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Community Corner

Emergency Food Network Receives Generous Funding At Crucial Time

$75,000 from Gary E. Milgard Foundation comes on the heels of two other sizable donations as need remains high at food banks across Pierce County.

To say that $75,000 buys a lot of food would be an understatement.

At the Emergency Food Network, it’s just a starting point.

Staff can take the $75,000 it received this week from the Gary E. Milgard Foundation and turn it into $900,000 worth of food.

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That is because EFN can purchase $12 worth of food for every dollar donated – and that is crucial for the 67 food banks, shelters and meal sites in Pierce County under the organization’s umbrella. EFN distributes more than 14 million pounds of food annually.

“Oh my gosh; isn’t it fabulous?” asked EFN Executive Director Helen McGovern. “The Milgard Foundation is being exceedingly generous with basic services – they also just donated $150,000 to the YWCA, and then the $75,000 to us.

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“Their focus on domestic violence and basic needs in the community is to be applauded.”

While McGovern said that the Milgard Foundation has donated money to EFN twice in the past,

“We weren’t expecting anything that significant.”

Jeff Klein, EFN’s director of development, agreed, noting that donations are down in a struggling economy. Most foundation donations are in the $5,000-$15,000 range.

“But there are a few family foundations and we feel really blessed that they consider us, and consider hunger relief a priority. The Milgard Foundation is super generous in this community.”

The donation comes on the heels of a two-year, $30,000 annual gift from the Medina Foundation as well as an anonymous gift of $50,000 to match $50,000 from the Murdock Charitable Trust.

“Our budget is roughly $2 million and we put out about $21 million worth of food a year,” Klein said. “That’s about 1.2 million pounds a month, so with Milgard and Medina, that’s really covers about three weeks of operations here, which is a significant amount.”

The anonymous matching gift will go toward EFN’s $300,000 roof-replacement project.

McGovern said that a portion of the Milgard donation will go toward general operations, including the vehicle, fuel and salary for a part-time employee to pick up donated produce.

“We used to be able to get some free trucking, but with the cost of gas … The farmers are donating food in the Yakima Valley and Walla Walla area, or even California, but we have to go pick it up.”

She said that they received watermelons from California this week and apples, onions and potatoes from Central Washington. They had not received the latter two for a while.

“This couldn’t come at a more pivotal time,” McGovern said. “The need is going up, and this is that time of year when people are focused on getting their kids back to school and they need to remember the kids going back to school who won’t have food on the weekends.”

Klein said that EFN is constantly looking for ways to get more food – and purchasing it is the best way.

“It guarantees quality and makes sure that we’re getting staple foods out into the community,” he said. “When we get funding like this, it really makes a difference – and the need is going way up.

“We’re extremely grateful – but it’s not about us,” he said. “It’s about them making a priority out of alleviating food insecurity.”

McGovern said that donations are generally slow this time of year, but added that EFN’s gleaning project, which collects produce from homeowners’ gardens, has been quite successful.

“But generally speaking, this is a lower time,” she said. “People are on vacation.”

Klein said that demand seems to have stabilized over the last year, which comes as a relief because “in an ideal world, these resources wouldn’t be needed,” but at the same time, a lot of the people using food banks are the ones who started visiting when the economy soured in 2008-09.

“Now they’re returning,” he said. “We’re seeing lots of repeats (so) while the number of people did not increase that much, the total number of visits was up about 300,000 from 2009-10.

“People are not using food banks once or twice – they’re using them a lot more to stay afloat.”

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