Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry Inc.

Our pantry promotes the health and well-being of our northern Westchester community by providing weekly nutritious food and complementary education and services to those in need. Our congregational and community partners work together to honor the dignity of those we serve.

We empower our neighbors to thrive by providing nutritious food and complementary programming in a w

Goal One: Address the escalating nutrition and wellness needs of our community reliably, responsibly, efficiently and economically.

Goal Two: Ensure guests' needs and preferences are prioritized with highly nutritious, culturally resonant foods and meaningful and engaging nutrition and wellness programming.

Goal Three: Ensure our operational and administrative infrastructure is sustainable and sufficient to enable the delivery of our services.

Regular participation by leadership in round-table and webinar discussions and trainings on poverty, nonprofit governance, compliance, development strategy, collective impact, and food insecurity.

Prior to COVID we forecast guest numbers for FY2022 at 43,400. Instead, we served 63,840 -- a 47% increase over expectations due to the pandemic. Then inflation hit hard and demand grew further. We are on track to serve 90,000 guests in FY2023. These high volumes require a larger, more complex organization. We are making the transition carefully and successfully and have implemented numerous strategic initiatives. We adjusted our governance and staffing models for sustainability. We are pursuing new funding and messaging channels. We adjusted our volunteer scheduling to ease the burden of extended hours and escalated pacing on our volunteer base, and expanded our network of volunteers. We initiated a Neighbor Advisory Council and a guest survey to ensure our guests' needs and preferences are understood and integrated into our programs and services. We created a Youth Advisory Board to engage local youth in fighting food insecurity. We introduced our Food 4 Wellness program to respond in a multi-dimensional way to guest needs, including partnerships with local restaurants/groceries to provide periodic, healthy, grab-and-go meals. We are distributing higher volumes of nutrient-dense and culturally resonant foods, and contracting with a nutritionist to help guide food selections and create engaging nutrition-education content (e.g., videos, guest-recipe cards, etc.). We are enhancing complementary distributions, including diapers, wipes, children's books, flow kits, coffee, tea, spices. After a COVID-19 suspension, we have returned to our robust array of complementary programming, including breastfeeding clinics, flu and COVID-19 vaccinations, nutritional classes, the Westchester Library van with affordable connectivity, and more. We implemented metrics to measure poundage of nutrient-dense foods distributed and guest-value created that we use to track progress toward our goals.