Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1975 dedicated to creating and sustaining places that build community. We provide technical assistance, education, and research through programs in parks, plazas and central squares; buildings and civic architecture; transportation; and public markets. PPS has worked with communities in 48 states and in 20 countries around the world. A long-time advocate of the catalytic role that markets can play in community development, PPS created its public market program in 1987 to further the preservation and establishment of public markets through research and education programs and assistance to communities in market development, renewal, design and operations.

The Farmers' Market Coalition (FMC) was created in 2002 as a program of the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association (NAFDMA). NAFDMA was established in 1986 to provide education and forward innovations in farm direct marketing for the purpose of promoting economic sustainability for family farmers. By 1997, NAFDMA recognized that the farmers market community had unique challenges compared with "on-farm" direct marketing venues and would benefit from a more focused agenda of its own issues. In 1998, in order to satisfy that need, NAFDMA established a component of the association to focus entirely on issues related to farmers markets. The Farmers' Market Coalition elected their first governing council in February 2005 and now operates independently of NAFDMA.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 "to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations." Its programming activities center around the common vision of a world in which each person has a sense of worth; accepts responsibility for self, family, community, and societal well-being; and has the capacity to be productive, and to help create nurturing families, responsive institutions, and healthy communities.

To achieve the greatest impact, the Foundation targets its grants toward specific areas. These include: health; food systems and rural development; youth and education; and philanthropy and volunteerism. Within these areas, attention is given to exploring learning opportunities in leadership; information and communication technology; capitalizing on diversity; and social and economic community development. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.

The Ford Foundation is dedicated to strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation, and advancing human achievement. The foundation is a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide. This has been our purpose for more than half a century. Created with gifts and bequests by Henry and Edsel Ford, the Foundation is an independent organization, with its own board, and is entirely separate from the Ford Motor Company.

The Farmers Market Project - a one person shop with lots of supporting actors - was conceived as a way to promote awareness among farmers' market managers of the increasing attention farmers' markets are receiving from private foundations, national-level non-governmental organizations, and new and existing opportunities for assistance from federal agricultural programs. The Project also seeks to provide resources to farmers market managers on what other markets are doing and update federal policy makers of the needs of farmers' markets with data collected from surveys and other sources.