Description:
Kitchen Gardeners International is a 501c3 nonprofit founded in Maine, USA with friends from around the world. Our mission is to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve greater levels of food self-reliance through the promotion of kitchen gardening, home-cooking, and sustainable local food systems. In doing so, KGI seeks to connect, serve, and expand the global community of people who grow and prepare some of their own food.

Goals:
-To provide a structure, virtual and real, for kitchen gardeners worldwide to: meet up with each other; share their passion for food, cooking, and organic gardening; and further their skills and knowledge in these areas
-To introduce new people to the joys and benefits of actively participating in one's food production and preparation
-To inform KGI's supporters and the general public about the many ways of participating in and contributing to a sustainable food system and planet
-To help individuals and communities to achieve higher levels of food self-reliance through education, garden promotion, technical assistance and charitable giving
-To promote fellowship, cultural exchange and international understanding via a shared love of kitchen gardening

Main Activities and Achievements in 2008:
1) Kitchen garden advocacy and promotion – The Eat the View campaign
KGI launched the “Eat the View” campaign to encourage the digging of “high-impact gardens in high-profile places” starting with a request for a new garden at the White House. The campaign, planted in February 2008, ran for the duration of the year, reaching millions of people and inspiring countless numbers of them to plant gardens of their own. The campaign began small and humbly as an entry in the United Nations Foundation’s OnDayOne.org project, an online contest for identifying the best ideas that the next US president should consider upon taking office. KGI rallied its members to support our entry sending it into the first place spot where it remained throughout the year. KGI was able to leverage its standing in that contest to attract significant media attention, notably coverage in the New York Times in April, the International Herald Tribune in July, the Philadelphia Inquirer in August, and the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio both in December. KGI also developed a website and an online petition and two very popular campaign videos, the Garden of Eatin’ and This Lawn is Your Lawn, the latter of which won third prize in the Climate Matters Video Contest and was shown on national TV.
2) KGI website and newsletter
The KGI website and electronic newsletter continued to be important outreach and education tools and both had strong readership. In February, social networking features were added to our site which created a stronger sense of community and allowed us to reach more people with regionally-appropriate information. Our website had nearly one million pageviews while our newsletter readership rose from 4,200 to 12,100 or an increase of 188%.
3) International Kitchen Garden Day
KGI coordinated the six annual International Kitchen Garden Day on August 24th. The day was recognized and celebrated by a number of groups and individuals from different parts of the world, both large and small.
5) KGI mini-grants and partnership program
KGI continued its partnership program in earnest in 2008 through a $800 grant to the nonprofit group, Organic Agriculture Center of Kenya. The grant was used for training home-gardeners in organic methods and for the digging of school gardens.

Staff and board updates:
KGI’s board consisted of Jan Maes, Roger Doiron, David Buchanan, Kate Flint and Maya Howard. Roger Doiron continued to staff KGI in 2008 on a part-time basis.

Financial Report:
KGI made considerable strides in its fundraising in 2008 thanks to a growing number of individual donors and the generous support of the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust and Helianthus Fund.

Revenues, Gains and Other Support
Foundations and project grants 21,200
Individual donors 6,372
Website-related revenues 505
Other 653
Total revenues 28,730

Expenses
Program-related costs 21,545
Administrative costs 1,089
Total expenses 22,634

Change in Net Assets 6,096
Net Assets, Beginning of Year 5,144
Net Assets End of the Year 11,240

Report Approved by KGI Board on April 2, 2009

Jan Maes
David Buchanan
Maya Howard
Kate Flint
Roger Doiron