KANSAS CITY, Mo — In a recent KSHB 41 report, nonprofits talked about the impact of rising food costs on their operations.
Many of them were struggling to make ends meet because donations were down and their internal food budgets were going up.
VOICE FOR EVERYONE | Share your voice with KSHB 41’s JuYeon Kim
On this Giving Tuesday, KSHB 41 checked back in with Nourish KC to see if there was an increase in donations throughout the holiday weekend.
“Giving Tuesday can be kind of hit or miss,” said Mandi Jean-Letter, executive director with Nourish KC. "We usually don’t typically see an increase in donations on giving Tuesday. A lot of our supporters are kind of longterm supporters for us. We would love any new supporters that maybe want to help in the food insecurity space.”
The good news at Nourish KC is that they are now fully staffed thanks to a big money donation.
But in order for employees to continue making their impact, they simply need more resources, especially in order to meet the increasing holiday demand.
Last week they were doing about 5,000 meals; this week, they did 2,200 meals in one day.
Jean-better has been leveraging any and every connection they have in the community to get them through the holidays.
For example, Tuesday’s lunch menu was leftover turkey donated by the Salvation Army on Thanksgiving. They recently accepted a huge donation of to-go containers as well, which are slightly defective.
“We stock pile as much as we can. We lean on a lot of our partner organizations as well,” Jean-Retter said. “One of our food rescue partners just opened a new store location and so we’ve been able to lean on an additional location to bring in some of our food rescue for our meals.”
Janine Urness with Catholic Charities is doing everything she can to make sure their pantries are stocked too.
She is concerned as they continue through the holidays because while donations are down, demand is up exponentially.
Compared to January, they are serving 250 families instead of 89. Instead of repeat customers, she is seeing more people coming in for the first time as well.
“It’s just, I think, the increased cost of food,” Urness said.
A yearly food fundraiser done by two schools really helped them out during Thanksgiving week.
“That helps significantly not to have to purchase because we typically end up having to purchase food, because we don’t get enough donations,” Urness said. “Anything helps — people need to understand anything helps.”
—
