Feedback Request
Help us!
I’d love to have some feedback on a few rough spots in how
we run our CSA administratively.
1.
For a few years now, we’ve relied on our Change
Order link for add-on requests (like eggs, honey or juice oranges) as well as
Credit Card updates, vacation skips, and subscription holds/cancellations.
We instituted the Change Order system a few years back so
that I could spend days at a time working on the farm without having the
rosters blow up in my face, as well as the ability to go on vacation. For many
years I couldn’t do either, and eventually it caught up with me. Literally, I
hadn’t gone on vacation for 10 years when Beth took over. I don’t handle
rosters or roster changes at all now, adhering to the Change Order system is an
important part of keeping communications current and rosters error-free. (And
me sane.) Beth is a full time librarian and does a meticulous job of keeping it all straight for us. She
downloads the Change Orders every week and is totally on top of all this,
leaving me to the occasional vacation and several-day farm projects without avoidable roster goofs. As some of you know, I
had to take a months-long sick leave earlier this year; had I not had this in
place, we would have had quite a mess on our hands when I returned. Most folks that
emailed my personal email accounts during that time period, weren’t
acknowledged during my hospitalization. It doesn’t matter that a member SHOULD
know how their farm works, because in the end, all the matters is that many don’t. How a farm works is the boring part of a CSA, and our Welcome Note is lengthy and boring, I'm told. :/ I'm hoping we can get the word out more effectively with some subscriber input. What can we do differently?
Here’s what I’m doing currently:
I blog about our Change Order system, I print out the link
onto a Welcome Label on the first box picked up, I include how our farm works
on our website and the individually emailed Welcome Note sent to each new
subscriber.
Still, many participants send emails which are not always
caught in time to be included in the roster for which the
change/add-on/cancellation/vacation skip was intended. I’m reaching out to our
CSA membership to ask how we might get the word out, so no subscriber’s needs
are left unattended to. What can I do to differently? Feedback and suggestions
would be greatly appreciated.
2.
Quarter System:
Our farm is run on the quarter system.
1st quarter is January-March
2nd quarter is April-June
3rd quarter is July-September
4th quarter is October-December
We assume our subscribers are continuing into each new
quarter as a default, because most do. This is no different than a gym membership or
an apartment rental. Cancelling a subscription at the end of any quarter is
easy: just use our Change Order link.(www.morningsongfarm.com,
click on CSA Boxes, Click on Change Order. Your cancellation is immediately acknowledged via automated email response, and we manually acknowledge it on the roster. If anyone needs clarification, of course emailing us here makes sense.
3.
Vacation skips: We currently offer 2 vacation
skip credits to Every Week subscribers, and ask that those that don’t order
weekly, or need more than 2 weeks of vacations… allow us to donate their box to
the homeless shelter we serve. We’d like to make this more generous, but ran
into problems with biweekly subscription vacation skips causing roster/pick-up/miscommunications. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
4.
Billing:
The traditional CSA model started in Japan, was
based on a quarterly billing/commitment concept; which we started out doing many years ago…and
we eventually added monthly billing for those that needed/chose to have their quarterly CSA
payments spaced out into each month. We start billing at the end of each month
for the following month’s boxes, and usually end the billing process in the
first week of the current month that we’re delivering in. Occasionally
the billing takes longer when there are a lot of credit card declines, changes
or new starts. Some farms manage to do this automatically, but when we tried
the auto software it just didn’t work for us. Manual transactions take longer,
but each account is reviewed and the transactions are manually done to assure
accuracy. Even New Starts are entered manually from the order form; they are
not instantly charged to the credit card provided. This allows for a review of
the order and making sure that unusual requests/start dates/add-ons are properly billed for;
avoiding refunds.
5.
Rosters: The roster at each drop point includes
all participants of that drop point, whether they are picking up that week or
not. The roster indicates a YES or NO by each person’s name. ALL means the
subscriber is picking up every week, 2/4 means picking up in the 2nd
and 4th week of that month, and 1/3/5 means picking up in the first,
third and 5th (if there’s a fifth) of that month.
6.
Signing off: It’s not a problem until it’s a
problem: signing off that you have collected your box aids your volunteer host
in tracking down an issue such as a missing box or a biweekly subscriber being
on the wrong track.
7.
Recycling: About HALF our CSA membership does
not return their boxes, which means our CSA’s landfill footprint is
considerably more than it needs to be, and adds to the cost of running the farm
unnecessarily. Please return your empties each week. Some participants are
choosing to transfer the contents of their boxes directly into bags so that
they don’t have to return the box at all.
We’d appreciate our subscribers’ feedback on how we might
improve communication and ideas that might improve how we run our farm
administratively. Please let us know!
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