USBI Launches Major New Programs to Benefit
Biochar in North America
If you are like us, biochar is one of the things that you find most hopeful in our world today. With all the bad news out there, we are privileged to know about the good news of biochar. Biochar shows us that we can make a difference. We can sequester carbon in soil and products. We can improve soil health and food security. We can show the world a pathway to sustainable bioenergy with carbon sequestration. It’s a beautiful story and more people need to know about it, but it is also a complex story that takes a while to understand.
If you are a North American biochar supplier,
You need help telling the story of biochar to potential investors and customers.
If you are a farmer, gardener, forester, landscaper or other end user of biochar products,
You need to understand the benefits and costs of biochar. You also need to know how best to apply biochar and get the most out of it.
If you are an educator or an enthusiast
,
You need reliable, vetted information, so that you can communicate the promise of biochar to decision makers and future generations.
As a USBI supporter and member of our network, you may be new to biochar, or you may have been here with us over the past decade that USBI has been active – organizing conferences, meeting with decision makers, networking across industries, and supporting the biochar industry in the United States and North America in many different ways.
Thank you for your past support.
We have listened to your feedback.
Many of you have voiced needs that our all-volunteer team has been trying to satisfy, as best we can. To meet these increasingly complex needs, we must raise $175,000 this year to build capacity and to bring on paid staff, who will be able to respond to your requests for support with greater urgency in the following areas:
- Biochar market and business development, including industry networking, industry tools (such as biochar testing services), outreach and education, all geared for the US and North American markets.
- Policy leadership and collaboration to develop and promote supportive policies that incentivize markets and biochar production.
- Capacity building and development, including grant writing and management, donor relations, fund management and accounting.
First Year Fundraising Goal
This is a huge and ambitious program! But the time is now and with your help, we can create these needed resources for our biochar community. Our fundraising goal for the first year is to raise $175,000. This will allow us to:
- Hire people to do the work. We need to bring on paid staff to do the work of communications, content creation, development and program management.
- Pay the bills for our website and other communications tools
- Cover travel and administrative expenses
Gift Opportunities
The time is ripe to take biochar to the next level and we can do it if you will support this campaign to the best of your ability. We are asking
YOU
to contribute now to ensure a bright future for biochar in North America. Here is how we can get to our goal:
- Become a Major Donor – we need several dozen large gifts of $1000, $5000, $10,000 or more to meet our goal. Please consider all the benefits of a strong USBI – committed to developing and promoting the biochar industry in North America – and contribute accordingly.
- Become a Sustaining Donor – we need a few hundred people to commit to providing a monthly donation of $10 to $100 a month. Monthly giving is easier to manage for you, and it provides a reliable income source for the USBI.
- Please give any amount that you can afford. Everything helps!
Top Priority - Outreach and Education Programs
Soon, you will start seeing results. Over the next 6 months, we intend to:
- Start producing a monthly newsletter to keep everyone informed about new developments in the biochar industry in the United States and North America.
- Begin a comprehensive survey of all of the available and accessible information on biochar applications. We find that there is much quality information from extension services and knowledgeable individuals, but there is also a lot of questionable information that is not helpful. Our board and other experts will vet information for accuracy, and then we will create an indexed resource library on the USBI website with links. This will become a very helpful tool for biochar users and for biochar suppliers—those of you who are looking for quality information to share with your customers.
- Identify gaps in existing educational resources and close them by creating new resources to share with our network. We will be asking you about your information needs – whether you are a biochar supplier or an end user – and outline a program of biochar content creation.
USBI is doing other important work as well:
- We have applied for a grant from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to conduct on-farm biochar demonstration trials with over 100 farmers and 60 biochar producers from all over the country.
- We are planning a demonstration tour of a new biochar burner technology developed by the US Forest Service and Air Burners Inc.
- We are working hard to identify North American testing labs that can quickly and reliably analyze biochar samples.
- We hope to plan another USBI conference or, alternatively, a set of regional meetings in 2021.
- We are continually expanding conversations with policy makers and state and federal agencies, such as the USDA, on how to best support the biochar industry.
- We will broaden our successful cross-industry networking strategy, bringing biochar information to allied industries, such as organic waste management, bioenergy, forestry, conservation and others.
- We work closely with regional biochar organizations, like the Sonoma Biochar Initiative and the Eastern Biochar Association, to pool resources and to accomplish more for the biochar industry.
The word about biochar continues to spread. New biochar producers are coming on line. More and more farmers and other end users are incorporating biochar into their products. Now is the time to move forward, with confidence, together.
Please join us in taking biochar to the next level!
Make your donation to move USBI forward and do your part for biochar.
Your contribution is tax deductible! USBI is an IRS 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization.
