These last few months have been filled with both joy and sorrow at the REED Center. In this newsletter, we honor our good friend, Mark Hatfield, who passed away in June after battling cancer for more than a year. We'll be sharing more about Mark's beautiful life and his impact on our organization in a future communication, but for now we wish to share his smile with our community.

Mark and his family have been extremely committed to TRC and we will keep them in our hearts as we move forward with the vital work ahead.

Tree of Life -- Big News!

We are thrilled to announce that TRC has received a three-year grant from the State of Maryland designed to support innovative farming strategies that improve the health of soils in our state. This grant, together with financial donations from our community and many hours of hands-on volunteer work, will help bring our Tree of Life Project to life, starting this fall!

At the end of 2022, we kicked off a fundraising campaign with our newsletter to raise seed funds for the Tree of Life Project. Our goal was to raise $15,000 that would be matched dollar for dollar by an anonymous donor. So far, we have raised more than $6,500 toward that goal (and have received the corresponding matching funds).

Since we sent out that first request, several hundred more people have joined this e-mail list. To learn more about this ambitious and unique project, please read our full description here. We are hoping to complete our fundraising campaign before the end of 2023. If it is within your means to give $5, $500, $5000....or any other amount...we would be most grateful if you could make that contribution today, as we need to buy more trees, shrubs, and infrastructure materials as soon as possible. The Maryland grant covers only certain aspects of the overall project; we still rely on our community to help make this full vision a reality. DONATE HERE

Introducing ZEFFY

While we are on the topic of fundraising, we would like to let everyone know that we are trying out a new platform called Zeffy for our fundraising needs. This organization is a Certified B Corp that passes the full amount of your intended donation to the us, the non-profit, rather than taking a "percentage cut" as many other payment platforms do. We welcome any feedback you might have on this new platform. If this is working well for our community, we plan to expand its use to include other services as well, like registrations for classes and events next year.

General Updates

• YOGA classes: Sunday morning yoga will continue through mid-November. For details, please visit the website here.

• PDC courses: The next on-site PDC Class is October 14th: Decomposition and Renewal: The Nuances of Coppicing, Mulching and Mycology. Sign up here. Full schedule below.

• The Introduction to Permaculture webinar was recorded and is available here for anyone who missed it or wants a refresher.

• Volunteer opportunities on-site: If you'd like to be kept in the loop on additional volunteer opportunities on-site, which sometimes pop up on short notice, please add your name here.