General Writing Process

All writing originates independently unless it is an article written

for something else (i.e. reports that want to feature the farm or
publications)
Documentation and reporting to make the project move forward
begins with Allison
Reach out to others for input (both within and outside
department)
Write up draft and ask for feedback and input for people
Ask for budget information to correct numbers
Work with development office and student affairs (they share
grants, come up with initial draft, and then he edits and puts in
language about the campus over all)
Annual reports come up with idea of sections, then hand off to
Kate to do data analysis and put together data analysis, work
with graphic designer about how we want final to look like
Farm manager sends out email to culinary team (get orders, then
Kate works on sending out transfer for deliveries) (written chain
of command)
Day is vary different from day to day
[farm] is only one of the projects
1/4 of time working with [farm] projects
Management role with pantry initiative and campus farmers
market
Example
o Monday visitors from catholic university to visit dining
program to learn about waste management; email, then
hosted a class from 1-3; then emails and other admin tasks
o Tuesday conference on anti hunger
o Wednesday hosting 2 labs; meeting with vendor; they
were getting ready to prepare a report about potential
savings; teaching a lab;
o Very out of office heavy week, but other weeks is lighter on
presentations
o Give a lot of talks this time of year
o In office = have a lot of meetings with collaborators, own
team, students
Day with nothing scheduled = rhythm oriented to some of bigger
projects,
End of semester = documents for outcomes of the semester,
reports, grant proposals, summaries from what weve done with
previous proposals
Whatever is scheduled makes a big difference

Grant Writing and Funding

Grants = you do draft, editing and feedback from other people,
but bulk of the writing done by you
o Kate been able to do heavy lifting of taking materials weve
already come up with and repackaging
o Brand new information comes out of your own brain
o Becoming more and more collaborative and the project
builds
o Takes time to extract stuff from brain and take team
members in
Deciding donors
o Initial grants = first look for on campus resources
o Already know about potential opportunities
o Receive info by email or from other employees
o Already know about pots of money and sizes of money
availability
o Sustainability initiative always an option
o [state] parents association (support student activities on
campus)
o Funds from Pepsi
o ^ Available every year
o External grants
Rely heavily on folks in development office in division
of student affairs to send ideas
His job is to look at grants
On many listservs
If you see something, ask him to look it up to see it
farm is competitive enough or is acceptable for grant
Certain funders are looking for certain projects, and
some might not be interested in state agency
Look for him to decide if we can be considered
Grant rules Ed Kenny calls funder and talks about their priorities
Look on their website to see what has previously been funded
Conversations about what we envision they are looking for
Have to speculate based on how an organization looks up
priorities
Also true for on campus funds
Use previous samples to look at how to (impacting students)
format grant
Think critically about how to pitch the grant
Gets at how they are going to pitch the grant
External grants

o Looking at donor that is interested in programs that aims

underprivileged youth we may not be in target area
Trying to build program with UMD students
Grant has specific format that they want and is dictated in
application
o Submitted electronically, pdf, multiple documents,
o Give word count even to explain aspects
o Not very open ended
o Provide samples if they dont have a specific format
Information that is the same
o Pull from existing content
o Pieces of information that we can build off of and can
repackage
o Background, accomplishments, goals
Differences
o How you describe what your doing in terms of donors
values and vision of what they want their funds used for
o How you will use the funds can be very specific for a
certain donor
o Pull language from prospective donor, but ask for same
thing
Have to divide people into different tasks
Buy tools not for production, but for demonstration
Asking for something new = developing new content
We do not exaggerate what were doing to fit grant standards
Look for right fit rather than just look for money to do anything
o We are working towards a very specific goal and specific
functions
o Saying your going to do something = you have to then do
that
o Dont want to go so fare out of the scope that we cant pull
it off
o Donors must have same values of projects
o Looking within a very

Student Involvement

Encourage student involvement

Students are the whole point of the farm
All of it exists because of student interest in sustainability and
sustainable food
Students are at the core of what we are doing

Want students to be core of functioning

Staff members to make sure organizational structure is there,
and then faculty help to outreach to students to help them bring
the farm to life
Need student labor component and energy to make things work
Partner with classes that come out to the farm with a lab
Bring students out for students to have experiences on the farm
Also have visitors from living and learning programs that have
volunteer requirements
Students in classes that do one time visits
Like to focus on organized activities
Instructors help to provide transportation and connect it to an
academic setting
[farm] fall harvest festival every fall
o One or two of these a year where people can come and
learn about the farm and have fun
Labor is affiliated with classes
Summer = hire students to help with the farm
o Past season = 4 interns and also full time staff
o Internship and volunteer for dedicated students during the
year
o Interns help one on one
o New apprenticeship on the farm with an academic
framework
o Multilayered = going from lots of students with little impact
to few students with a big impacts
Want to make all students feel like it is their farm
Core group = work intimately with interworking of farm
Constantly looking to expand student connection to the project
All of us can learn a lot from idea of growing our own food

General Notes
Most of notes are task oriented to dos
This is how I organize immediate to dos
Who do we have to call, email, writing procedures, getting key
Have check boxes for list
White board is more governing priorities whereas notebook is
more immediate to dos
Calendar = exclusively appointments and events
o Dont use it as an activity list
o Keep emails that need to take action