This site offers great resources for starting a CSA: https://growingsmallfarms.ces.ncsu.edu/growingsmallfarms-csaguide/
Author: Stephen Hinton
Buyers’ club resources
The motives to start a buyers’ club range from controlling food sources to saving money by buying in bulk. Others include wanting to help local farmers, minimizing a product’s carbon foot print or simply yearning to get closer to the food system. 146 buyers’ clubs often want to do something planet-friendly. This site is a treasure trove of information. http://startabuyingclub.com/
Kentucky typhoon
This drone footage of the aftermath of the Kentucky typhoon gives paus for thought: would a resilient 146 club have been able to help? See the footage here. https://youtu.be/ROXs0F7gcc4
Localwiki
LocalWiki (Follow this link) offers everybody a way to share and learn about where they live. From Sapporo, Japan to Oakland, California, communities across the world use LocalWiki to share their local knowledge. Localwiki is place to learn about your neighborhoods, about your local parks, about being a parent in your city, about history, politics – anything and everything useful and beautiful about your community. Unlike a news site or a blog, anyone can add and modify LocalWiki pages. LocalWiki lets you and your […]
Choosing a fiscal sponsor
Instead of starting your own non-profit or another kind of organisation, you can work with an existing organisation under a formal arrangement known as fiscal sponsorship. This is when all income is paid first to the sponsor, who keeps a separate account for you. Payouts, too come from the sponsor. For Europe, we recommend you look at opencollective.com Your organisation is then just an informal collective. One website that is full of information about fiscal […]
On the optimum size of your club
This article from The Agile Elephant gives us a lot of clues as to the optimum size of our club. The research comes from the anthropologist Dunbar. When looking at human organisation he found certain scales of organisation reoccurring. Core group – up to 5 people (family) Close Group – c 15 people (close kinship group) Acquaintance Group – c 50 people (band of related close kin groups) Personal Social Group – c 150 people […]
Aim for 25%. Here’s why
Writing in the Guardian, George Monbiot gives us a hopeful message that societies suddenly shift, and only 25% of the population are needed to change attitude before the whole society starts to change. Monbiot points to research by Simon Sharpe and Tim Lenton: Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope. What this means for 146 clubs is to understand that your area can encompass four times the maximum number of members […]
Join the global cooperative
To get 146 clubs off the ground we are working on a three step plan Setting up 146help (this site) to encourage all local community builders to start the process of forming their own clubs Starting a global platform cooperative 146 International Developing the app Looking for countries and local clubs to pilot the concepts and then spread them! This article explains step (2) and how you can join.
Getting Started: working out your boundaries
You are enthusiastic about gathering neighbours around you to start a 146 club. But which neighbours and where to draw the limits? /
Transition towns envisaged life after fossil fuels
This article from YES explains the approaches taken by the Transition Towns movement.