: We start by getting schools interested and they sign up on our website and go to www.farmraiser.com and we get producers interested. When we have enough producers and we have school that is committed then we’ll do a FarmRaiser in that location. One of the biggest FarmRaiser’s to date has been in a small town in Idaho that just said we’re going to do this throughout the school and they had a multi-crop farm that provided all the goods and they sold $15-thousand dollars worth of produce in like 2 weeks.

And that’s Washington Ag Today. I’m Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.