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Donate to Help Truelove Seeds Grow our Forever Home in Philadelphia!
Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company. And from our roots to the seeds we dispurse, we are also a food justice organization.
We are a profit-sharing company: a huge portion of our sales are shared back with the farms that grow our seeds. We pay our growers far more than the industry standard in order to honor their dedicated and careful work with their ancestral seeds.
We also want to pay ourselves fairly: all of us at Truelove Seeds make a living wage.
Luckily, we are able to cover these costs with the sale of our seeds and other merchandise! The reason we are asking for your support is to help support the unfunded work we do to educate, mentor, document seed stories, and rematriate seeds, AND to help us equip our new farm with the infrastructure we need to fully support seed production in our local and national seed keeper networks.
We are raising funds to help with our next big infrastructure projects at our farm, as well as our community-based seed keeping and storytelling work, such as:
- Our Seeds and Their People podcast
- Mentoring small-scale farms and food justice projects
- Running our apprenticeship and internship programs
- Offering workshops
- Creating educational resources for seed keepers
- Coordinating local seed and knowledge exhanges
- Investing in research and adaptation of culturally imporant ancestral seeds
- Training our team and network in advanced seed production and protection
- Rematriating Indigenous seeds.
See more on the Community Work page.
As of this writing, we have raised nearly $100,000 of our $200,000 goal from 527 donations ranging from $5 to $50,000. Thank you! It has allowed us to build a 30-year deer fence, dig a powerful well and pumping system for irrigation, upgrade our electric connection, clear trees and shrubs, till the land, bring in a new equipment storage container, put in a gravel driveway, and so much more. We are now looking for support with the following projects to get us even better situated to thrive as an educational seed farm and a hub for seed growers in the region and beyond:
Seed Drying Building
$30,000
At our previous farms, we used large climate controlled basements to dry and cool our seed harvests. We currently use a small portion of a shipping container that does not perfectly keep out mice nor effectively keep in the cool, dry air. To properly function as a seed farm and community seed hub, we need to create a structure with HVAC and insulation, enough space to handle our large harvests, and elbow room to organize and process them. We plan to purchase a 40 foot insulated shipping container and hire an electrician to install HVAC and connect it to an upgraded panel. This would accommodate our 250 seed crops per year, representing 130 species, as well as many of the crops from our partner farms.
High Tunnel for Season Extension
$11,000
We are seeking a match for the $10,000 grant we have won from the USDA to construct a new high tunnel for the initial stage of drying down seed harvests and also for propagating and adapting arid and tropical varieties for our farm and our local partners. We will run fans and create a heated section for winter and spring seed starting. This will allow us greater control over pest and disease management, and to work entirely from our farm, instead of traveling from the high school greenhouse we share two miles down the road. We start seeds for our own farm and local partners so this would directly benefit many farms and gardens who grow traditional crops.
Investment in On-Farm Research and Rematriation in our Farmers Network
$25,000
Our network of 70 small farms around the US grow their own culturally important seeds for our seed catalog. We will offer 10 gifts of $2,500 each for farmers in our network who will research, trial, and adapt their most important ancestral crops. We will convene the growers virtually and provide continued mentorship and forums for sharing learnings, knowledge, questions, and best practices. This will allow our growers to use their limited field space to grow crops they are passionate about without fear of decreased revenue.
Start up funds to hire a business manager
$21,000
In our 10th year, we are in a new phase of development and investing in the long-term sustainability of our organization. We bring in nearly half a million dollars in income per year, and spend 95% of that by paying our staff a living wage and paying a generous compensation to our farmers. Two thirds of our income is from selling seeds, and one third is from grants, public speaking, partnerships, donations, and tips. Since none of us studied business, grantwriting, or fundraising, we feel we could do great things by hiring someone with that experience and focus! Help us do just that and give them time to implement new strategies for income generation, marketing, and wholesale customer recruitment.
Visual and audio storytelling fellowship grant
$7,300
This year we hired a farm and office assistant who happens to also be a filmmaker. If this is funded, he will have a day per week to create short films about our seeds and practices so that partner farmers, staff, and interns learn on a deeper level.
Bringing the Truelove Network to the 2027 Organic Seed Alliance Conference
$7,500
In March 2027, the Organic Seed Alliance will convene their biennial international gathering by and for agroecological seed communities. This is the first time this gathering is happening on the East Coast, and we hope to bring 5 staff and 5 growers/community partners as a way of deepening our collective seed keeping knowledge and skills and building relationships with other seed keepers near and far.
Gift the whole vision!
$99,800
Are you in the position to make the entire vision a reality? We welcome your support. And if we raise above the target amount, we will extend and deepen our work even further by continuing our research projects, storytelling fellowship, and professional development for our network for more than just one year, and by continuing to build up the infrastructure of our farm as a hub for seed production and protection in our region and beyond.
Contribute to our GoFundMe!
Other ways to support us:
Learn about the impact of our work:
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