Children learning to grow food — the next generation of growers, builders, and community leaders
Southeast Michigan · 501(c)(3) Pending

Land is the
real signature
of wealth.

We help people transform ideas, land, and local resources into viable enterprises — and generational assets that outlast any single generation.

See the Work Join the Work
The Work

Build a Career Plan That Actually Leads to Income

Four pathways. Each one ends with something real in your hands — not a certificate, not a class credit. A plan funders can evaluate. A business that can operate.

Most programs require you to already be somewhere — a specific city, a revenue threshold, a business that's already running. Others are designed only for people who have nothing at all. That leaves out everyone in between: people with ideas, a roadmap, and real potential who just need the infrastructure to make it fundable. That gap is exactly where we work. No boxes. No checkpoints. Just the work.

Participants working through business planning and capital strategy

FundReady Capital Readiness Bootcamp

Build a Career Plan That Actually Leads to Income

You have an idea. We help you build the full structure around it — the Capital Plan, the financial model, the implementation strategy, and the fundable assets that can withstand scrutiny from a bank or a funder. Most programs stop at the plan. We go further: build, implement, fund, and sustain. Because implementation is where most workshops fail — and we don't let that happen here.

You leave with A Capital Plan · A Fundable Asset · An Implementation Roadmap
Veterans building enterprises and transferring leadership skills into community impact

FundReady Veteran Entrepreneurship Bootcamp

Turn Your Military Experience Into a Meaningful Business

You already have the courage, the discipline, the rapid-response skills, and the ability to move through any challenge. We give it a vehicle — a home that turns your service into an impactful, fundable, generational enterprise. Your military experience isn't background. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

You leave with A Capital Plan · A Fundable Asset · An Enterprise Ready to Launch
Nonprofit leaders building grant proposals and organizational capacity

FundReady Grant Readiness Bootcamp

Get Funded. Not Just Ready.

We help you translate your impact into funding. This Bootcamp builds a corporate-level backbone into your organization — opening untapped revenue sources for your mission. It's strategic planning, capacity building, and grant proposal design all in one. We don't just hand you a proposal. We build the repeatable systems, executable processes, and institutional knowledge that eliminate starting from zero every single time.

You leave with A Full Grant Readiness Package · Repeatable Systems · A Proposal Funders Can Say Yes To
Growers learning land-based enterprise skills on working farm land

FundReady Land Enterprise Bootcamp

Grow Food. Access Land. Build Income.

An 8-week business plan and capital strategy Bootcamp built specifically for urban farmers, growers, and intentional communities. Entity structure, land acquisition strategy, and a Capital Plan designed for food-system enterprises. The hands-on farm incubator follows Bootcamp completion — and it's coming sooner than you think.

⏳ Farm Incubator — Coming Soon
You leave with A Capital Plan · A Land Enterprise Strategy · Incubator Access When Ready

Are you an organization that works with aspiring entrepreneurs, veterans, or community builders? We can bring FundReady to your clients.

Let's Talk →
The Payoff

What You Build. What It Gets You.

Every asset you build in the Bootcamp does something specific. Here is what you leave with and what it unlocks.

What You Build

What It Gets You

A Capital Plan

A fundable document banks, CDFIs, and investors can evaluate without you explaining yourself from scratch every time

Fundable Assets

Access to grants, loans, and contracts you currently do not qualify for. Doors that were closed become open.

Repeatable Processes

60 to 80 percent of your next proposal already written. You are updating, not starting over. Hours saved every cycle.

Documented Systems

A site visit from a funder reveals strength instead of gaps. You stop dreading scrutiny and start welcoming it.

A Theory of Change

Two sentences that answer every funder's first question. Who you serve, what you do, and why it works.

A Dual-Capital Map

You know exactly which capital sources you qualify for now and which ones you are building toward. No more chasing grants you are not ready to win.

A CapScore Baseline

A measurable readiness score you can show funders, track over time, and use to demonstrate organizational growth.

These Bootcamps are sponsor-funded in partnership with Creative Focus LLC. Participants contribute a $99 co-pay at enrollment. Your commitment to the work. If you are ready to build, we are ready to meet you there.

Contact Us to Enroll
Now Enrolling

Upcoming Cohorts

FundReady Capital Readiness Bootcamp. 8 weeks. 5 hours per week. Online via Zoom. Eastern Time.

Cohort 1 - July 28, 2026

Capital Readiness Bootcamp - Day Track

Enrolling Now

Schedule

Mon and Wed, 10:00 to 12:30 PM ET

Duration

8 weeks, ends Sept 19, 2026

Co-pay

$99, sponsor-funded

Cohort 2 - September 29, 2026

Capital Readiness Bootcamp - Evening Track

Coming Soon

Schedule

Tue and Thu, 6:00 to 8:30 PM ET

Duration

8 weeks, ends Nov 21, 2026

Co-pay

$99, sponsor-funded

Cohort 3 - January 12, 2027

Capital Readiness Bootcamp - Day Track

Coming Soon

Schedule

Mon and Wed, 10:00 to 12:30 PM ET

Duration

8 weeks, ends March 6, 2027

Co-pay

$99, sponsor-funded

All cohorts are delivered online via Zoom. Seats are limited. Contact us to reserve your spot and someone will respond within 24 hours.

Contact Us to Enroll
How It Works

Two Stages.
One System.

The Bootcamp answers Can I build it? The Land Enterprise Collaborative answers Can I operate it? Together, they take you from idea to running enterprise.

1

FundReady Bootcamp

"Can I build it?"

Eight weeks. A structured curriculum that takes your idea and builds the full business infrastructure around it — financial modeling, capital strategy, funder-ready documentation. You graduate with assets, not just knowledge.

  • Capital Plan
  • Fundable Asset (business plan, grant proposal, or enterprise strategy)
  • CapScore™ — a measurable readiness benchmark
2

Land Enterprise Collaborative

"Can I operate it?"

The LEC is where plans become enterprises. Farm practicum, residency, kitchen incubator, enterprise accelerator. You don't graduate until your operation has been tested against real conditions — land, production, and market.

  • Operational experience on working land
  • Refined financial projections
  • Enterprise validation
  • Production knowledge + market readiness
Artie Short — Vietnam veteran, gardener, the man whose peace in the garden started everything

Artie Short
Vietnam Veteran · Gardener · The Beginning

The Origin

It didn't start with
a business plan.

It started with a man who found peace in a garden. Stephanie Willis grew up watching her father — a Vietnam veteran — spend his days fishing and tending to growing things. Not as hobbies. As healing. As the thing that made the weight of what he had carried, bearable.

She didn't have a word for it then. The word is ecotherapy. The practice is as old as the earth itself. And when she redirected her nine-year-old son Chris away from a video game screen and toward a sheet of garden beds and colored pencils in 2009, she was passing something forward she had watched her whole life.

That garden became a community garden. The community garden became a soap apothecary, then a citywide mutual-aid network Chris and his college friends built in college. Now, it's a teaching program — and it has come full circle.

2009

Detroit backyard. First garden bed. Chris trades a controller for soil.

2014

Community garden launched. Stephanie leaves corporate career to homestead and build.

2015

First grant funding. Bodytruth Soap Apothecary founded.

2021

Mother Earth News features the work.

2026

Bodytruth Family Farms Educational Foundation, Inc. incorporated. Seventeen years of work, formalized.

What We Believe

This Is a Declaration,
Not a Compliance Section.

Our Mission

Bodytruth Family Farms Education Foundation, Inc. educates aspiring growers, veterans, and community members ages 18 to 59 in food sovereignty, land-based wellness, and business and workforce development — giving them not just skills, but a replicable blueprint to build food security and economic opportunity in their own communities.

Our Vision — A future where every community, regardless of size or geography, has the knowledge, capacity, skills, and economic pathway to close its own poverty gaps — organizing together for the betterment of the whole, sharing values, knowledge, and resourcefulness, growing its own food, and building a thriving local economy. In doing that work together, communities learn to heal together.

Human Potential

Every person carries inherent value, capability, and possibility. When given the right environment and tools, people learn, grow, and flourish.

Stewardship

We care for land, resources, knowledge, and relationships with intention — recognizing that what is entrusted to us today shapes what is available tomorrow.

Whole-Person Wellness

Physical health, emotional wellbeing, learning, purpose, environment, and community influence one another and must be nurtured together.

Learning Through Understanding

Lasting transformation comes from understanding systems, not following instructions. We teach the why behind the how.

Regeneration

Healthy systems restore more than they consume. We seek to regenerate land, strengthen communities, and create conditions where people and ecosystems thrive together.

Community Multiplication

Knowledge and opportunity are meant to be shared — extending impact beyond the boundaries of the farm, into families, neighborhoods, and communities.

Generational Impact

We make decisions with future generations in mind. Our work is designed to be carried forward, built upon, and passed down.

Stephanie Willis — Founder, Bodytruth Family Farms Educational Foundation, Inc.
The Founder

Stephanie Willis

Founder & Executive Director

Before there was a nonprofit, before there was a methodology, there was a mother trying to save her son from a screen. That single redirection — from a video game controller to a hand-drawn sheet of garden beds — changed the trajectory of his life. And eventually, of hers.

Stephanie spent seventeen years building the proof of concept for everything the Foundation now formalizes. A community garden. A soap apothecary. A teaching program inside the Detroit Public Library. A store that became a gathering place. A mutual-aid network that a college student — her son, Chris — helped build across an entire city. And in 2022, a return to Michigan to do the deeper work first, before building anything meant to last.

She built FundReady because she lived the gap it closes: mission-driven founders who know what they're building but not how to fund it. The Foundation is the fullest expression of both — the mission she was always building toward, funded and structured the way she always knew it should be.

Founder, FundReady LLC — capital readiness methodology
Founder, Bodytruth Soap Apothecary — botanical skincare
Featured in Mother Earth News, 2021
Governance

Board of Directors

The Foundation is governed by a founding board committed to mission integrity, community accountability, and long-term stewardship of this work.

Stephanie Willis

Stephanie Willis

Founder / Executive Director

Detroit-rooted entrepreneur, educator, and community builder. Founder of FundReady LLC and Bodytruth Soap Apothecary.

Board Member

Treasurer

Seat being filled

Board Member

Secretary

Seat being filled

Board Member

Director at Large

Seat being filled

Interested in serving on the founding board? Tell us about yourself →
Join the Work

This Is an Open Invitation.

Whether you want to build an enterprise, support this one, offer land, or bring FundReady to your community — the door is open. Tell us who you are and what brings you here.

  • Join a Bootcamp cohort and build your Capital Plan
  • Put your name on the Land Track waitlist for Southeast Michigan
  • Bring FundReady to your organization's clients or participants
  • Offer land partnership or land donation in Southeast Michigan
  • Share your knowledge as a volunteer mentor — every cohort needs experienced voices
  • Fund or partner with the Foundation
  • Explore a board or advisory role
  • Connect as a veteran ready to build something of your own

Tell Us Who You Are

We read every submission and respond personally within 24 hours.

Your information is never shared or sold.