It’s an exciting time of growth at Mill City Farmers Market! We are heading into the upcoming outdoor farmers market season with so much joy and love for our community as we celebrate our 20 year anniversary (!!) and look back on all the ways we have grown together over the years. Here are a few updates on the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes that will allow us to better support this incredible local food community.

We are happy to announce that our two entities – the Mill City Farmers Market, formerly a 501(c)4, and Mill City Farmers Market Charitable Fund, a 501(c)3 nonprofit – are now consolidated into a single organization: Mill City Farmers Market, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. The two Boards took up this vote late in 2025 and it passed unanimously.

For many years, it made sense for the two entities to function separately, governed by two separate Boards. The Market has been responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Mill City Farmers Market, while the Charitable Fund organization oversaw grant-making and nonprofit programming, allowing us to make a deeper impact at the Market and across the region.

This move to merge our organizations provides many benefits by allowing us to consolidate time, talent, and resources. We are moving forward as a single nonprofit entity to better serve our vendors, partners, and every community member that visits the market. We have become and will continue to be a sustainable organization, growing our capacity to provide a marketplace and launching pad for local farmers, makers, and artisans to grow their businesses. Our programs work in tandem with the market to provide educational food experiences, while also reaching far beyond the Market to create support for family farms and food insecure neighbors across the food shed. 

For you, our supporters and shoppers, you won’t notice a visible change. All of the great vendors, programming, art, events and vibrant market atmosphere will continue to thrive at MCFM. Our farmers market will always be a place where everyone can gather to enjoy delicious food and be part of a meaningful community.

Our Board and Staff are working through the development of a new strategic plan to take us into the next several years of growth and impact, and we’ll be excited to bring you all into that story later this year. If you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you! You can reach out to Executive Director Ella Daniels at ella@millcityfarmersmarket.org to share your thoughts or set up a time for an in-person conversation.

Please join us for our remaining indoor winter market dates (March 21st, April 4th & 18th) and help us build excitement for the coming outdoor season kicking off on Saturday, May 2nd! 

Thank you for your support, from all of us at the Mill City Farmers Market. We can’t wait to celebrate 20 years growing together with this wonderful community, and many more to come!