Harvest Hope Food Bank

Hunger

We are the food safety net for 20 counties in South Carolina – the Midlands, Florence and Greenville. We are a regional food distribution organization that collects, stores, and distributes food and related items. Our 476 member agencies that feed the hungry in these communities – churches, private charities, others – depend on Harvest Hope to provide the food.

The INCREASE IN NEED recently has been startling. In the last six months, the number of families we have fed has increased by 42 percent over the same period a year earlier. Comparing 2008 to 2010 we have had a 91% increase in our service to hungry families. We served 2,037,496 individuals throughout our service area in 2010. With double-digit unemployment in our state, we see NO sign of this need abating soon.

Here is how our funding cycle typically works: Most of our cash donations come in during the last four months of the year. We get through each spring and summer by tapping a $400,000 line of credit. We pay off that line of credit with the money that comes in from September-December. Each year in the past, we have paid off the line of credit by January 1. THIS year, because of the drop-off in financial donations, we have been unable to pay off the line of credit. We have cut every operating expense we can cut, while still serving the needs of the hungry. We have cut back on mailings, switching to e-mail; reduced casual labor to help sort food, bringing in more volunteers for additional shifts on nights and weekends; tried to get our food more from within our region to avoid shipping costs; eliminated travel to conferences and staff training; reduced our use of operational supplies. And we’re looking at possible staff reductions.

WHY has giving dropped off? Because our regular donors, our friends and neighbors who have been so generous to us in the past, are ALSO hurting in this economic crisis. We have been told by some who have given to us regularly that they are themselves just a step away from needing Harvest Hope’s help in order to eat.

Donations to Harvest Hope are of course tax-deductible, and 98 CENTS OUT OF EVERY DOLLAR we receive goes directly to feeding hungry families in our area. Harvest Hope does NOT foster a culture of dependency. Typically, if we can feed a family for three months in succession, it gets them through their crisis and they are able to be self-sufficient after that. During those three months, Harvest Hope frees them from worrying about food so that they can concentrate on the other things they need to do to get themselves out of their own financial difficulty.

Our records indicate 72% of our clients come to us just 1 to 3 times a year. Over the last three years more than 484,000 individuals came to us for help through our two full-time emergency food pantries, and of those, 86,000 came to us for the first time. The top reasons? Unemployment, underemployment, and the high costs of shelter. Less than 1 percent of our clients receive TANF (welfare) payments. When this economic crisis first hit the nation in 2008, we heard a lot about financial institutions that were “too big to fail.” For the communities we serve, Harvest Hope is the institution that is too big to fail. The hungry of these communities, and the various agencies that feed them, depend on Harvest Hope too much. And we are NOT failing. We are not going away. We are getting the job done, despite the challenges before us. But for the first time, we have gone into a financial hole doing so, and we need your help to get out of it, and continue the mission.

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