In early 2008, Kevin Kelly, a prominent digital technology thinker, wrote an article entitled "1,000 True Fans" in which he argued that new communication technologies allow artists and musicians to thrive in a whole new way than before. Instead of artists being reliant on the blockbuster, break-out hit, they can instead nurture a group of committed "fans" that will spend money often and reliably to create a steady stream of income for the artist.

Kelly writes,

"A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans."

Applied to agriculture, this "true fan" sounds a whole lot like a CSA member.

CSA members are willing to do certain things that no other rational consumer will do: pay up-front as much as 6 months in advance for produce, accept weather-related losses, take whatever produce is in season at the farm, buy all their fresh food from one farmer, and on and on. It takes a lot of trust and the mind-set of a true fan to be a CSA member.

Of course, the CSA member expects a lot from your farm: the freshest produce, the highest quality, a discount over market prices, a newsletter of what is going on at the farm, or a good conversation at the pick-up site.

The CSA is a bargain that benefits both the farmer and the member. As a farmer you are eliminating some of the marketing headaches of the direct marketing small farm, but there are a lot of responsibilities in this relationship. Namely, keeping your membership happy week after week and year after year.

Kelly explains the challenges and rewards of this set-up:

"The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this circle possible. Blogs and RSS feeds trickle out news, and upcoming appearances or new works. Web sites host galleries of your past work, archives of biographical information, and catalogs of paraphernalia. Diskmakers, Blurb, rapid prototyping shops, Myspace, Facebook, and the entire digital domain all conspire to make duplication and dissemination in small quantities fast, cheap and easy. You don't need a million fans to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient. "

So, beyond providing a stellar product, the key is to keep your fans (ahem, CSA members) happy and engaged by communicating the difficulties and joys of growing their food. Your website and newsletter is a key part of that effort -- these technologies that we have at our fingertips allow us to keep CSA members in the loop at a very low cost. The unique story of your farm and individual relationships with customers will keep them coming back year after year.

We have one Member Assembler farm that opens their CSA sign-up at midnight on Sunday morning in March and sells 350 shares by that Sunday evening (almost their entire membership quota) with full payment taken at the sign-up. That is the kind of following we should all be striving for.

It should be noted that I am not suggesting that each farm needs 1000 CSA members. The number of CSA members that you need is the number members that would support the farmer and farm at a decent wage year-round, so this number will be different for every scale and locale.

The CSA concept, and in a larger sense, the "1000 true fan" concept, allows us to do what we love whether that is farming or playing the bass guitar without constantly struggling for one-off sales at the farmers market, a huge blockbuster, or the big wholesale contract.

Our CSA member management service, the Member Assembler, was a success in it's first season with over 5,000 CSA members signed up. From farms with well over 1,000 members to farms with 25 members, the system eased data entry, collected payments, and is now serving as a repository for membership information as the season progresses.

It is fun to watch the automated "pickup reminders" go out each night to CSA members that are receiving a CSA box the next day. I can imagine a great box of veggies and fruit behind each one of those emails. Quite exciting.

If you are running a CSA in 2010, consider using our system for online member sign-up, balance tracking, credit card integration (or old fashioned checks; your choice), member management, pick-up reminders, and more.

We are planning a lot of improvements for later this season and next season:

• Survey/questionnaire integration for end-of-season surveys and next season we'd like to have a way for members to give feedback on a weekly basis like Village Acres Farm does it now.
• PayPal integration to complement/replace Google Checkout.
• Improved interface for easier interaction with membership information.
• And much more based on the feedback from our subscribers.

Google Checkout Problems

The biggest hiccup for the Member Assembler this Spring was related to Google Checkout. Google apparently does not understand or appreciate the collective risk of the CSA system and, for a couple of farms, was holding back 10% of gross sales to cover any charge-backs.

Despite reasonable explanation from Small Farm Central, our farms, and numerous emails from CSA customers, Google could not be budged. If we cannot get a guarantee that this will not happen for 2010, we will remove Google Checkout as an option in the Member Assembler and move to use PayPal as the credit card processor.

We Love CSAs

We love the CSA concept -- I've helped start and manage a CSA farm, been a member of a number of CSA programs, and seen the logistical issues of complex CSA programs in my experience delivering CSA boxes for Penns Corner Farm Alliance which collects products from 25 farms in the Pittsburgh area, packs CSA boxes, and then delivers them across the city.

Keep up the hard work this year - I know the CSA delivery season has just started for most of you. Another 20 weeks, give or take, left! We'll keep working for you to make sure the Member Assembler continues to improve and can become an even more useful tool for your CSA.

According to the USDA, the United States has 12,549 farms that participated in a CSA program in 2007 (download the report here). Local Harvest reports having 2,700+ profiles of CSA farms in their database.

The USDA reports the total number of farms in the country at 2,204,792 which means about 1% of US farms participated in a CSA in 2007. I think this is a useful way to think about the CSA movement even if both numbers are flawed.

It would be more interesting to know how many local-type farms participated in a CSA program, because we know that many of those 2 million+ farms are corn/soy operations, hobby farms, or otherwise very far from participating in a CSA.

Another statistic in the report is "Produced and Sold Value Added Commodities" with 78,418 farms reporting. Maybe that is closer baseline to look at than total farms? With that baseline, the percentage of farms participating in a CSA is closer to 20%.

Either way, I think the 12,549 number is useful. It is not a complete picture depending on how you define a CSA and a farm's partipation in a CSA program. Then there is the discrepancy between the LocalHarvest number and the USDA number. More revealing will be how the numbers change over the next several years.

Several other blogs have posted on this topic:
The Robyn Van En Center
The anti-view from a LocalHarvest blog

Of course, we love CSAs. The Member Assembler has signed up almost 5,000 CSA members this year so far.

Small Farm Central's "Member Assembler" integrates online CSA member sign-up, payment processing, and member management tools to create a package that will save CSAs numerous Spring hours, ease the sign-up process for members, and reduce data-entry errors.

We Love CSAs

I love the Community Supported Agriculture concept. It is a win-win situation for the eater and the producer and the relationships it creates are what will sustain the small farm in the long-term.

I have helped build a CSA: marketing, seed ordering, greenhouse seeding, member spreadsheets, lost checks, planting, weeding, and harvest. I know how difficult and rewarding the CSA model is from a producer's standpoint and member's point of view; I have done both. That's why we developed this management platform that solves some of the fundamental problems of managing members in CSA-type programs.

How it Works

Farmers configure the Member Assembler to model their CSA through an online control panel that does not require technical skill. Easily program pickup locations, custom forms, multiple member types, and checkout procedure. A detailed "get started" document guides this process.

Members come to a publicly accessible URL (such as www.yourfarm.com) and submit their information and options. The system easily hooks up to a credit card processor (or farmers have the option of no online payment processing), records payments, and tracks balances.

Other tools like printable pick-up lists, downloadable excel spreadsheets of member data, weekly reminder emails to users, payment requests and mailing lists are also integrated into this package.

This system can be used in conjunction with a full Small Farm Central website or as a stand-alone tool.

Try it for yourself! A sample sign-up form is available at:
http://memberassembler.smallfarmcentral.com

30-day Free Trial

If this seems like something your farm would be interested in, make sure that it will work for you by requesting a 30-day free trial. This is a fully functional Member Assembler site that you can configure and start accepting sign ups. If you find that it fits your needs, you can easily transfer this trial to a full Member Assembler subscription.

Request the trial here:
http://smallfarmcentral.com/memberassembler/freetrial

More Information

You may also be interested in...

Pricing
http://smallfarmcentral.com/memberassembler/pricing
How Does it Work?
http://smallfarmcentral.com/memberassembler/how-does-it-work
Features
http://smallfarmcentral.com/memberassembler/features

Full Information is available at:
http://www.memberassembler.com

--
Simon Huntley
Small Farm Central, Lead Developer
http://www.smallfarmcentral.com