As expenses and demand skyrocket, Sacramento Food Bank CEO worries about meeting local need
Sacramento’s regional food bank is sending out an SOS. The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services at exactly the time individuals and families need it most.
“It’s not just food costs. It’s operational costs. It’s fuel. It’s labor. It’s boxes and tape,” said Blake Young, the food bank’s president and CEO. “We’re all bleeding cash because the demand is so high.”
This financial crisis affects not only the organization Young leads but more than 200 local agencies that receive food from it. If you volunteer for a Sacramento County food program, if you give to one, if you or a relative have ever been helped by one of those agencies, chances are some of that organization’s foodstuffs came from the Sacramento Food Bank.
The orders to shelter in place and the subsequent hoarding hit all these nonprofit agencies with stunning force: Their volunteer armies disappeared as senior citizens sheltered in place to avoid exposure to an illness that too often proves lethal for those 65 and older. Grocers were overrun by shoppers doing panic buying, and there was no longer much of a supply of goods ready to rotate out of their stores.
And, Young and leaders of other food programs had to cancel some of their biggest food drives of the year. Gone, for instance, were May’s postal service food drive and the Sacramento Food Bank’s year-round Spirit of Giving.
Young is trying to save the organization’s signature fundraiser, Run to Feed the Hungry, by making it a virtual run that people will be able to complete anywhere. Registration opened Wednesday, and all runners will get a T-shirt and a special bib to mark the 26th year for the nation’s largest Thanksgiving Day fun run.
It’s a million-dollar event, Young said, and the food bank can’t afford to lose that funding. He said he’s hoping that people will form teams and do fundraising, vying for gift certificates to Fleet Feet.
Biggest concern: Sustainability
Around the nation, food bank leaders, lawmakers and the nonprofit community say the future of regional food banks are at risk.
“Right now, our biggest concern is sustainability,” Young said. “We know that the impact of the pandemic and the unemployment rate is going to hit our organization as hard as any organization in the country.”
The demand brought on by the pandemic and joblessness has already staggered the organization.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services were serving about 150,000 people every month.
That number doubled to 300,000 by late April.
Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, said that number speaks to the urgency of the food insecurity crisis here and across the state.
“Food insecurity is a devastating issue and has been exacerbated by the economic impact of COVID-19,” McCarty said. Though he said the food bank has “stepped up at an unprecedented level,” he also called for local, state and federal government help along with that of the Sacramento-area community.
Sacramento’s city council on Tuesday appropriated $500,000 of coronavirus relief funding to the food bank. Young said Friday that a number of individuals and organizations have contacted him since The Bee published articles on the food bank’s plight and he hopes to get a cash infusion large enough to help local residents weather a protracted loss of income.
The impact from the coronavirus pandemic is being felt by nonprofit food programs not only in the local area but around the state and nation.
In Pleasant Hill, the Bay Area food rescue nonprofit White Pony Express has seen demand — and expenses — grow to meet the crisis of food insecurity, said chief growth officer Erica Brooks.
The nonprofit typically delivers food surplus from retailers and companies to 70 agencies in Contra Costa County that serve those in need: shelters, foster youth homes, senior centers, basically any agency that serves people who need help, she said.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in the need for food. We’ve tripled the amount of food that we’re distributing.”
Brooks pointed to an Antioch food distribution site set up after schools were closed due to COVID-19, and those closures shuttered many free and reduced lunch programs.
“These are low-income schools where we have a pantry one day a week. We asked them to let families know they could come drive through to get weekly groceries,” she said. “Week 1, we had 200 families and students come through. The next week, it was 600. The next week it was 900, all at one distribution site.”
Need continues to grow
The numbers continue to rise, she said.
“The need is continuing to grow, especially among students and the senior community,” Brooks said.
White Pony once delivered only to agencies, but as many agencies closed amid shelter-in-place orders and volunteer shortages, the Bay Area nonprofit is delivering to people’s doorsteps. It is experiencing the same sort of cash drain as the Sacramento Food Bank.
“Our expenses have gone sky-high. We used to just deliver to agencies, and now we’re delivering to people’s doorsteps through different programs across the county. Fuel costs have gone up. We had to buy an additional truck, and we’re looking at buying another truck. We’ve had to hire additional staff drivers,” Brooks said.
“Any cost you would associate with being a highly mobile organization with 10 vehicles, they’ve all gone sky-high.”
Now, the question for Sacramento Food Bank, White Pony and others that are filling the food insecurity breach is: When will the surge of people in need slow?
Young predicted it will be a couple years, and Brooks, well, she said she can’t say for sure.
“I wish we could estimate that. One thing we’ve focused on is looking at what it means to be food-insecure,” she said.
White Pony used to focus on homeless people and those already off the radar. Now, she said, her staff focuses on preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place working as a safety net to keep families under roof.
“If we can provide them food so they can pay their rent, we want to catch them and help prevent them from falling into situations they can’t get out of, not just helping those who are already in dire straits,” Brooks said. “There are a lot of people coming who are the working poor. A lot of people are literally having to choose between rent and food, so we want to be able to give them food, so they can afford to pay their rent.”
That includes students’ families and seniors, both with huge needs and families threatened by wildfires.
“Also, now we’ve got the fires going, so our unhoused neighbors, the people experiencing homelessness, are also a big concern of ours,” Brooks said.
Food insecurity high in Sacramento County
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Young said, Sacramento County was higher than the state and national average for food insecurity. The need surged after the last recession, he said, and it never abated.
“I’m scared for people I’ve seen with my own eyes: isolated seniors,” he said. “People have no idea how much they’re struggling to get decent nutrition. People are working hard, but I’ve had so many conversations with single moms with their kids home, grown men who were the breadwinners for their families and now they’re out of work.”
The demand has so worried his staff, he said, that many started working seven days a week to be sure their neighbors get fed and they continue to do so.
“If you ask me, ‘Blake, what’s different about the crisis versus the other 24 years of your career,’ I would say I’ve never seen more people come to me and come to our team and come to volunteers at our partner agencies and say, ‘I’ve never even been to a food program before. I’m scared. What do I do? I feel bad. I’m embarrassed.’
“I’ve tried to tell each one, ‘Don’t be embarrassed. This is a unique situation. That’s what we’re here for.’”
But the number served by the food bank is only one marker of the toll that the pandemic has taken. Young, who also sits on the board of the California Association of Food Banks, said he and other food bank leaders are still absorbing the speed and scope of the waves of challenges coming at them.
“We immediately had a huge drop in volunteers (because of stay-home orders). At the same time, within two weeks, the demand for food had absolutely gone through the roof,” Young said.
Help came from the military and from other organizations, but participation from partner agencies dropped by more than a third, Young estimated, mainly because their volunteers came from the same senior pool told to stay indoors and because of the health risk posed by the virus.
Cash donations needed
Fortunes quickly turned as the pandemic and its impacts grew worse.
“Demand doubled. The amount of volunteers shrank and the numbers of agencies handing out food shrank,” Young said. By the end of April, “we were really concerned for our sustainability. The amount of money it cost to run our organization doubled overnight. The amount of food required, the amount of people required to get the food out around the county was just overwhelming.”
The Food Bank has gotten help — a $180,000 infusion from the Sacramento Region Community Foundation’s RCA Community Fund, enough to pay for four full-time warehouse workers for an entire year.
Foundation officials said in a statement they hope the donation will spur other foundations and companies to give.
“Serving over 300,000 people per month without enough warehouse staff to deliver service is just not sustainable,” the community fund’s Larry Gilzean said in the statement.
Foster Farms also donated chicken to the Sacramento charity in recent days — 65,000 servings or 16 tons as part of its COVID-19 relief efforts.
Other grocers and producers are also stepping up big time, Young said.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving and the holiday season loom on the calendar — along with the help so many will need in the months or even years after.
“My heart goes out to all of the families who will experience Christmas time in this situation,” Young said. “From a mental health perspective, the holidays are a very difficult time for people…. Then you overlay the stress of this pandemic: parents being scared for their parents, scared if their children will get it. Throw it into a blender and you’ve got an absolute disaster.”
Still, Young continued to display his trademark optimism: “All we can do is work our tails off to ensure children are well-nourished and that our agencies are well-resourced and that people at least don’t go hungry during the holidays. I’m holding out hope, though, for much more than that during the holidays.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 9:27 AM.
