For the KC Food Circle, 2014 was a year of growth as we saw an increase in eater members, farmer members, expo attendees, and coordinating committee members.

We hosted our first annual Volunteer Open House and invited new volunteers to learn more about the Food Circle. It was also a way to show existing volunteers gratitude for their hard work. About 50 people attended the Open House and we benefited greatly from the generosity of Jane Zieha at blue bird bistro who supplied the food and the location for the event.

The coordinating committee nearly doubled in size this year as we took on 8 new or returning volunteers. We have already begun to reap the rewards of a more robust planning committee and fresh perspectives. We believe that our larger committee will better enable us to serve both our member farmers and our eater constituents. We topped out at the end of 2014 with 102 farmer members (our record high) and 104 eater members.

At the 2014 Expo we were delighted to break our previous attendance record with a whopping 1,700 people in attendance at the Kansas Expo at Johnson County Community College. Not only did we see great attendance numbers and enjoy the great location at the college, we believe it also gave us a chance to form a more solid partnership with JCCC and their efforts on sustainability.

Our Missouri Expo at Penn Valley Community College brought in about 900 people making for a total of Expo attendance for 2014 a record-breaking 2600 people.

We also continue to steadily increase our fans and followers on social media with 4,750 followers on Facebook, 1,250 on Twitter, and - new this year - we have joined Instagram and have already gained 474 followers.

2014 also brought us several great fundraising partnerships. We worked closely with the organizers of the new KC metro chapter of Green Wish, an organization that funds local, green organizations through customers' small donations at local retailers. KCFC was one of the first non profits to receive funding from Green Wish KC.

In the fall we enjoyed being the beneficiaries of Kansas City's exclusive craft butchery event, Knife and Pork, hosted by Alex Pope of Local Pig and Jonathan Bender of Recommended Daily. We are also grateful to Eden Alley for supporting us with one of their fundraising weeks.

2014 brought us the support of our second volunteer graphic designer - Josh Fultz, who redesigned our ads and our trifold brochures - in addition to the continued support of our first volunteer designer, Rachel Allen, who has supported us by designing the annual Directory.

At the end of the year we launched our new website featuring a searchable database of farmers, helpful resources for farmers and eaters, and ease of use to encourage and facilitate our eater and farmer memberships. We are very grateful to Pam Hausner of BASE KC for her web development expertise and her generosity.

The best thing about the growth we've seen this year is that we are well poised to enter 2015 with lots of plans for improvement already underway. This will be a great year of eating local, organic and free-range.