When residents of the Golden Triangle find their budgets tightening, food banks are there to help fill the gap. Now, however, food prices are bad enough that food banks are struggling to make ends meet.
Starkville Strong is a nonprofit that helps coordinate charity work and mutual aid throughout the city, focusing on food and housing. Executive Director Brandi Herrington said its coffers have been completely exhausted.
“We have used all of our savings and are completely reliant on what comes in daily,” she told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “… The food we (have to) purchase for our pantries has increased significantly and we’re running out of creative ways to crowdsource. We even ask for people to go through their pantries to grab items they may not want anymore, not expired of course.”
Starkville Strong relies on donations for 85% of the food it redistributes to those in need, covering the gap with purchases from its fundraised savings. That ratio has been getting worse, Herrington said, mostly because food intake from larger organizations have slowed.
“Donations are declining,” Herrington said. “Some of our monthly church donors have backed out because they can’t afford it. Some of the places we normally get large in-kind donations from have begun splitting their haul with more organizations than before.”
Second Servings has taken 32,000 meals from local businesses that would have been wasted and given them to those in need, an example of the “creative ways to crowdsource” Herrington hopes will help Starkville Strong stretch its capacity.
Another creative program is Neighbors Helping Neighbors, held on the fourth Sunday of each month behind Dunkington. Typically seeing 50 to 75 volunteers and 75 to 120 participants, neighbors contribute food and work to let anyone in need pick out meat, produce, eggs or even whole meals.
With food donations declining and funds exhausted, however, it’s getting harder and harder to fill shelves for Neighbors Helping Neighbors, those of the seven Free Little Pantries Starkville Strong runs around the city or its direct contribution programs Path to Stability and Path to Prosperity.
“We’re hoping to continue crowdsourcing and doing what we do best – be creative and innovative in our approach to sustainability,” she said.
Columbus food pantries
Rhonda Sanders, a lieutenant with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office and the president of the Community Benefit Committee in Columbus, said the committee has also exhausted its savings trying to fill its 29 local food pantry boxes. The Pete Patrick Food Pantry, where the sheriff’s office collects donated food for distribution to the boxes, has been forced to cut its deliveries in half to just one run per week.
“I can’t remember the last time it was this low,” said Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins. “… There’s a pantry across the street, and coming in today I saw a girl riding away from it on her bike with groceries. It’s a good thing to do, giving a hand to people who need a little extra help.”
Sanders said CBC will get by on donated food until it can find another opportunity to fundraise. Typically that would come in June or July from the group’s annual gala, but given the upfront costs of that event she said CBC might have to skip the gala this year and instead wait until the holidays for fundraisers.
“Food prices and everything are just so expensive. We might just wait and start raising money when we do the haunted house and (Christmas) toy drive,” she said. “… It usually costs us about $5,500 to put on the gala. With everything going up like the food and building, and donations going down, we’re debating whether to put it on again this year.”
But not every Golden Triangle food shelf is staring down the barrel of a crisis. Jennifer Garrard, executive director of Helping Hands, said she’s noticed a drop in donations but still expects to maintain its level of food distribution.
“It’s the frequency of (donations),” she said. “We’d be getting (donations) every month from a certain church or organization and now we might get it every month and a half. There haven’t been a lot of food drives from schools or organizations like there was in the past. We saw a slow decline last year as grocery prices increased, but not as much as we’ve seen the first three months of this year.”
Garrard also mentioned that one of the churches that used to contribute closed entirely.
Sanders said the Community Benefit Committee was affected by closures as well. Bargain Hunt, which used to donate clothing to the pantry, closed in March.
Helping Hands helps about 34 families every week, Garrard said, though each family registered with the pantry can only come in once every two months. If Helping Hands tried to serve all their clients each month, Garrard said, they couldn’t keep shelves stocked, though it still manages to serve roughly 1,700 people each year.
Garrard has also had more luck soliciting funding, mostly through grants from large private corporations like the TV company Sparklight. She said she’s almost exhausted existing grant funding but already has new ones identified to apply to, and is confident the group’s finances are secure.
Coupled with steady support from local churches and extra time she spends tracking down good deals, Garrard wasn’t worried that she’d have to scale back operations and has been increasing her number of clients as food insecurity spreads.
“We have had a ramp up in the number of new clients coming for food,” she said. “A lot of people who’ve never been to it have signed up, and a lot of them are apologetic, saying they’re very sorry they’re having to come. We always reassure them. That’s what we’re there for.”
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
