2022 Annual Report

25 Years of Nourishing Our Food Future

2022 marked an incredible milestone for FRESHFARM: our 25th anniversary!

In 1997, Ann Harvey Yonkers and Bernadine Prince courageously pursued their goal of connecting farmers in the Chesapeake Bay with a community looking for food that came directly from people growing and making it. They started the Dupont Circle Farmers Market and along with it, they founded FRESHFARM. They aimed big and began a tradition of innovative ideas that have grown beyond their wildest dreams.

For our 25th anniversary year, we celebrated the achievements of hundreds of people who built FRESHFARM’s legacy–people who believed in our mission of building a better local food system. We worked with the Council of the District of Columbia to issue a Ceremonial Resolution acknowledging FRESHFARM’s contributions to the city. In collaboration with 19 farmers and producers, we launched a co-branded commemorative product line to elevate farmers and food businesses in our network. We invited the community to join us at two celebrations, one at Dupont Circle Market in July and one at Monroe Street Market in October. And finally, we shared stories of the people behind FRESHFARM and how our programs have influenced nutrition education, food access, food distribution, and the regional food system. FRESHFARM continues to build on this legacy, adapting to an ever-changing landscape with creative solutions to nourish our food future.

We are so grateful to everyone who has played a part in FRESHFARM’s success over the past quarter-century, including our co-founders, board members, staff, volunteers, farmers and producers, funders and patrons, partners, and community members. This collective of dreamers has brought beautiful local food to our tables, strengthened our regional foodshed, and demonstrated the many ways that local food transforms communities. We are proud to share in this report how we carried out this work in 2022. It was truly a remarkable year for FRESHFARM, and we have so much to look forward to as we continue to nourish our food future.

Hugo Mogollon
Executive Director

Farmers Markets

For 25 years, FRESHFARM has led the way in managing some of the region’s most beloved and profitable farmers markets, fostering connections between farmers and residents of the Washington, DC Metro Area. 

FRESHFARM began in 1997 with the founding of the Dupont Circle Market, Washington, DC’s first producer-only farmers market, and has evolved into a leading food systems nonprofit operating the third largest network of farmers markets in the United States. Over the last 25 years, we’ve amassed formidable operational expertise in creating farmers markets that function as diverse and inclusive community spaces, vital food access points, and critical economic outlets for farmers and food producers in our region.

In 2022, we operated 26 markets and farm stands in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, generating a record-breaking $24.7 million in sales for 254 farmers and producers. After a two-year pandemic hiatus, we reopened Foggy Bottom and By the White House Markets. After 14 years in the same location, we relocated the FRESHFARM Oakton Market to a highly trafficked thoroughfare with enhanced marketing opportunities and room for future expansion. The FRESHFARM Mount Vernon Triangle Market became a year-round market, opening for its first winter season. Finally, we partnered with Petworth Community Market (PCM) to take over the management of this 12-year-old neighborhood stronghold to streamline operations, improve food access for the Petworth community, and allow the volunteer-run PCM Board to focus on community connectedness, education, and outreach.

While much has changed across the region and at FRESHFARM since we opened our flagship market in Dupont Circle, farmers markets remain at the core of our comprehensive food system work. Now more than ever, farmers markets serve as essential change agents that create meaningful incomes for farmers and producers, drive demand for local food, and provide inclusive and welcoming spaces for local communities to gather. We are proud that our markets serve as vehicles for our farmers’ and producers’ growth and help their businesses thrive well beyond the limits of their weekly market.

Farmer Spotlight

From Tenant To Landowner

The Barajas family has been farming on leased land in the Northern Neck of Virginia since 2001, after immigrating from Mexico in 1984. “We were always looking to expand and wanted something for ourselves,” said farmer Jorge Barajas. “When you’re leasing, you never know if you have the parcel year after year, which changes how you farm. For example, our asparagus field is on leased land; it was an expensive investment that has paid off in the long run, but if we ever lose the lease, we will also lose that investment.”

At the close of 2022, the Barajas family (Alfonso and Natalia Barajas and children Ana, Edger,  Elda, and Jorge) purchased their own parcel of land. “It’s a circle of gratitude: we are grateful to organizations like FRESHFARM for creating opportunities for us to sell and keep markets open during the pandemic, to our loyal customers who’ve shopped with us for years, and to our incredible farm team,” Jorge explained. By driving consumer demand for local food and creating vibrant economic outlets for farms like Barajas Produce, FRESHFARM is helping a new generation of family farmers turn sustainable practices into sustainable incomes.

Producer Spotlight

Nurturing Small Businesses At The Farmers Market

When Candice Mensah decided she wanted to share her mother’s amazing Ghanaian cooking with the public, she found farmers markets to be a unique testing ground. “A lot of people, when they hear I sell at farmers markets, say, ‘oh yeah, that’s cute, you’re at the farmers market.’ And I’m always like: people are making real money at the market,” noted Candice, founder of Hedzole, a fast-casual restaurant specializing in West African cuisine. Hedzole has sold prepared food at FRESHFARM markets since 2020. After a successful pop-up storefront at Tysons Galleria in 2022, Candice is finally opening her first brick-and-mortar in Washington, DC in the spring of 2023.

With a background in business but no formal culinary training, Candice explained, “I targeted farmers markets to incubate Hedzole because there is lower overhead. I can hone my customer service skills, build a following, plus reach a diverse customer base that might not be familiar with Ghanaian food. One of my goals for the business was to grow our following in highly trafficked commercial settings. I did this to demonstrate that Ghanaian/West African cuisine will be well-received by diverse audiences. Participating in FRESHFARM markets allowed me the opportunity to grow the business and build our customer base.” Over 25 years, FRESHFARM has incubated dozens of local businesses like Hedzole. We are so proud to see producers in our network like Candice thrive beyond their farmers market roots.

20
FRESHFARM markets & farm stands
265
farmers & producers participated in FRESHFARM markets
$24.7m
revenue for farmers & producers
56%
market sales spent on farm-grown products
783k
customers shopped at FRESHFARM farmers markets
934
market days hosted

“This market has been a game changer as far as being able to move pretty much every single stem that I have grown this season. Thanks so much for making space for my little farm. [It] has led to expanding in ways that I only ever thought about.”

— Cristina Flores, Farmer/Owner of Flowers x Flores, who sells at the FRESHFARM Dupont Circle Market

Pop-Up Food Hub

The Pop-Up Food Hub’s low-infrastructure food distribution model leverages farmers markets to deliver fresh produce to underserved areas and generate new and sustainable economic opportunities for regional farmers. 

In 2022, FRESHFARM’s Pop-Up Food Hub (PUFH) moved into a new facility in Hyattsville, Maryland, shared with Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture, to house our vehicles and equipment, as well as to hold produce overnight from aggregating at evening markets to making morning deliveries. This new distribution hub has supported the PUFH’s ongoing growth as our local communities continue to face food insecurity in the aftermath of COVID-19, national food supply chain disruptions, and inflation.

Increasingly, community organizations such as childcare centers, health clinics, senior housing, food pantries, and meal services have turned to local food sources to support the needs of stressed and marginalized communities. While 35 traditional food hubs operate in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the community organizations and nonprofit food services seeking resources often don’t “fit” into these food hubs’ service models due to ordering minimums and staff capacity, among other issues. By operating with low-overhead and streamlined infrastructure, the PUFH is uniquely positioned to build a more equitable and resilient food system that benefits everyone along the local food supply chain, from the local farmers and producers, distributors, gleaners, and those preparing and consuming local food.

During the 2022 season, we worked with 57 partners to distribute over $500,000 worth of local produce. The PUFH primarily served vulnerable populations by partnering with senior care agencies, community health clinics, and nonprofits that serve low-income populations. We purchased from a network of 36 local farmers, 58% of whom are first-generation farmers. Just over 19% of these farmers identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and account for 47% of all revenue generated. The PUFH allows small farmers to unlock the economic potential of wholesaling that may not be available to them otherwise.

Our farm stand model expanded to more organizations in 2022. With this model, partner organizations purchase produce from the PUFH and run farm stands at their sites in low-access areas in DC, hiring community residents to staff the market. This year we also diversified the PUFH’s clientele by adding our first-ever farm-to-table restaurant, Chaia, as a wholesale client.

Farmer Spotlight

Creating Revenue Opportunities For Small-Scale Local Farmers

Gail Taylor is the owner and operator of Three Part Harmony Farm, a two-acre farm in Washington, DC that also grows in Brandywine, Maryland. Founded in 2012, the farm has almost exclusively served CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) customers, but in 2022, Gail started providing wholesale orders to FRESHFARM’s Pop-Up Food Hub (PUFH). “Because I only have half an acre of vegetables in production, it’s very difficult to find the right match of a wholesale customer who can buy what I have extra of,” Gail explained. The PUFH has been the perfect fit for her needs, because we are able to take smaller quantities or more limited varieties of product than what other wholesale customers are able to accept.

The PUFH team works closely with local farmers like Gail to pair their available produce with the needs of PUFH clients. Working with multiple farmers across the region, the PUFH staff “manages to piece together orders in a really organized way,” Gail noted. “They know what I need to make those sales, and really understand farmers in a way that is unique and valuable.” These orders made a real impact on her bottom line, and she appreciated that the PUFH prioritizes supporting small farmers who don’t have access to traditional wholesale outlets. For Gail, the direct relationship she has with the PUFH team is the key to success: “It’s nice to know I have someone to work with who can buy most of what I have to sell.”

Farmer Spotlight

Strengthening Farmer Networks For First-Generation Growers

For a trio of women in Baltimore County who are all first-generation farmers, working with the Pop-Up Food Hub (PUFH) has created a special opportunity for collaboration. Sarah McCarthy of Crooked Fence Farm, Christy Ottinger of Kitchen Girl Farm, and Joanna Winkler of Good Dog Farm all focus primarily on selling their product through CSAs and wholesale orders. In 2019, they started collectively selling their produce to the PUFH, coordinating to set their prices, availability, and delivery each week. Thanks to these aggregated orders, the PUFH has become a significant revenue outlet for each farm.

“Selling to the PUFH gives us the flexibility to fill larger contracts that we wouldn’t be able to fill on our own as a smaller farm,” Sarah noted. Since the three women know each other and are familiar with each other’s farms, they know they can rely on consistent quality and diversity across their products. Christy added, “It’s a really awesome outlet for a small farm, and it’s nice to have consistent, reliable, fairly large orders during the main season,” especially compared to other wholesale outlets that are not as consistent with their ordering. Emphasizing the importance of a close relationship between farmer and wholesaler, Joanna explained, “[The PUFH has] been so committed to working with us, and committed to figuring things out and making things work,” which is invaluable for new growers.

57
wholesale organizational community partners
36
farmer partners
59%
Market Share produce delivered to SNAP customers
25,961
bags of produce distributed
$504K
revenue in wholesale orders for farmers

“I’ve had some of the best produce. I couldn’t be more happy with how fresh and ripe everything was, and found it lasted longer than store-bought produce too (on the rare occasions I didn’t eat it right away)!”

— Pop-Up Food Hub Market Share customer

Food Access

Thanks to two $1 million+ grants and a brand new staff department, FRESHFARM’s food access work expanded tremendously to increase access to fresh, local food while driving increased revenue for farmers.

FRESHFARM’s whole food system approach means addressing the needs of underserved populations at both ends of the supply chain, from small family farmers and producers to low-access, low-income consumers. Over our 25 years, FRESHFARM has blazed a path in increasing food access at farmers markets: in 2008, the FRESHFARM H Street NE Market became the first farmers market in Washington, DC, and the FRESHFARM Downtown Silver Spring Market became the second market in Maryland, to be approved by the USDA to accept SNAP/EBT. In 2009, FRESHFARM became the first organization in Washington, DC and among the first nationally to offer SNAP/EBT shoppers an incentive match. This Double Dollars program evolved into today’s FreshMatch program offered at over 50 Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia markets.

2022 was a banner year for FRESHFARM’s food access work in our region. We launched a new department dedicated to managing food access and incentive programs. Thanks to a $1.4 million four-year USDA grant to create a regional incentive system, we ramped up our food access programming at markets. At our network of markets, food-insecure individuals and families in DC, Maryland, and Virginia have spent $228,743 in SNAP benefits and received $236,914 in SNAP FreshMatch bonus and $92,357 in FMNP FreshMatch bonus to spend on fresh, local produce and food. This was also our first year of a five-year contract managing Produce Plus, the District of Columbia’s farmers market produce incentive program. In our inaugural season, 6,000 residents spent over $900,000 on fresh local produce from over 34 farmers. Thanks to public-private partnerships, government funding, and grants, our food access work connects underserved communities with fresh foods grown by regional farmers. This work ensures that fresh and local foods are accessible to all, regardless of income or background, and amplifies growers’ vital role in improving food security in our region.

Farmer Spotlight

Improving Food Access Benefits Shoppers & Farmers

The farmers market in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, DC has long been a community stronghold. Many shoppers might not have noticed much difference when FRESHFARM took over management in the 2022 season, but one of the biggest changes we implemented was bringing our FreshMatch incentive program to the market, offering a dollar-for-dollar match on all federal nutrition benefits spent.

The impact of this food access program was immediately noticed by farmer Sidney Kuhn of Kuhn Orchards, located in Adams County, Pennsylvania. “The Senior and WIC FMNP sales at Petworth have increased this year…due to FRESHFARM’s matching program, which the participants have seemed to really appreciate since that hasn’t been offered at Petworth for the past couple years. Our SNAP sales also…have increased this year with FRESHFARM’s ability to match those transactions,” she explained. “I recognized at least two customers who have started shopping [at Petworth] regularly once they found out that their SNAP purchases would be matched. So thank you to FRESHFARM for all you do to make that happen! It does mean a lot to the folks who are possibly only able to purchase high-quality, good-tasting fresh produce because of these programs!”

Program Spotlight

Digitizing Produce Plus & Expanding Participant Choice

As first-time administrators of Produce Plus, FRESHFARM put community feedback into action in 2022, re-designing the program to make it easier to implement at market and improve customer agency. In previous years, Produce Plus was administered to participants via the distribution of paper checks, which were handed out at market on a first-come, first-served basis, frequently resulting in long wait times and stress for shoppers, farmers, and market operators. Our new program design included a switch to a membership model, eliminating the stressors of the first-come, first-served system. We also replaced checks with a card-based digital system that improved the customer shopping experience and increased agency.

Throughout the season, Produce Plus participants received a card loaded with at least $40 per month to spend on local produce at participating farmers markets, mobile markets, and farm stands. Customers had full agency to buy any produce from any participating farmer at any participating location, a program change that empowered District residents to purchase nutritious food of their choosing. For the first time since the program’s 2014 inception, the Produce Plus season extended past September 30th. We ran the program into the fall, and Produce Plus shoppers spent the most benefits in October and November. The season extension served District residents and sustained healthy food retail establishments longer into the fall, especially those east of the Anacostia River, and will continue to be a priority in future seasons.

$1.1m
benefits, nutrition incentives, and Produce Plus spent across the FRESHFARM network
92
FreshMatch partner sites across DC, MD, and VA
133
farm businesses in the FRESHFARM network accepting benefits and incentives
6,000
DC Produce Plus participants
6
months in the Produce Plus season (June through November)

“I am really pleased that the program was modernized with the use of digital cards…Making purchases was easy peasy. The operation is now so much more efficient and program participant friendly, and participants are no longer stigmatized by being able to choose only certain produce from a designated section.”

— 2022 Produce Plus shopper

FoodPrints

FoodPrints’ successful experiential food education model has a lasting impact on students and families.

In 2005, FoodPrints started at a single school teaching students about food, gardening, and nutrition. In 2022, the FoodPrints program celebrated our 17th year of providing positive experiences with growing, preparing, and eating nutritious food, while supporting students’ academic learning. As FoodPrints served 7,000 students across the city in 19 DC Public Schools, we heard from our many stakeholders about why they value the program:

“No other program has provided all of our students with such a diverse, hands-on curriculum perfect for connecting science to the foods and flowers they grow and the delicious healthy meals they create!” – Lisa Washington, Speech Language Therapist, Whittier ES

“Coming back from the pandemic, I found FoodPrints helps students learn how to communicate with each other again.”  – Christina Greta Schorn, Art Teacher, Amidon-Bowen ES

“FoodPrints gave me a foundation of confidence – now I can cook anything – and profoundly impacted my career interests.” – Aaron Scott, FoodPrints alum and University of North Carolina student

“I will never forget this. FoodPrint made my dreams come true.” – Laniya Taylor, third grader in the FoodPrints summer program at Marie Reed ES

“I get to engage with the community to demonstrate my passion and journey with foods both familiar and new.” – Rose Williams, Community Food Educator at Simon Elementary and parent of a FoodPrints alumni student

Program Spotlight

Supporting Food Education With Farm Stands At Schools

FRESHFARM strives to bring a food systems approach to our work in school communities. We have been procuring food for our lessons for years from FRESHFARM farmers and producers, but with new levels of collaboration in 2022, our team purchased more than 15,000 pounds of local produce through our Pop-Up Food Hub for FoodPrints programming. We also explored new methods of providing knowledge and agency for our school communities to access fresh, local, nutritious foods, including weekly fall farm stands at Whittier Elementary organized by the parent-teacher association with produce purchased from the Pop-Up Food Hub.

At several schools, FoodPrints teachers have organized after-school produce stands and classroom farmers markets. At School Without Walls Francis Stevens, students shopped for ingredients at a mini farmers market and then met online later to cook and eat the recipe together from their kitchens at home. Coming full circle with farmers, our students visited with Farmer Gale Livingstone of Deep Roots Farm, both at her farm stand near Watkins Elementary and in our classrooms.

Curriculum Spotlight

Food As A Tool To Learn About Social Justice & Equity

In 2022, we centered using food education as a tool in our classrooms to help our students learn about taking action in social justice efforts.

During our “Activism and Food Justice” lesson, students learned how they can become food justice advocates. Through short readings and discussion, students explored the work of leaders such as Will Allen, Michelle Obama, and Tony Hillery. Inspired by these advocates’ various approaches to food justice, students proposed their own campaigns including: cooking and nutrition education classes for the public, starting or working at a school or community garden, and encouraging grocery stores to sell and advertise more nutritious food.

During another social justice focused lesson, “Fractions and Fairness“, first graders explored “Is equal always fair?” Students first practiced chopping fruits and vegetables into equal pieces, and then were challenged to think about times when unequal portions could be fair – for example, bigger portions for friends who didn’t eat breakfast that morning. This lesson offered a hands-on way of seeing that sometimes equal is fair but sometimes it isn’t!

19
FoodPrints schools across 7 Wards in DC
3,130
classes in 2022
15,000
pounds of produce from 23 FRESHFARM farmers used to study, cook, and eat in our classes
7,000
DC Public Schools students learning with FoodPrints
5,260
square feet of growing space in 19 school gardens

“Our partnership with FRESHFARM FoodPrints is one of the most valuable, meaningful, significant, and consistent partnerships upon which we have embarked. FoodPrints will have lasting effects far beyond our children’s time at Anne Beers: it is life-changing.”

— Principal Gwendolyn Payton, Anne Beers Elementary School

Community Engagement

FRESHFARM’s newly launched Community Engagement department uplifts community voices to strengthen equity in our regional food system.

In 2022, FRESHFARM launched a new Community Engagement department to amplify community voices and bring food education to a broader audience. Our Community Engagement efforts are rooted in our groundbreaking FoodPrints food education curriculum. Our team brings food education and expertise to Early Childhood Education (ECE) centers, food professionals serving children throughout the Washington, DC metro area, families, market shoppers, community-based organizations, policymakers, and community members at large.

We believe that food access and food education must be paired in order to be effective in curbing food insecurity. Through collaborative efforts between FRESHFARM’s Pop-Up Food Hub, Markets, and FoodPrints teams, Community Engagement provides our partners with a range of educational programming in tandem with delivery and subscription services and opportunities to redeem supplemental nutrition assistance benefits.

Community is at the heart of our Community Engagement work. We center community voices in developing our programs and intentionally engage community members in all the spaces where FRESHFARM works: at farmers markets and farm stands, at schools, and with our Pop-Up Food Hub partners, including ECE centers, senior centers, and healthcare clinics. Our programs include training and employing Community Food Educators to provide food education for families at schools, ECE sites, and farmers markets through workshops and hands-on cooking with seasonal food. We also provide technical assistance for ECE staff focused on skills and equipment to procure and prepare fresh food. Two community-based outcomes from this hands-on work are the formation of an ECE coalition to share best practices and the development of a toolkit on how to create family councils to support child caregivers.

Finally, Community Engagement developed a Produce 101 guide for identifying, storing, and preparing vegetables. Available both in print and online with a collection of supporting videos, the guide helps eaters get the most out of farmers market produce year-round.

Staff Spotlight

From FoodPrints Parent To Community Food Educator

Rose Williams is an engaged Ward 8 resident and a native Washingtonian who joined the FRESHFARM team as a Community Food Educator in 2022. But Rose’s FRESHFARM journey began about ten years before when her own kids were students at Watkins Elementary and participated in FoodPrints.

During her son’s elementary school years, Rose said, “I experienced firsthand the phenomenal exposure that the FoodPrints program had…To witness the pure joy of a six-year-old child unearthing a sweet potato the size of a football that grows in the garden at their school — that vision will never fade away.”

Now, Rose is a Community Food Educator working with the Simon Elementary community to spark that same joy in other Ward 8 students and families. Rose’s work at Simon includes providing classroom and garden support, hosting weekly after-school tastings, and running a monthly farm stand.

Like many of the other Community Food Educators employed by FRESHFARM, Rose hails directly from the community she serves. Rose’s experience as a Ward 8 resident and food justice advocate not only gives her an intimate understanding of her community’s food access concerns but also motivates her to work with organizations like FRESHFARM striving to increase the availability of and access to nutritious food.

Program Spotlight

Amplifying Community Voices

In 2020, FRESHFARM, in partnership with OSSE, was awarded the Farm to Early Childhood Education Implementation Grant (FIG) through the Association of State Public Health Nutritionists (ASPHN). The goal of the grant was two-fold: develop curriculum to enhance capacity for early care providers to source, serve, and teach about local foods and amplify the voices of those providers.

FRESHFARM’s Community Engagement team collaborated with OSSE to convene and facilitate a multi-sector Washington, DC Farm to ECE Coalition. During the first few months, we used a larger coalition structure, which included Washington, DC government staff, funders, ECE centers, and nonprofit organizations. This first iteration of the coalition marginalized ECE centers in the discussions, and we struggled to amplify the voices of these stakeholders that provide direct, on-the-ground services. Meeting spaces that included both ECE and local government stakeholders and traditional decision-makers was not a space where ECE voices could be fully heard. Our team realized that we had to address this power dynamic.

We pivoted our coalition structure approach and created a sub-group of just ECE providers and families. By using intentional outreach we recruited a mini-coalition of providers with a range of experience and expertise.

In our first year of convening this sub-coalition, we structured conversations to center ECE voices and create a safe space for ECE staff and families to develop trusting, collaborative relationships. This pivot to a more intimate mini-coalition proved vital in our ability to not only assess challenges and barriers but also to empower ECE providers to own their expertise.

35
Early Childcare Education Centers engaged in food education workshops
133
hours of individualized coaching sessions delivered
515
childcare providers supported with technical assistance
1,006
interactions between Food Access Community Educators and shoppers who use nutrition benefits
56
Food Navigation trainings for FRESHFARM Community Food Educators, Market Operators, and partners

“FRESHFARM has certainly helped me to create a healthier lifestyle, but I have also empowered others who may not have had the opportunity or knowledge to seek healthier food options or to work in this field.”

— Sharon Rosenboro, Family Engagement Specialist at House of Ruth

2022 Financials

In 2022, FRESHFARM’s budget grew by more than 50%, from almost $6 million to more than $9 million annually. This is a result of both continued development of FRESHFARM’s existing programs and the addition of two new departments: Food Access and Community Engagement. FRESHFARM continued to maintain diversified income streams made up of donations, grants, and program revenue, all of which grew significantly in 2022. Most notably, grant income doubled from 2021 to 2022. A core of talented and committed staff are one of FRESHFARM’s greatest assets, and personnel expenses made up more than half of FRESHFARM’s annual budget. As we look towards future years, we aim to sustain this growth in order to further enhance our ability to promote sustainable agriculture and improve food access, education, and equity in the Mid-Atlantic region.

 

 

 

Please note: these are preliminary numbers and subject to change once the 2022 Financial Audit is complete.

Funders

FRESHFARM focused our fundraising efforts in 2022 on donor engagement and building options for a variety of ways to give: monthly giving, workplace giving, stock gifts, donor-advised funds, and more. We launched our monthly giving program, the S.E.E.D. Circle, which builds a community of donors committed to making a lasting and sustainable impact on our work. Our donor retention rate increased to 43%, up from 24% in 2021.

FRESHFARM celebrated our 25th anniversary at the Feast cocktail reception, where we showcased a video highlighting the organization’s founding. We are immensely grateful to our donors, funders, and partners who continue to invest in building a brighter food future through FRESHFARM.

874
individual donors
43%
donor retention rate
21%
increase in Spring and End of Year Campaign giving
90%
increase in federal employee giving
334%
increase in employee match giving

$20,000 - $24,999

  • The Nancy Peery Marriott Foundation
  • Shipt
  • Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission

$15,000 - $19,999

  • DC Mayor's Office of Latino Affairs
  • Inova Health Care Services
  • Lisa Renstrom & Bob Perkowitz
  • Ludlow Taylor PTO
  • Montgomery County Department of Health & Human Services
  • Robert & Maureen Sievers Family Charitable Gift Fund
  • School WIthout Walls HSA
  • Share Our Strength

$10,000 - $14,999

  • Alice Shaver Foundation
  • Aramco Services
  • CleanChoice Energy
  • Clif Bar Family Foundation
  • DowntownDC Business Improvement District
  • Evergreen II Fund
  • Fairfax County Government
  • Feedback Labs
  • Housing & Community Development Department, City of Takoma Park
  • Joan Fabry & Michael Klein
  • Judy & Peter Blum Kovler Foundation
  • The Revada Foundation of the Logan Family
  • Susan Buffone
  • Virginia Hospital Center

$5,000 - $9,999

  • Annette M. & Theodore N. Lerner Family Foundation
  • Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture
  • Big Green
  • Center for Nonprofit Advancement
  • City National Bank
  • International Monetary Fund
  • Langley Tigers PTO
  • Linda & John Costa
  • Marie Reed PTO
  • Mary Challinor & Henry Richardson
  • Nancy Swope
  • Powell Padres
  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  • Robin Burton
  • The Venable Foundation

Get Involved

As a regional and national leader in sustainable food systems, FRESHFARM builds a more equitable, vibrant, and resilient food future in the Mid-Altantic region by producing innovative solutions in partnership with local communities and organizations. We create food access, economic development, and thriving communities through hands-on education, farmers markets, and food distribution programs. We invite you to join us in this work in 2023! Here are some ways to connect with FRESHFARM:

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Learn more

Explore our blog to learn more about our impact and read stories about our community.

Special thanks to our 2022 Annual Report contributors: web report design by Interactive Strategies; print report design by Cutting Edge Design; videography by Castle Gate Media; graphics by JMT Creative; illustrations by OK Creative Studio; and photography by Daniel James courtesy of VAFMA, Juliana GB, Mariah Miranda, OK Creative Studio, Ty Grigsby for Three Part Harmony Farm, and FRESHFARM staff, farmers, and producers.

Download Annual Report

Find the print version of the 2022 Annual Report here.

View Past Annual Reports

2021 Annual Report

2020 Annual Report