Note: this service is not ready for public consumption yet. Look for this service as of Spring 2009. This was an email sent out to a group of CSA managers. If you have any thoughts on what is below, please contact us.

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This email outlines a new Small Farm Central extension which attempts to ease the CSA member signup process. Please take time to read this email and give us some feedback by answering a few questions on your CSA and your interest in this type of system. Your input is appreciated!

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One of my passions in agriculture is the CSA -- I have managed one, joined a few, and I think it is the best way to truly connect the producer and eater. With Small Farm Central, I try to ease some of the specific problems of small farms with a little technology. We've started with websites and ecommerce, but I would like to do something for CSAs as well.

One of the most time-consuming aspects of administrating a CSA is signing up the members every Spring -- getting demographic information like name and address, learning about preferences, and making the financial transaction. If you are tired of typing and retyping all of this information from printed page to spreadsheet and handling mailed checks, this may be the system for you.

First a few questions about your CSA:

1. How much time do you spend managing the sign-up process each Spring? Examples: 60 minutes a day, 3 hours per week, 20 hours per month.
2. How many members do you expect to sign-up next year?
3. What kinds of non-demographic information do you collect from customers when they sign-up (i.e. vegetable preferences, pickup location, best time to call, favorite song)?
4. Are you interested in exploring the use of online payments for your CSA?
5. Please explain your share options and pricing. For example: 1/2 shares and full shares with the option for a flower share. Feel free to attach a flyer or copy and paste this information. Please include dollar amount due up front and then any further cut-off dates when funds are due.
6. Are you interested in this type of system? Please discuss any thoughts you have (too expensive? too hard to use? members don't use internet?).

How it will work

Though there are likely to be many changes based on your feedback, this is the basic idea of how the system will work:

From the customer prospective:

1. Visit prescribed URL for CSA signup (for example, http://www.yourfarm/csasignup)
2. The first screen will ask for basic demographic information such as name, address, phone, and email address.
3. The second screen will collect custom information from the user such as vegetable preferences, pickup location, best time to call, or favorite song.
4. The last page will allow the user to choose their CSA share options such as: "1/2 share + fruit share".
5. Then the user will be taken to Google Checkout with the price calculated from the share screen to finish the financial commitment.

From the administrator (that's you) perspective

1. When a new sign-up is completed, you will receive an email from Small Farm Central with the details of the new member.
2. When you are ready to manage your list, you will login to the Small Farm Central control panel and you can
• Manage user information
• Download user lists to Excel for further processing
• Add a new user for members that submit their membership by phone or mail
• Send emails to groups of users
• Edit the signup process, including changing the share calculation and the custom question section
3. Google Checkout will handle the credit card charges and etc.

Other administrator options

• Print a list of users coming to a certain pick-up throughout the year (or any other groupings that you have)
• Turn off credit card integration so you can deal with the funds in another manner (mail, in-person).

We welcome any and all feedback. You can help us create something great for the CSA community -- feel free to reply to the questions above or just type a response based on what you have read.