Strong, trusting and interdependent relationships are the foundation of this work. Together we have over thirty years of experience starting and growing impactful regional and national networks and communities of practice. This work relies on great meetings, brave conversations, and being able to develop shared visions, goals, and plans- all of which takes sharp facilitation.

During our time at the Wallace Center, we founded and facilitated three national communities of practice (CoPs) through the Food Systems Leadership Network - on value chain coordination, farm to food assistance, and food safety & quality. We grew these CoPs to over 1,100 total members. For each CoP, we designed and facilitated monthly calls that focused on building relationships, sharing great ideas, solving common challenges, and having a good time.

We’re currently facilitating the Eastern Food Hub Collaborative, a growing network of food hubs on the East Coast working together to expand opportunities for farmers and equitable access to good food for all.

Value chain coordination is how we build relationships between the actors in a regional food system. Through these relationships we can share information and resources, create resilient and responsible supply chains, and build collective economic power. We’ve spent most of our careers cultivating a national understanding and practice around VCC.

In recent years, we founded the national value chain coordination community of practice, grew this national network to over 500 members and designed and facilitated over two dozen calls for this community. We supported the development of the first-ever training on value chain coordination and facilitated its delivery to over 300 people.

Today, we’re working with the Eastern Food Hub Collaborative to design impactful VCC strategies that help 13 food hubs create new market opportunities for 1,500 growers across the eastern seaboard. We’re also supporting the Mid-Atlantic Food Resilience and Access Coalition as they work to build equitable regional value chains that connect local farm to grassroots food assistance initiatives.

Too often, nonprofits design programs around funding opportunities. We believe that it needs to happen the other way around. We have a tremendous amount of experience designing impactful programmatic strategy and then finding the federal and philanthropic funding sources to turn those ideas into a reality.

Together we have designed, written, and managed over $5M in federal and philanthropic grants. We’ve also coordinated and provided over 40 hours in training and technical support on USDA LAMP grants. We break down the complexity of program design and grant opportunities so that you can focus on building them around what matters most: your values, relationships, and vision.

Across the country there are hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals working to create resilient and equitable regional food systems. Working at the national level has meant that we have learned from people doing this work across the country and contributed to some amazing national research projects.

Recent publications include:

Initial Impacts of the USDA Local Food Purchase Assistance Program (2023)

Findings of the 2021 National Food Hub Survey (2023)

The Local and Regional Food Systems Resilience Playbook (2023)

Everyone does projects; we have since we were kids - art projects, science projects, gardening projects, house projects, cooking projects. Projects are how we experiment, try things out, and get stuff done. But our work projects can sometimes feel dauntingly complex. Budgets, timelines, partners, contracts, deliverables, evaluation, reporting… it can make it hard to see the forest for the trees.

Having a little outside assistance can go a long way. Together we have managed over $5M in projects. We come equipped with a whole host of tools, processes, and best practices that we’ve honed over the years - which will help you focus on what matters most - and even have a fun time doing it!