Building Toward a Hunger Free Community

We believe hunger is solvable.  That’s why we are working to create a Hunger Free Community.  We’re the first food pantry to join the Hunger Free Communities Network, an alliance founded by the USDA that supports broad-based, multi-sector coalitions committed to ending hunger.  With help from the Alliance, we are working to better understand hunger in our community and identify underserved populations, gaps in programs that address hunger, and underutilized resources.  We know this means we must accommodate growth in our systems and capacity.  So, this year we’ve focused on bringing our infrastructure up to speed, updating and building out our technical capacity to collect and process data on programs, finances and volunteers.

Our new client data tracking system helps us better understand how people use our programs and will be vital to helping gauge progress towards becoming a Hunger Free Community.  Our new financial system simplifies the process of tracking and reporting on budgets by program and better serves grant reporting needs.  Finally, our system for coordinating scheduling and managing our 1,500 active volunteers is more streamlined. Infrastructure may not be sexy, but we can’t build a Hunger Free Community without it.

The time, attention, and funds directed toward improvements this year will help guide data-informed improvements to our program offerings for years to come.