Hello!

As you may know, we have been intensely busy over the past 3 years. We helped coordinate Benzie County’s COVID response, launched CARE for Benzie to address the county-wide child care crisis, and have continued to anchor and sustain a variety of clubs, programs, and initiatives that do great work every day with Grow Benzie’s help.

While continuing these important efforts, Grow Benzie has also been working hard over the past 3 years to understand how to best help our community going forward. We completed a detailed scan of 70 existing municipal and organizational strategic plans, followed by hosting dozens of meetings and focus groups with community leaders, peer organizations, residents, and funders in Michigan and beyond. This work showed us that while there are many great champions in Benzie County, they often lack the systems and support necessary to truly succeed.

We now have clarity on a direction that we feel confident will have a tremendous impact for children, families and communities in Benzie County.

Our vision is to be a rural prosperity incubator. Quite simply this means helping good people who have good ideas to have an impact for children, families and communities in Benzie County.

How will we do this?  In three ways, using three essential tools.

The three types of projects we support are:

• Nonprofit projects intended to improve the lives of children, families and communities 

• Community initiatives designed to address complex problems affecting Benzie County

• Food and farming enterprises that need space to experiment and grow

The three tools we offer these projects are:

• Online capacity building tools for ideation, communication, governance, and collaboration

• Fiscal sponsorship, including fiduciary services and grant writing

• Connections with a network of like-minded community champions, projects, and initiatives
  

Why is this so different… and so needed?
Many of the challenges and opportunities facing Benzie County can’t be met by one approach offered by one organization – whether they are in Washington, Lansing or closer to home. To meet the opportunities in child care, in housing, in food access and the like, we need lots of small solutions that are tailored to the needs of our individual communities. We meet good people every day who have great ideas for Benzie County. We can help them know what’s already going on, can help them focus and organize their work, and can ultimately accelerate and boost their impact.

Why will we be successful?
Grow Benzie has already been doing much of this work over the last several years as we recognized we are more than just a great place. Over 30 nonprofit projects, community initiatives, and food and farming businesses have been able to launch and be successful through Grow Benzie’s help. Now we want to be even better and have an even larger impact with your help. We are focusing not on narrow issue areas but rather on the tools and resources that will help local champions to succeed.

What’s next?
We want to invest in our systems, our team, and our campus to be a true demonstration site for how to bring prosperity to rural America. We believe that Benzie County has an even greater future ahead, and we are excited to work toward it.

Won’t you join us? Please click HERE to become a member and start supporting Grow Benzie today.

Sincerely,
Josh Stoltz
Executive Director

Our Mission:

Grow Benzie seeks to enrich our region by fostering positive activity that increases access to healthful foods, jobs, life skills, and each other while providing a space that nurtures this activity.

What We Do:

Since 2008, our “modern day” community center has been providing safe and accessible space to residents and visitors from all backgrounds. Our campus facilities include an event center, commercial kitchen, incubator farm, co-working office spaces, bee apiary, sewing studio, makerspace, fibershed, edible trails, and community gardens.

In 2017, we identified the need in our community to focus on providing space and services for clubs and non-profits rather than starting (and often duplicating) existing programs. Studying and applying solutions through a systems change lens vs. a traditional programs model, Grow Benzie has spent recent years developing itself as the anchor organization for dozens of clubs, non-profits, and collaborative bodies.

In November of 2022, the organization concluded a strategic planning process spanning three years of in-depth research and community input. Over 70 existing strategic and master plans were compiled, hundreds of individuals participated in focus groups and meetings led by a team of consultants, and community members from all sectors were part of the process. Our objective is to formalize Grow Benzie’s evolved role in our county and region as a Rural Prosperity Incubator, and continue facilitating connections between organizations, residents, and resources.