As many of you have heard, your national market support entity, Farmers Market Coalition, the organization that I have been attached to for the last decade as a staff person, and a half decade before that as a market leader supporting its development, is rethinking its role and structure.
Part of that rethinking means the elected board made a recent decision to put all staff on temporary furlough for at least January 2025, leaving just our Interim Director working to catch up on invoicing and administrative changes.
As painful as it can be to be open about the issues we are dealing with, FMC needs to do what we urge markets to do, which is to be transparent about development plans and challenges.
I have heard from enough markets and network partners that they believe FMC is essential to the field, and vow to be patient for its journey to find the right admin and funding structure, all of which make the idea of being laid off a little less awful.
Still, pulling off a rework is a HUGE task. I hope we can. I do think we can.
While I am off work at FMC, I am focusing on the Market Eras article and then prospectus for a book.
Here is also my Substack about that process:
Here is an earlier post about it:
https://darlenewolnik.com/2024/01/02/market-eras-part-1/
Expect to see more here about that and my own consulting for markets in the next few months but I promise to also share whatever FMC builds for its future when I am able to speak on its behalf again.
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 