Re: RE: 'in kind' donations & CA visits

**A*@aol.com**

Soleil,

To Fred's sage advice, I'd suggest that you get yourselves organized to the 
point that you have done these things:

1) Elected officers ( a chair, treasurer, and record keeper for starters). 
Create by-laws a procedures for expenditures before the first cent comes in - 
this is serious business, fund-raising, and you need to do this on the up and 
up. If you need by-laws to use as an example, please go the the Clinton 
Community Garden site:  <A HREF="http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org/";>
Clinton Community Garden

</A>
2) Created some letterhead for yourself on your computer with the garden's 
name,  mailing address, contact phone/fax, e-mail and the link to your nice 
website ( looks good, by the way.)  

3) Open up a bank/checking account for your community garden that has the 
president, treasurer and some other responsible person as signatories. 

4) Make friends with a local politician or businessman who will vouch for 
you. Make sure that you create opportunities where he/she can look good and 
that there is someone around to take pictures ( starting the children's bed, 
getting soil amendments, the handing off of the check with everybody smiling, 
garden events - get the idea.)  Create a constituency.

5) Let the local paper know what you're doing. There is usually some nice 
person who writes a garden page - cultivate her/him. Same thing for the 
person who does the local events calendar. Send them pictures and invitations 
to events or descriptions of them afterwards.

I like to sell t-shirts with the garden logo on it ( and have a few around to 
give as souvenirs to folks who make themselves helpful.) 

By the way the ACGA website has plenty of stuff on fundraising as well on the 
links page: just scroll down to the bottom where there are lots of great 
links under "Miscellaneous ( Funding, etc.) 

 <A HREF="http://www.communitygarden.org/links/index.html";>ACGA:Links index
</A>  

On being shameless - just remember, if you don't ask, you won't receive.

Also, and this is important - charity begins at home. Always start by passing 
the hat among yourselves....

Best wishes,
Adam Honigman

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