What to expect: The Foodbank pilots new neighbor intake system

What to expect: The Foodbank pilots new neighbor intake system

The platform, created by Feeding America, will allow us to collect more insights about the people we serve

By Emily Gallion, Grant & Metrics Manager/Advocacy Manager

Thanks to a new partnership with Feeding America, The Foodbank is piloting a new neighbor intake platform. This platform will allow us to better understand the people we serve and evaluate our services, but may cause some minor disruption as we adapt to the new system.

The new platform is very similar to PantryTrak, the system we already use, which was created by our friends at Mid-Ohio Food Collective. However, the new program will collect more complex demographic information so that we can evaluate how well we are reaching communities that are traditionally underserved.

We are already using the new system to sign-in clients at select Mobile Pantry and Drive Thru Food Pantry distributions. Significantly, we are unable to import our historic client database to the new system at this time.

PantryTrak has enabled us to quickly pull up our returning neighbors’ profiles without entering more detailed information, but we must create a new profile for each individual for this new system. Fortunately, this is a one-time process — you will not need to provide this information for each consecutive visit.

If you are unable to provide any of the following information, you will not be turned away from receiving food. Our team does everything we are able to, in keeping with state and federal guidelines, to make sure anyone who reports a need for food receives assistance.

The new platform will require the following information from clients:

  • Full name
  • Date of birth OR age
  • Street address
  • Number of adults (18-59), seniors (60+), and children in the household
  • Date of birth OR age of each family member

If you are picking up on behalf of another household, you will need to provide this information about the family you are picking up for.

We’d like to remind you that we are required to collect the above information about each client to receive federally-purchased food. While we strive to make our programming as user-friendly as possible, we must follow federal and state guidelines to distribute food. (In special circumstances, we are able to find alternative solutions — such as offering food that is nor federally purchased — to ensure no one goes hungry.)

As we move further in the pilot process, we will be asking additional questions to help understand who we are serving. You may decline to respond to any of the following questions:

  • What race or ethnicity do you identify as?
  • What gender do you identify as?
  • Does anyone in your household receive SNAP/food stamps?

Finally, we will be piloting optional questions to gather information such as dietary restrictions, disability status, and veteran status. You may decline to respond to any question you do not wish to answer.

We are grateful for our neighbors’ patience as we collect this vital information. We are so excited to use this data to better serve our community.

If you have questions about this pilot, call Lauren Tappel at (937) 461-0265 x40


It takes a village: We couldn’t do it without our volunteers

It takes a village: We couldn’t do it without our volunteers

Our volunteers are just as vital to our work as our donors

By Emily Gallion, Grant & Advocacy Manager, and Caitlyn McIntosh, Volunteer/Intake Support

We often celebrate our monetary donors and talk about how far we can stretch your dollar. But if time is money, our volunteers are just as valuable. Volunteers are the heart of our work, and many of our operations, from food sorting to distribution, could not be completed without their generosity.

For proof, we only need to look back to recent history. In 2019, we hosted a record breaking 8,000 volunteers throughout our warehouse and mobile pantries. Largely in response to the 2019 Memorial Day Tornadoes, we were impressed to see the response of our community during a time of crisis. We knew our volunteer program was evolving into something special. 

However, the onset of COVID changed everything about our operations. All of our mobile pantries temporarily closed, and over 40% of our partner agencies shut their doors for safety measures. The hardest decision we had to make was to not allow any volunteers inside our building, as they are the backbone of our daily operations.

The truth is, even though our staff is amazing, we could not be such a high performing team if it weren’t for the support of volunteers. For example, our mass distributions require over 100 staff and volunteers in order to make sure food is distributed quickly, traffic flows safely, and clients get registered in a timely manner. 

At a recent Thanksgiving mass food distribution, we served over 1700 households. This could not happen with our staff of 50 people alone. We also rely on volunteers to support our monthly Mobile Farmers Markets, which distributed over 2 million pounds of food — much of it fresh produce — directly in high-need communities last year.

One of the best parts about volunteering is the people you will meet. Getting to see clients face-to-face adds a different level to the volunteer experience. As a Foodbank volunteer, you get to see firsthand the work we do to relieve hunger in our community. 

While many people have assumptions about who our clients are, participating in our food distributions can foster greater empathy and compassion for our neighbors experiencing food insecurity. It is our hope that people will come to view those who use our services not simply as people in need, but as individuals with stories and experiences as rich and meaningful as their own.

Our goal for your volunteer experience is to leave as an advocate for our work. Charitable food assistance is just one way to address hunger in our community. To solve food insecurity at its root, we must work towards systemic change to address the drivers of poverty. By building relationships with volunteers, we can create a community of action.

To schedule a volunteer shift, visit www.thefoodbankinc.volunteermatters.org and create an account. You can participate in a variety of activities, including sorting and packaging food, working in our Urban Garden, and distributing food at a Mobile Farmers Market.

If you have ever volunteered with us at The Foodbank, we offer our gratitude on behalf of the people we serve.  Your impact expands so far beyond the hours you serve!


How to host a holiday food drive

How to host a holiday food drive

By Emily Gallion, Grant & Metrics Manager/Advocacy Manager, and Caitlyn McIntosh, Intake/Volunteer Support

The holiday season is in full swing, which means things are getting busier here at our warehouse. We see an overall increase in volunteer hours, donations, and corporate campaigns. One of the most popular ways people choose to give back is by hosting a food drive.

While some food banks have moved away from accepting food drive donations during COVID, our food drive program is back in full swing. Whether you’re gathering items at home, work, or school, food drives are a great way to add a personal touch to your holiday giving by adding your favorite food items.

We’ve created a short how-to guide to help you get started!

What items can I donate?

This time of year, lists of items that you should or shouldn’t donate circulate on social media. Don’t overthink it! We encourage people to follow a simple guideline: What would your family eat?

The families we serve also enjoy the same sorts of foods you do, including easy-to-prepare meals, snacks, and the occasional sweet treat. Remember that our goal is not to provide as much food at as low cost as possible, but to serve our neighbors with the food they need for a healthy, active lifestyle.

We welcome non-perishable food donations of all kinds. Some popular items are canned meat and fish, hearty soups, rice, beans, and canned fruits and veggies. We are unable to accept perishable foods through food drives. 

We can also accept non-food items, such as toiletries and pet food. In keeping with food safety guidelines, please store these items separately from all food.

Consider a virtual food drive!

The easiest way to maximize your impact is through a monetary contribution. Because of our ability to purchase in bulk, our partnerships with local retail donors, and our hard-working food procurement team, we were able to distribute five meals for every $1 donated last year.

To put that in perspective, a 24-pack of ramen at a local grocer costs around $5. On average, a $5 contribution provides 25 meals — and one-third of the food we distributed last year was fresh produce. If you yourself are working with a tight budget this holiday season, consider donating to us, and we’ll do the shopping!

That said, we do value the food we receive through food drives tremendously. This food is an important supplement to our other food procurement streams. Physical food drives are also important to raise awareness around the issue of food insecurity during the holidays.

Visit this page to learn more about organizing a fund drive.

Get started today!

Scheduling a food drive is simple: Before you start, contact Jamie Robinson at (937) 461-0265 x14 or jrobinson@thefoodbankdayton.org to discuss the details of your drive. Then, fill out this participation form on our website. Please allow 48 hours before you pick up or drop off your food drive barrel(s).

At the end of the drive your collection of food may be dropped off at The Foodbank, Monday through Friday between the hours of 9:00 a.m. through 12:00 pm and 1:00 p.m. through 3:30 p.m. Please call to let us know when you are coming. Lunch appointments for drop off can be arranged in advance.

Questions? Call Jamie Robinson at (937) 461-0265 ext. 14.

Consider these ideas to make your food drive more impactful:

  • Offer materials, such as this factsheet from Feeding America, about food insecurity alongside donation barrels.
  • Set up friendly competitions between departments to encourage giving
  • Come up with a theme! Ex: allow casual wear for people who donate, hold a potluck lunch with a canned good as cost of admission, etc.
  • Ask your organization to match donations with cash to incentivize giving

 


Closing out a historic fiscal year at The Foodbank

Closing out a historic fiscal year at The Foodbank

Amidst the ongoing recovery from the 2019 tornado outbreak and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Foodbank distributed more food than ever before

By: Emily Gallion, Grant and Advocacy Manager, and Caitlyn McIntosh, Development Manager

Despite an unusually challenging year, The Foodbank was able to distribute 17,884,642 pounds of food in our 2020 fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020.

Over one third of the food distributed by weight was fresh produce. With it, we were able to provide food to 116 partner agencies in our three-county network and serve a total of 935,404 people.

It’s hard to believe over a year has passed since the 2019 Memorial Day tornado outbreak. The storm left over $1 billion in property damage and at least 1,800 without homes. While the disaster struck a month before the beginning of the fiscal year, recovery has been slow, and the destruction is still visible in many parts of our community. Read about our tornado relief response here.

It’s even harder to believe that just one year after the storm, our community would be living through a mass shooting and a pandemic. It has been a challenging year,  but we are honored to have been able to serve our community through it.

Here are some highlights from the past year at The Foodbank:

Drive Thru fills critical gaps in COVID-19 response

A line of cars forms outside The Foodbank’s Drive Thru Food Pantry on a rainy distribution day.

Our on-site drive thru was built in 2018 as an accessible distribution site for our Senior Box Program. While we saw potential in the drive-thru to expand our distribution capabilities, we didn’t know just how critical it would be in our disaster relief efforts.

Early March was an extremely difficult time for us at The Foodbank. The spread of COVID-19 and mandatory social distancing measures forced us to rethink nearly every aspect of our operations.

We typically host Mobile Farmers Markets at 27 different sites each month, but the high attendance at these events makes social distancing difficult to enforce. Sadly, we had to suspend these distributions for nearly three months.

Additionally, we could no longer visit our 18 Senior Box distribution sites due to safety precautions at the living facilities. With all of these operations canceled, we were left with one way to get food out of the building and onto the tables of our community — our on-site Drive Thru Food Pantry.

Immediately, we saw attendance rates spike to levels we have never seen before. Before the pandemic began, our Drive Thru was averaging about 200-300 households per distribution. That number skyrocketed to 600-700 households per day, peaking at a record breaking 750 households on April 22nd.

This was an incredible year for the Drive Thru, which served a total of 37,249 households and distributed 3,467,113 pounds of food. It is an essential service that aids in our confidence that Miami Valley residents can always turn to us no matter the circumstance.

 

Mobile Farmers Markets distribute record-high number of meals despite COVID-related cancellations

Like nearly all aspects of our operations, our Mobile Farmers Market program was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We were forced to temporarily suspend our Mobile Farmers Markets March 12 to limit the spread of the virus.

After developing a plan to enforce social distancing, which included additional staffing to keep our families six feet apart, we were able to reopen on a limited basis starting in June.

After carefully evaluating each Mobile site to ensure our ability to enforce social distancing and reach all areas in our territory, we selected 11 sites to reopen first. We are continuing to evaluate the course of the pandemic as well as food insecurity projections in our area to determine our next courses of action.

While our almost three-month closure certainly affected our metrics, this has still been a very successful year for our Mobile Farmers Market program. Through this program alone, we were able to distribute a total of 1,848,453.7 pounds of food to families in our three-county service area — an increase of 73,990.5 pounds from the previous year!

We would like to thank our generous donors and volunteers for supporting our work in the past year. Last year, a total of 5,414 volunteers spent 13,600 hours with us. We couldn’t do it without your help! Follow our social media accounts @thefoodbankinc for future announcements on volunteer opportunities. While we are still not allowing volunteers on-site due to the severity of the pandemic, we hope to see you all soon.

It has been a record breaking year here at The Foodbank and we are hopeful for what the future holds. This year has challenged us in ways we never thought possible and proven our true resiliency as a team and a community. If you want to read more about our service area, hunger statistics, or our economic impact, visit our Tri-County Impact Statement on our website.


Foodbanking in the time of COVID-19

Foodbanking in the time of COVID-19

Pandemics disproportionately affect the people in our lines. Here’s what we’re doing to help.

By: Caitlyn McIntosh, Development Manager, and Emily Gallion, Grant and Advocacy Manager

Last week, concerns about COVID-19, a form of coronavirus, reached a fever pitch as the Ohio Department of Health announced the state’s first three positive cases. Since then, efforts to contain the pandemic led to school closings, orders to limit public gatherings, and even the suspension of voting in the state of Ohio. 

For weeks, the health and well-being of our clients, staff, and volunteers has been at the forefront of our minds as we monitor the spread of this pandemic. We have had to make very difficult choices to suspend or modify many of our offsite services, but we are making every possible effort to make sure our clients have access to the food they need.

In these trying times, we would like to commend the leadership of Governor Mike DeWine, who has made strong moves to limit the spread of the virus. Many early actions, including the closures of schools, bars, and restaurants, have provided a model for other states trying to respond to the epidemic. We are glad to see our leaders taking this virus seriously.

Background on COVID-19

COVID-19 is a form of coronavirus, a family of viruses that are zoonotic, or transmitted between animals and people. Coronaviruses have been responsible for deadly outbreaks in the past, including MERS and SARS, but COVID-19 is a new strand thought to have originated from bats. Many initial infections were traced to a large market in Wuhan, China.

Seniors and people with pre-existing conditions are at a heightened risk of becoming seriously ill as a result of this disease, but people of any age can become sick with or transmit the virus. According to the CDC, early data suggests that seniors are twice as likely to have a serious illness because of the virus.

This reality became chillingly clear when COVID-19 swept through a nursing home in a Seattle suburb, causing the deaths of 18 residents. Older adults are at an increased risk due to weakened immune systems and the increased likelihood of pre-existing conditions. The National Council on Aging stated that “age increases the risk that the respiratory system or lungs will shut down when an older person has COVID-19 disease.”

Families with small children can take comfort in the fact that, unlike influenza, COVID-19 does not seem to cause a serious threat to children. In fact, children and young adults are more likely to carry the disease with no symptoms at all. However, these populations should still take part in healthy practices as they could transmit it to someone else who may not have a strong immune system.

Symptoms of COVID-19 are similar to that of the flu virus and the common cold. Both viruses are potentially dangerous to high-risk populations, and individuals who experience difficulty breathing should seek emergency treatment regardless of known COVID-19 exposure.

What does this mean for people in our lines?

One risk factor for the disease may not be immediately apparent: Analysis of past disease outbreaks, such as influenza, reveals that pandemics often disproportionately affect people who are living in poverty. 

One study of the 2009 H1N1 outbreak found that, in Oaklahoma, 26 percent of white individuals who contracted the virus needed hospitalization, compared to 55 percent of black patients and 37 percent of indigenous patients. 

In many ways, this is common sense: People with low incomes are more likely to work part-time jobs that do not offer benefits such as paid sick leave and healthcare. People living in poverty and people of color are also more likely to live in areas with high population density, which increases the likelihood that they will be infected.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than one third of private-sector employees in the lowest wage category have access to paid sick leave

Luckily, employees whose employment is affected by the outbreak may be eligible for additional unemployment relief. This will be especially important for employees of the restaurants, gyms, bars, and other businesses that have been ordered to close. 

Workers who are required to self-isolate will be eligible for unemployment benefits even if they do not test positive for the virus. Many restrictions on unemployment benefits, including the usual waiting period for benefits to kick in, have also been waived.

Workers who need to apply for unemployment benefits can file online at unemployment.ohio.gov

This pandemic is a stark reminder that almost half of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, which means a loss of income due to quarantines or business closures can be catastrophic. It also decreases these households’ ability to stockpile food, water, and other necessities.

School closures are also incredibly disruptive to families’ day to day life, as workers who cannot afford childcare may be forced to stay home. Closing schools can also impact children’s cognitive development at an extremely crucial stage in life.

Encouragingly, many school districts have already begun to offer carryout school meals. Governor Mike DeWine confirmed on March 13 that the United States Department of Agriculture approved Ohio’s waiver to allow carryout meals in school.

So, what are we doing about all of this?

In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, it may be difficult trying to follow the constant news updates and safety precautions. At The Foodbank, people are the most important resource, so it is our duty to ensure that we are serving our vulnerable populations in the safest way possible. 

Unfortunately, the spread of COVID-19 has a tremendous impact both on the population we serve and our own operations.

Due to Governor Mike DeWine’s orders of limiting public gatherings to less than 100 people, we had to make the difficult decision to cancel our mobile food pantries for the time being. Clients are actively being guided towards our weekly drive thru pantries.

To meet any additional needs due to the cancellation of our mobiles, we have expanded our drive thru operations to running three times a week. Additionally, we moved to serving families once a month in effort to keep up with high demand. 

Since the outbreak of the virus, our drive thru went from serving an average of 350 families per day to over 400 per day. As news changes by the day, we are always looking for ways to update our services with the community’s safety in mind.

We have made the decision to target low-income seniors with this box program because they are the population at highest risk for death or serious illness as a result of this virus. We also know that many of our seniors are homebound or on a fixed income, which makes it more difficult for them to visit the supermarket or stockpile emergency supplies. 

Because we have had to suspend offsite distributions of our CSFP boxes, we have added additional drive thru distributions to serve those clients directly at our warehouse. Seniors enrolled in the program can visit our drive thru March 24 or March 26 between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm to pick up both their senior food boxes and their additional COVID-19 emergency boxes.

If you are looking for a way to help out, The Foodbank is still actively seeking volunteers. We currently have an increased need due to high demand in the drive thru and the volume of emergency boxes we are trying to package.

If you want to volunteer at The Foodbank, please make an appointment prior by calling (937) 461-0265 x31. We are enacting several safety measures to protect our volunteers, staff, and clients, including:

  • Limiting walk-in traffic to The Foodbank by locking our doors
  • Taking the temperature of all volunteers and staff who enter our building
  • Requiring all volunteers to wash their hands prior to the start of their shift
  • Asking volunteers and staff not to bring outside food into the building
  • Asking any volunteers over the age of 60 to stay home

Thank you donors!

It is always heartening to see our community come together at difficult times such as that. We would like to extend our thanks to the people who have volunteered or donated in the past several weeks. In times like this, every little bit counts.

We would especially like to thank Caresource, who committed $128,000 in funding to provide additional food boxes to our at-risk seniors currently enrolled in our CSFP program. This funding will be used to prepare 1,200 boxes, each of which will contain enough food to last 14 days. We hope these boxes, which we are currently building and distribute, will help this high-risk population practice social distancing in the coming weeks.

To follow along with The Foodbank’s response efforts, follow us on our social media channels @thefoodbankinc and our website for further updates. 


Canstruction 2019 – Call for Entries