How to Pay for Herb School: Herbal Support Boxes!

classes at CCHHExcited about the prospect of going to Herb School, but not sure how to pay for it? Why not crowd source your tuition? It’s not just a great way to raise funds, but it’s also an excellent study tool!

Imagine it like this:

You’re going to school to learn all about herbs, how to work with them to stay healthier, and how to make all the different types of herbal preparations. That’s information that lots of people would like to have, but they might not have the time to actually go to Herb School. That’s where this plan comes together!

You could run a crowd funding campaign offering a monthly Herbal Support Box for everyone who contributes.

Let’s say you wanted to start with the Family Herbalist Program. If you can find 15 people who are willing to chip in $20/month, you can pay for that program in only two months AND pay for all of the supplies you need to provide them with herbal goodies that you’ll be learning how to make. You’ll be improving your learning by actually taking action on the things you’re studying, and your friends will give you valuable feedback about the herbs!

And if those people enjoy their herbal goodies and want to continue to receive them, you’d be making $300/month – you could move on to the Community Herbalist program, and fund the monthly payments with money leftover for supplies for the herbal goodies you’re sending out!

You don’t have to use kickstarter or gofundme to do this – just send an email to your friends and if they’re interested, they can pay you in person or with PayPal or something – that way you don’t have to pay the fees!

Herbal Support Boxes

What do i mean by “herbal goodies”? These days, monthly surprise boxes are really gaining in popularity. They’re not hard to make, and people love them!

Let’s say that you offer Herbal Support Boxes that include one or two herbal preparations along with three “Herbal Tip” cards, delivered each month. You might make a tea blend for relaxing before bedtime, for example, along with a nicely formatted card detailing the herbs in that tea blend and why they’re fantastic. You might also provide a second Herbal Tip card that talks about your favorite herb from the Materia Medica that month, and how to work with it for some every-day situations. You could include a small packet of that herb by itself, so people can try it out as tea. And you might offer a third Herbal Tip card with your favorite recipe for incorporating a tasty herb into regular cooking, to encourage people to get more herbs into their daily life! It could be an herb they can get at the grocery store even, like Garlic or Ginger – so that it’s something really easy for them to incorporate. (You can even ask for ideas and suggestions at the live Q&A sessions that you get access to with all of our courses!)

herbal preparationsYou could be creative and artistic, making pretty labels for your preparations, and creating handy cards that can be kept in a keepsake box. Or maybe you’re more minimalist, so instead of tangible cards, you create a private blog for your Funders, incorporating pretty photos with the information you want to share with them! Blogs are easy to start for free these days, so your cost is low and the value to your Funders is high!

Everyone Wins!

And not only does making the preparations and creating the printed or digital content fulfill your deal with your Funders, but it ALSO provides you with an excellent opportunity to immediately put into practice the things that you learn each month, and to organize your notes and thoughts to create the written part of your monthly Herbal Support Box. You’re paying for school AND getting a better education doing it!

You can do all this in one or two days each month – a few hours one day to plan and get your supplies, and a few hours on a second day to put everything together and send it out.

And, if you should decide to make herbalism a career, you’re building a client/customer base right from day one!

Infinite Possibilities

Of course, you can structure your Herbal Support Boxes any way you like – you could offer larger boxes with multiple herbal goodies, you could host an herbal party each month where your Funders get to help you make the preparations you’re planning, you could even offer to customize the boxes – a ginger lovers box, a peppermint lovers box, whatever floats your boat! You can celebrate an herb of the month that grows locally so that folks who are funding you can learn more about the plants in your region, or you can be elaborate and exotic. You can go the extra mile and decide to grow as many as the herbs yourself as possible, or get them fresh from a local farm. You could even create a foodie Herbal Support Box – incorporating your herbs into cookies, chocolates, jams, chutney, ferments – the list is endless!

Monthly boxes are very popular these days, and it’s a fun way for people to watch your progress while enjoying the fruits of your studies!

Pro Tip:

I think this is a great idea even if you don’t need crowd funding for your herb school tuition: knowing that you’ve got a project each month will really provide you with motivation and structure for keeping your studies front and center!

And the greatest thing about it is, you don’t ever have to stop! You might love making the Herbal Support Boxes so much that it could become a whole business all on its own!

Want to share YOUR ideas about funding Herb School?

Comment below!

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