1) Shared Benefit; Shared Risk
By signing up for the Local Food Share, you are making a season long commitment to GoFarm and to your local farmers. Many of our farmers base their production plans on the number of GoFarm shareholders there are, and rely on these sales throughout the season. Your upfront payment (or commitment of payment installments) is vital to the success of our organization and to the farmers we work with as it provides necessary funds upfront to help prepare for the season ahead. In return, the farmers guarantee you a portion of their fresh, seasonal, sustainably-grown food each week during the growing season. As long as they have food, you will get to enjoy it!
With this model, there is mutual benefit between you, your farmers, and GoFarm.
In addition to this wonderful mutual benefit, we also share the risk if any unexpected occurrence hurts the farmers' crop. With this shared risk that we take as a community, if our farmers lose part of their crop due to unforeseen circumstances such as a late frost or a hail storm, it’s possible they will not have their expected harvest to share with our shareholders. At GoFarm, we work with enough farmers to lessen some of the risk for our shareholders - though if there is an occurrence where enough of our farmers' fields are impacted, we may not always be able to reimburse you, either in the form of extra food or returned money. If our farmers do experience unforeseen hardship with their crop, your payment still gets passed along to the them.
Along with our mutual benefit, we also share the risk of the realities of farming. With this we find a sense of community. One in which we are all in this together, cheering each other on when the harvest is bountiful and sharing the disappointment and hardship if an unforeseen event occurs.
2) No Refunds
Our farmers rely on your commitment as a shareholder, as many of them rely on GoFarm as their main sales avenue and/or set aside a portion of their fields to grow for GoFarm shareholders specifically. In addition, as an organization, GoFarm also relies on the upfront funds from our shareholders as these funds are woven into helping us run our many programs that strengthen the local food system. After all, we are a nonprofit organization, so when you purchase a share of local food from GoFarm, you are contributing to a web of positive change. Because of this, we are not able to offer refunds.*
*Though, we realize that situations come up that we can not always foresee. If you have an extenuating circumstance where you are unable to participate in our Local Food Share after you’ve already signed up, please let us know. We will try our best to work with you and help however we can.
Thank you for reading about our shareholder policies and why they exist. We appreciate your commitment to your local farmers and your local food system. You are making a difference!
