Philabundance

Philabundance was founded with the simple belief that no one should go hungry while healthy food goes to waste. Our mission is to drive hunger from our communities today and to end hunger for good. In addition to food distribution, we reduce food waste, increase access to nutritious meals, and tackle the root causes of hunger through programs such as the Philabundance Community Kitchen. Philabundance directly serves over 300 community focused organizations and provides additional food resources through lead agencies that reach another 300 partners across our nine-county service region in greater Philadelphia. For more information visit philabundance.org or call 215-339-0900.

Philabundance's vision is to end hunger for good throughout our nine-county service area.

Goal One: Continue to expand our distribution of healthy, culturally responsive food by increasing our food purchasing program budget and expanding our diverse food source streams

Goal Two: Grow our Ending Hunger For Good place-based interventions and integrated service partnerships in order to achieve long-term impacts such as increased economic mobility

Goal Three: Provide diverse and convenient methods for people to receive food, such as direct delivery and prepared meals--giving people the food they need, when they need it

Philabundance prioritizes investing in its staff and leadership. Recent leadership development investments include: *monthly full-day Employee Engagement Days with presentations and resources for staff and leadership development, including seminars on key management responsibilities *small group in-person management trainings for warehouse leaders *training resources provided through Philabundance's membership in the Mid-Atlantic Employer Association, such as public speaking training for managers

COVID-19 demanded innovative changes to our day-to-day operations. When the crisis first began, many food pantries and emergency kitchens in our network temporarily closed, creating a bottleneck in the amount of food we were able to distribute. In response, we quickly expanded our food-purchasing program and streamlined our processes in order for disaster relief items to be brought in and held in reserve. This strategy, though costly, has paid off, and we now have a steady stream of food coming in from orders placed moving forward. We distributed over 30 million pounds of food from March through August alone, and more than 50 million pounds in fiscal year 2020 overall – an unprecedented number. While our agencies have since resumed operations, we are working to improve their capacity by purchasing and delivering refrigerators, freezers, and other capacity equipment so they can better store and distribute larger amounts of food. In addition to emergency food programs offered through our network of 350+ member agencies, we also worked with the City of Philadelphia to run 40 new weekly food distribution sites at convenient locations. Moreover, due to the need for social distancing, we also operated a weekly drive-thru “truck-to-trunk”-style emergency food distribution site at Citizens Bank Park. This model allowed for a minimal-contact exchange and more clients obtaining provisions, serving up to 1,300 cars per distribution. Internally, we significantly modified our regular warehouse and distribution operations to maintain good health and safety, following procedures recommended by the CDC, WHO, the Feeding America network, and ServSafe. We are placing regular bulk orders for a variety of sanitation products and PPE for staff, volunteers, and our agency network, including disposable masks and gloves, hand sanitizer, bleach, sanitizing wipes, and bags. During the early phase of the crisis, we also hired temporary help, and we provided hazard pay to workers.