Dear AdkAction Community,
Right now, we should be ordering hundreds of Fair Share Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions from up to fifteen local farms across the Adirondacks to feed our North Country neighbors in need all spring and summer long. We should be distributing road salt reduction equipment to nearly thirty highway departments, planning our summer community revitalization initiatives, and preparing our native pollinator restoration projects. And yet, because a portion of these initiatives are underwritten by public funds, AdkAction, like others who lead community programming, is concerned about how to proceed.
Public funds have been some of the surest sources around, but today these funds are inherently vulnerable. While highly unusual, a funding agency has discretion to cancel grants like ours if the contract conflicts with federal rules or if the funding behind it is eliminated. Grant recipients like AdkAction are first required to foot the bill, later to be reimbursed months after our payments are made, either to farmers or other businesses around the region. It’s now possible that our grant reimbursement timelines may be extended indefinitely, or that reimbursement funds may be canceled altogether. In the future, grant opportunities like these may disappear.
In the past three years, our Fair Share CSA program has more than quadrupled in size, thanks in part to a state grant funded federally through the US Department of Agriculture, enabling us to serve hundreds more food-insecure families from Old Forge to Saranac Lake to Plattsburgh. We would like to tell you about someone who participated in our Fair Share program last year. Mary, a semi-retired grandmother in Willsboro, is the sole guardian of her two grandchildren. With a tight grocery budget and no reliable transportation, she often has no choice but to shop at the local dollar store, where fresh, healthy food is hard to come by. But last year, thanks to AdkAction’s Fair Share program, Mary received weekly deliveries of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables right to her door. With a stocked kitchen, she not only brought vegetables back to the dinner table but also dusted off her canning equipment to preserve the harvest for the winter ahead.
Without knowing if AdkAction’s public grants and programming will be funded six months or a year from now, we have to make hard decisions today, decisions that will affect real people. We cannot afford to take a “wait and see” approach when the health and wellbeing of the families, farmers, ecosystems and communities we serve are on the line. We hope you will stand with us to ensure we can continue to feed our neighbors, continue all our important projects, and step up to do more if other essential programs across the Park are reduced or eliminated, or if need in the North Country grows.
If it matters to you that our Adirondack communities are supported through uncertain times, we hope you will join us in making a gift to AdkAction to ensure all our programming can continue. Right now, we need your support. We are focusing on trying to replace potential lost revenue, so we can go back to focusing on our projects that make change.
We are building our own safety net by raising $100,000 in program reserves to cover potential losses of public funding for any of our programs, including our Fair Share CSA Program, and to ensure we can serve our community in the years to come if the funding arrives. I hope you will consider making a gift of any size today, so that we can move forward with confidence doing what we do best: serving the people of the Adirondacks.
We remain incredibly optimistic about our power to transform lives and create lasting change in our region. This is what we do, it’s what we’ve always done. And with your help, we will keep on doing it.
Thank you for your steadfast support.
Sawyer Bailey, Executive Director and Elizabeth Ruscitto, Board Chair
Ways to Give
Send a check or direct a Donor Advised Fund contribution to AdkAction at PO Box 64, Keeseville NY 12944. Please note if your donation is intended for our program reserve fund.
Please contact Lisa Malmgren, AdkAction’s head of fundraising, with questions, ideas, or to make a contribution via other giving options, including stock or IRA. Lisa can be reached at [email protected] or 518-856-3233 Ext. 4
