I am absolutely exhausted from a triple dose of Seattle food banks. Early this morning, I returned to Cherry Street food bank to observe mother/baby day and talk to the administrative staff. On Thursdays each week, Cherry Street changes its food line to baby formula, food, and toiletries and opens its doors only to women with children five and under. It is their slowest day, with only about 200 women throughout the day. Next, I met with Kim Nelson, the Community Affairs Director for Northwest Harvest. Once again, Northwest Harvest blew my mind with the astounding scale of their operations. Kim and her team are responsible for raising ten million dollars each year to purchase the more than 24 million pounds of food that is distributed to 330 food banks and, of course, to pay the salaries of the hard working staff. Today alone, she had a fund-raising goal of $40,000. This support is largely derived from individual donors paying small checks. Northwest Harvest has a 30,000-person mailing list and a 10,000-person donor base. Kim was full of incredible insight into the world of non-profit fund-raising. She has two rules by which she lives: she asks for four dollars for every one dollar she actually needs and she requires her staff to interact with a donor seven times between a donation and the next time they ask for money. Additionally, money and resources for Northwest Harvest are raised through thousands of food drives a year (600 drives in December alone!) and 17 signature events each year, all of which are facilitated by companies or individuals who want to give back.
Next, I talked with Elise DeGooyer, who is the program manager for Northwest Harvest. She and her staff are in constant communication with the 330 food banks that receive food from Northwest Harvest. These food banks range in dependency from 5% to 100%. Northwest Harvest distributes food for free to any food bank in the State. Their only requirement is that no client of a food bank can be denied food from Northwest Harvest, even if the food bank's clientele policy does not allow them to give that client the full food bank service. Elise told me that food banks across the state have seen a roughly 50% increase in demand in the past three years. In the past year or so, that demand has leveled off, but it has not dropped. This data matches up with what we have experienced at the Hunger Coalition.
After lunch, I took a bus (I am on my way to mastering the Seattle bus system) to Saint Mary's. Saint Mary's runs a moderately large food bank out of a church basement. It is not religiously affiliated and is very similar to Cherry Street. Like Cherry Street, it has no client screening system. Clients are only asked to show identification and are entered into the system so that they cannot come more than once a week. Saint Mary's receives food from Northwest Harvest, Food Lifeline, and a few major grocery stores in the area. Saint Mary's serves around 400 clients each day and requires between fifteen and thirty volunteers per day to work in the warehouse and food line. I found the food selection here to be quite strange: they had a lot of variety and types of food, however, a large proportion of it was unhealthy. There was a box each of ring pops, otter pops, cake mix, cheesecake mix, cakes, and pie filling. Many clients who came through the line refused substantial food like tuna and potatoes but loaded up on sponge cake and pie filling. Most of these sweet items come from the grocery stores, but I am of the opinion that it is better to throw Oreo cakes and ring pops away rather than give the empty, unhealthy calories out to clients. Saint Mary's also operates one of the largest home delivery services in Seattle. Multiple times each week, vans go out into the poorest neighborhoods to deliver food boxes to clients who are too ill or disabled to come to the food bank. They also create no-cook boxes specifically for homeless clients, about 20 of which are handed out each day.
Finally, I headed to Jewish Family Services for a quick orientation to their food bank. More on that later...I will be volunteering with them tomorrow morning. It is time to sleep and play with my brand new iPhone!
You are right. Some of the food choices are odd. Like you, I wonder why they even have all the cakes and pop tart stuff, especially if people are choosing those items over healthier food. Is it because they use what money they have to purchase good food, but get more discretionary items from the food bank? Or maybe it has something to do with Food Stamps and what your are allowed to get with those. Very odd. Or maybe it has to do with what is easiest to prepare? Very interesting things you are getting into, Zana. I would think seeing the huge scale of the operations would be very interesting to see compared to what we have going on around here. I'm glad you have started this blog.
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