Save Sisters Hill Farm
Dear Members and Friends Of Sisters Hill Farm:
We are a group of CSA members who have been formulating plans to save Sisters Hill Farm. We write to ask for your help right away.
We have learned that the Sisters of Charity have received several offers for the property and are interviewing prospective buyers this coming week. If we want to preserve the Farm as a beloved community resource – as it has been for three decades – we need to step up quickly with our own offer.
Our immediate plan. We are forming a limited liability company (an LLC) to buy the property. We hope to put in our bid as soon as possible. If it is accepted, we will sell off some of the land and grant a conservation easement for the rest of it. We will then donate the farm acreage to a new non-profit that will manage the Farm.
We have already gathered $700,000 in commitments for the LLC. We are asking those of you who can do so to pledge $10,000 or more – with our goal being to come as close to $2 million as we can. An amount of this size will allow us to make a serious offer to the Sisters with enough left over to cover the costs of subdividing the property and obtaining the necessary approvals.1
What happens afterwards. Assuming the Sisters accept our offer, we will set up a new non-profit, Friends of Sisters Hill Farm, to take responsibility for the Farm's operations.2 The Friends will be able to accept tax-deductible donations of any amount. They will also need volunteers: accountants, lawyers, human resources specialists, fund-raisers, and strategists of all varieties. If you are in a position to contribute to the Friends along any of these lines, please let us know.
Time is of the essence. Please fill out the form below today and let us know whether you can help to fund the LLC now, or back the non-profit Friends in the coming months. We will keep all replies confidential. If you have any questions you can write to Glenn Novarr who is kindly keeping our tally at Gnovarr@gmail.com. He is also open to having phone conversations with you about any size pledge. Please email him to set up a conversation.
We greatly appreciate your support.
Sincerely,
Glenn Novarr
Ilene Sameth
David Moody
Helen Hamada
Nicole Tapia
Garry Hattem
PS: Sisters Hill Farm serves about 400 families; our mailing list, as of now, has only about 140 names. So if you can share this message with other CSA members whom you know, we would be most grateful.
1If you do contribute to SHF Farmland, LLC, you can expect to receive a proportional share of any proceeds or tax benefits that the LLC may derive from the sale of unneeded parcels, the conveyance of the conservation easement, and the donation of the farm acreage to the non-profit Friends of Sisters Hill Farm. But this is no conventional investment; the LLC's “investors” will receive, at best, only a partial return of their capital. ↩
Please fill out this form
Let us know whether you can help fund the LLC now, or back the non-profit Friends in the coming months. All replies are kept confidential.
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