Sacramento’s Run to Feed the Hungry will go virtual this year amid coronavirus restrictions
Sacramento’s Run to Feed the Hungry, the nation’s largest Thanksgiving Day fun run, will go virtual this year as the Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services modifies the holiday giving tradition to comply with social-distancing restrictions aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19.
“It generates a million dollars for the organization. Without this event, we would be pretty devastated financially,” said Blake Young, who heads up the regional nonprofit food bank. “We want to encourage people to do this virtually. We will have a lot of fun things going on, including that people will still be able to register and get their T-shirts.”
Individuals and families will be able to form teams and raise funds for the organization, and any donations from their friends and family will be logged on their race pages. Participants who raise $1,000 will win a Fleet Feet gift certificate and those who raise $500 to $999 will get a $100 gift card.
It’s the 26th year for Run to Feed the Hungry, Young said, and it’s hard to over-emphasize just how crucial this year’s fun run will be for the Sacramento Food Bank. It is reeling from multiple blows that could have spelled the end of any entity, whether for-profit or nonprofit.
Labor costs have gone up because the organization no longer can count on the hundreds of senior citizens who volunteered countless hours each week to ensure food would be distributed to people in need, Young said. COVID-19 has been especially deadly for individuals age 65 and up, and public health officials have advised them to shelter at home.
When it comes to distributing food, Young said he and his team partner with River City Food Bank, Loaves and Fishes and more than 200 other agencies to connect with Sacramento-area residents who are food-insecure. But many of those agencies shuttered in the pandemic, he explained, either because they were led by senior volunteers or because their facilities were so small that they couldn’t mitigate the health risks.
Other new sites sprung up or expanded, Young said, and politicians or civic leaders asked the food bank to assist them in reaching out to thousands of people who had never come to a food bank before.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the food bank served 150,000 people a month in a region that ranks higher than the state and national average in food insecurity, Young said. The organization also continues to distribute food directly to local residents because there are roughly 70,000 food-insecure individuals whom its partner’s don’t currently serve.
“If you considered all of the people in Sacramento County who qualified for Cal Fresh, the number would be 500,000, or one-third of the entire county,” Young said. “Another thing to consider is that more than 75 percent of all children in Sacramento County qualify for free or reduced lunch, so you’re talking about 7 out of 10 children in our county are food-insecure.”
Food insecurity increased in the region from 2007-2009 during the Great Recession, Young said, and it really never dropped back much from those elevated levels.
The food bank staff have been working, in many cases, seven days a week not only to cover the gaps left by the loss of volunteer manpower but also to find new sources of food, to work out new logistical plans and to expand relationships with partners such as South Sacramento Christian Center where Les Simmons is a senior pastor.
“We had been doing a food distribution. We’d been working with the food bank, working with Blake and those guys and they’ve been incredible. We knew right away, because of COVID, it would need to be scaled up.”
Because the church had shut down services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Simmons and other church leadership converted a sanctuary, moving out chairs and other furniture to make way for a socially distant food box assembly line.
The church, Simmons said, is more than furniture, more than what’s between four walls. Where the food distribution service once served 1,000 people a month, he said, they now serve 2,000 of the church’s neighbors a week easily. No one has to leave their car, he said, because volunteers try to make the experience as safe as possible.
“The food bank has definitely done an amazing job trying to meet that scale,” Simmons said, “but there are real food challenges right now. There’s usually a line of 300 cars by 8 a.m. on Stockton Boulevard.”
Although it might seem early to be talking about a Thanksgiving Day fun run, Young said registrations and donations typically start in September and those funds go immediately to help with sourcing food and preparing for the holidays.
This year, he said, it’s even more important to start banging the drum early because political campaigning in a presidential election year can make it difficult to get the media attention needed to generate community excitement about the event.
Registration fees will be $35 for adults, $20 for children. To learn more, go to runtofeedthehungry.com.
Many charity running events have gone virtual because public gatherings have been limited amid the pandemic. This notion, though, of having people complete miles on their own and submit their miles or times hearkens back to a time before national championship track meets. Back then, high school students mailed in their times, and a champion was selected from those best times.
Julie Fingar, whose company NorCalUltras, puts on ultramarathon trail races, said she’s put on three virtual events this summer but they do not have the draw of the live in-person events and so her revenue has dropped significantly.
“These virtuals ... just do not pencil out. Honestly, I’m doing it as a labor of love because it’s my passion. It would be really hard if we had to continue in this virtual world. No matter how creative we are, it’s just not sustainable.”
So, Young and his team will face an uphill run to get registrations. He thinks, though, that people will enjoy the engagement they’ll experience.
“People can team fundraise,” Young said. “People can actually do the event at home on a treadmill. We’re going to have an app that they can download. We’re going to do our Run to Feed the Hungry T-shirts, and we’re planning a creative bib for folks. We’re hoping that people will take videos of themselves and post them. They will be able to use our training schedules. It would be great to see families and businesses doing team fundraising.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 7:14 AM with the headline "Sacramento’s Run to Feed the Hungry will go virtual this year amid coronavirus restrictions."
