Posted on 07/07/2002 3:39:22 PM PDT by Clinging Bitterly
July 7, 2002
Money hungry: FOOD for Lane County considers distribution fees, other ways to pump up its sagging bottom line
By SUSAN PALMER The Register-Guard
TONYA HALEY went through the Creswell emergency food box line selecting lettuce, tomatoes, bananas, bread and milk. The stay-at-home mother of four needs help feeding her family.
And it's not that her husband lacks a decent job. He works as a registered nurse at an Albany hospital. The simple fact is, his $20-an-hour salary doesn't stretch all the way across the monthly bills.
Until last November, Haley worked, too, as a clerk in a fast-food restaurant. But she and her husband were tired of working opposite shifts so one of them could always be home with the kids. And with the birth of their youngest in November, the couple decided to forgo Haley's $300-a-month paycheck so she could be home all the time.
They thought they could pull it off with a little belt-tightening, Haley said. She cut the food budget by buying cheaper foods and clipping coupons. The family rarely ate out or went to the movies, she said.
But a jump in electricity rates last winter swallowed all their careful frugality measures. "The utility bills killed us," she said.
By January, Haley realized that the family couldn't get by without help. So twice a month she joins the line at the Creswell food pantry. "This has been so helpful. I get to stay home with my kids, and that's how it should be," she said.
The groceries for the emergency food boxes come from FOOD for Lane County, but the agency charged with feeding the hungry is having its own financial problems, operating at a deficit three years running and depleting its savings to make ends meet.
In 1998, the food bank recorded a $677,700 reserve. By June 2001, the savings had dwindled to $144,756. Fiscal year tax records haven't been prepared for 2001-02, but Executive Director Caroline Frengle said the savings account is down to about $30,000.
"We have been scrambling," she said.
Even though individual donors and volunteers gave more than ever to the nonprofit agency last year, FOOD for Lane County is still operating in the red. The audited report won't be completed until October, but early calculations indicate a $55,000 deficit.
Frengle attributes the red ink to the fact that the agency has been getting more food to more people on about the same amount of money. Unforeseen expenses stemming from the agency's move to a bigger warehouse also affected the bottom line.
Five years ago, the food bank collected and distributed 2.8 million pounds of food. This past year, it gave 6 million pounds to needy families.
The agency's budget hasn't grown at the same speed, with state and federal money earmarked for distribution remaining about the same, Frengle said.
The food bank sought emergency help from the county this spring to help close the gap.
But FOOD for Lane County's board of directors has passed a bigger budget for the fiscal year that began Monday, relying in part on increased donations to cover expenses and build back some reserves.
This may be a year of reckoning for the agency, said Mike Favret, incoming board president. The cash crunch may force the food bank to reconsider self-sufficiency programs that take a bite from the budget but don't directly contribute to emergency food distribution.
"If we can't pay our bills, we'll have to figure out ways to cut," said Favret, a real estate developer.
Distribution fee
Before it comes to that, Frengle hopes to stabilize the budget with revenue-producing programs, more private support and government help.
She's also asked the smaller pantries receiving food to help pay distribution costs, perhaps just a penny a pound.
But for food programs such as Creswell's, which is run entirely by volunteers in a church parking lot, that might be too much, she acknowledged.
And the bigger pantries, such as Community Share in Cottage Grove, balk outright at the added expense.
Community Share received 171,000 pounds of food from the food bank last year. A penny a pound charge for the agency, which serves all of south Lane County, would be about $1,700.
"I'm opposed to a fee at any rate," said Community Share Executive Director Janice Niemela. The money that Community Share raises barely covers its own distribution costs, she said.
To find answers, food pantry directors from throughout the county have begun meeting with FOOD for Lane County. Their second meeting occurs Wednesday, but solutions are still on the horizon, Niemela said.
Meanwhile, FOOD for Lane County expects to go back to area city and county governments for more help, Frengle said.
She also has her eye on creating revenue with enterprise: producing food in the commercial kitchen, such as spaghetti sauce made from canned goods bought at a discount, or making dried fruit and sun-dried tomatoes from produce raised in the community gardens.
The money would help cover distribution costs, and the programs could be run by emergency food clients to help them develop business and entrepreneurial skills, Frengle said.
Those programs won't show up on the agency's agenda this year, but initial feasibility studies are in the works, she said.
The food bank also hopes that donors will be more generous than ever and has penciled in $90,000 more in donations to this year's budget than the $485,000 it received last year.
The $2.2 million budget includes a $75,000 cushion, money that will go back into the savings account, Frengle said. But that's just a fraction of what she'd like to see there.
"We'd like to have three to six months of operating reserves," she said.
Growing need
Regardless of what the agency does, no one expects a decrease in need to ease the pressure. Hungry people keep on coming.
In 2000, the agency distributed emergency food boxes to 52,000 people. In 2001, it served 9 percent more. The numbers jumped again by 15 percent to 64,000 people this year. That's about 20 percent of the population of Lane County.
"I'm signing up 40 new people a week," said Julie Stephenson, who supervises food distribution at St. Vincent de Paul. "And that's a low estimate."
More seniors and families with at least one working adult are coming in for help, Stephenson said.
Getting food to those families costs FOOD for Lane County 25 cents per pound. County and Federal Emergency Management Agency money helps cover distribution costs, but their contributions amount to about 14 cents a pound, Frengle said. It was sufficient four years ago, but it's not enough now.
Compounding that financial bottleneck, the food bank also spent more than it planned on the new warehouse, Frengle said. The agency moved into the $2.5 million building in January 2000. While private donations covered construction costs, furnishings for it ate into the agency's operating budget, Frengle said.
The new warehouse, triple the size of the old cramped quarters on Madison Street, gave the food bank more capacity. But the distribution dollars to support that growth lagged.
"At 5 million pounds is when we went, `Holy cow, we're in trouble,' " Frengle said.
The deficit prompted the agency to go to both the city and county governments this spring for emergency help to keep from cutting programs. It got a $32,000 crisis grant from the Lane County Human Services Commission and another $50,000 outright from Lane County. But county commissioners warned the agency that the extra money was a one-time grant.
The emergency money will help the food bank meet its core mission to feed needy people, yet retain programs that have given the Eugene agency a reputation as an innovator - for now.
Evaluating food programs
If solutions to offset the distribution costs don't come, FOOD for Lane County may have to take a second look at its projects aimed at helping people help themselves.
Among them:
# Community gardens and a youth farm that teach people gardening techniques, while adding fresh produce to the food boxes.
# Healthy Futures, a seven-week course that teaches clients cooking, nutrition and shopping techniques,
# A gleaning program that puts people in fields after crops have been picked to gather the leftovers.
Such efforts have drawn praise from other social service agencies.
"It's one of the most innovative in the state, if not the nation," said Kim Thomas, spokeswoman for the Oregon Food Bank, which oversees the state's 20 smaller food banks.
But given the agency's deficits, the programs have raised questions among board members, outgoing board President Mary Jo Wade said.
"There's more tension on the board now than there has been," Wade said.
Some board members feel that the food bank should stick to getting food to hungry people and let go of programs such as the community gardens.
The gardening programs yielded 45,000 pounds of fresh produce last year. But unlike most of the donated food the agency distributes, the produce doesn't come for free. The gardens cost about $214,000 to run, which means the fresh fruits and vegetables cost the food bank about $4.75 a pound.
But the math obscures the real value of the gardens, Wade said.
"We get a lot of funding for those programs. In some ways, they're easier to get funding for," she said.
Of 29 grants from corporate and government groups last year, 11 were earmarked for the gardens.
Frengle said the gardens and cooking classes should be maintained because they teach people skills that make them less reliant on emergency aid. Clients make friends in those programs, and the new connections help them avoid the isolation that often contributes to emergencies, she said.
Measuring the impact of such programs is difficult, but a survey of Healthy Futures participants conducted by a University of Oregon graduate student last year showed the classes had some impact.
Of 121 people who took the class, 73 percent said they needed fewer emergency food boxes because of what they'd learned. And 95 percent said they'd met people through the program with whom they had stayed in touch.
Second largest in state
Other programs aside, the Eugene-based food bank, the second largest in the state, moves a lot of food. The 6 million pounds of groceries it gave away last year puts it on par with agencies serving much larger populations, Oregon Food Bank spokeswoman Thomas said.
For example, the Tampa, Fla., food bank distributes emergency food to 10 counties with a population of just more than 1 million people and served about the same amount of food last year, according to its executive director.
Closer to home, Marion-Polk Food Share in Salem serves two counties with a population only slightly smaller than Lane County's and distributed 2.5 million pounds of food last year, Executive Director Margaret Grant said.
She attributes the difference to FOOD for Lane County's aggressive efforts.
"They collect a lot of food through their food rescue program that we don't have," Grant said, "and they have a tremendous amount of support from food drives. They've done a tremendous job of being able to involve the business community."
The challenge now is making sure all that food gets to the people who most need it, said Niemela of Community Share in Cottage Grove.
"It takes a certain amount of labor, but nobody seems to want to pick up that piece of the cost," she said.
If her pantry were to get stuck with a fee, Niemela would be in the untenable position of having to turn food down.
"Can I afford to take it? That's the question," she said.
FOOD FOR LANE COUNTY
# ANNUAL BUDGET: $1.95 million, fiscal 2001-2002; $2.2 million, 2002-2003.
# FOOD DISTRIBUTED: 6 million pounds in the year that ended June 30.
# WHO IS HELPED: 64,812 people in 24,850 households - about 20 percent of the population of Lane County - received one to three emergency food boxes last year. The boxes provide three to five days of food, depending on family size. Food also goes to social services agencies, such as Looking Glass, Womenspace and Centro LatinoAmericano, for hungry clients. Cost: $1.05 million.
# OTHER MEALS: The food bank serves dinners at three sites in Eugene and Springfield, and administers the USDA summer lunch program, which fed 105,000 lunches to Lane County children last year. Family dinner cost: $116,000. Summer lunch cost: $243,000.
# GARDENS: The Youth Farm, Grassroots Garden and Churchill Garden contribute fresh produce for hungry families. Cost: $214,000.
# TRAINING: Clients learn cooking, nutrition and shopping techniques to improve their skills. Cost: $64,000.
# FOOD RESCUE: Restaurants, hotels and the University of Oregon give prepared food that hasn't been served to FOOD for Lane County workers, who pick it up in refrigerated vans and return it to the food bank kitchen - where it's repackaged and frozen, then distributed in emergency food boxes. Cost: $258,000.
# COMMUNITY STEPS UP: Thousands of volunteers donated 45,000 hours last year, the equivalent of about 21 full-time staff members.
# FUND RAISING: As of June 12, the food bank had received $708,000 in individual and corporate contributions, almost $32,000 more than the agency's fund-raising goal for the year.
# GRANTS: Foundations gave $242,000 to various programs, including Healthy Futures and the Youth Farm, but $8,000 less than sought.
FOOD SOURCES
# U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE: 1.1 million pounds in the past fiscal year in surplus food from the federal government.
# OTHER FOOD BANKS: 1.6 million pounds from Oregon Food Bank and America's Second Harvest among others.
# FOOD RESCUE EXPRESS: 253,000 pounds in prepared food from local restaurants, hotels and the University of Oregon.
# DONATIONS: 3 million pounds from people who donate everything from canned foods to extra produce from their gardens, from businesses that organize food drives among employees and from grocery stores that give food still safe, but past its expiration date.
Copyright © 2002 The Register-Guard
It seems like $20 an hour should stretch. In this part of the country 2/3 of the wage-earners don't make over $10 an hour and many make quite a lot less.
Yup. That's one of the things I thought was interesting.
I'm another one who questions this. I live in a relatively high-cost area, and $20/hr. would "stretch". Maybe not to luxuries, but certainly enough so that a food bank wouldn't be necessary.
This smells of liberal propaganda.
For that matter, if she's a stay at home mother, why is she even getting produce from a food pantry? Why doesn't she have a garden (the climate in Eugene OR is perfect for it.)
There are a lot of things one can do to spend far less money; the problem is that many people will not do them, because they believe they should live *as if* they're making twice what they do.
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