CEO Annual Letter
Neighbors. Empowered.
Welcome, Neighbor.
“Neighbor.” Such a simple yet powerful word. When you hear neighbor maybe you think of a friend next door or a family up the block. For years the Food Bank has referred to those courageous enough to ask for help and engage with our pantries and programs as neighbors. This year we realized we are all neighbors, whether we’re the ones giving or receiving help, and it became even more clear to us that when we unite together, we’re empowered to build a stronger, healthier community.
Like most organizations, we’ve faced many challenges this past year; from inflation and rising food prices to supply chain challenges and great economic uncertainty. But through it all, our team at the Food Bank has focused on evolving, adapting, and growing to better serve our community by living out our Strategic Plan UNITE.
We’re empowering our neighbors experiencing food insecurity by designing with them for better choice, better access and less stigma. For years it’s been important to provide food choices to our neighbors, allowing them the dignity to choose their groceries as we all do. Now, as we think about choice and empowerment, we strive to provide choice in how neighbors might access food as well. Through our spectrum of programs, neighbors can choose to “shop” at a pantry, pick up at a pantry or mobile market, order online for pick-up or delivery, and call, text, or chat online with our team for help with SNAP benefits.
We’re evolving the Food Bank, becoming stronger and more adaptable while growing community support and awareness of food insecurity throughout our 13 counties. This year we welcomed 17,000 unique volunteers who donated an incredible 130,000 hours of their time. We raised $30M in contributed revenue from our many generous donors to further our mission. We moved our Lake County distribution center from Park City to a larger facility in Lake Forest to better serve our neighbors and member agencies and to accommodate more volunteers.
We’re embracing diversity, equity and inclusion in a deeper way in all our work. We’re addressing inequalities in our communities and raising awareness of the disproportionate rate of food insecurity in households of color. This year we launched an internal DEI committee and a Board DEI committee. We formalized a DEI Statement to help guide our strategies and offered monthly trainings to staff. To further increase diversity within our stakeholder groups we surveyed our leadership volunteer committees and set goals around proactive outreach to engage underrepresented demographics. We continue to add diverse and desired foods to our order list and make decisions about which foods to distribute at mobile markets based on the demographics of the communities we serve.
We’re enhancing our food supply by providing nutritious food, consistently and equitably. In FY22 we provided 78M meals, down from the previous year’s total of 100M meals at the height of need, but an impressive increase of 13% from pre-pandemic. Our food mix has changed drastically in the past two years compared to pre-pandemic. Last year we purchased 26% of our food, compared to about 10% pre-COVID. Part of this is to make up for the decline in government and donated food and part of it is our focus on making sure we are offering the nutritional food our neighbors need and want – including produce, protein and dairy, and also food that is culturally affirming. We met our goal of 27% of distributed food to be produce last year and we’re aiming to increase that to 30% this year.
We’re engaging our network to increase access to food and advance neighbor-centric practices with our 900 agencies and feeding programs. The Food Bank served an average of 375,000 neighbors each month, but we didn’t do this alone. It was accomplished together, through the hard work and dedication of our network of food pantries, soup kitchens, and mobile market sites. Our partnerships with child and senior programs also provided 1.9M meals. Working together, we’re improving the experience for our neighbors seeking help by creating more community partnerships, offering training and development opportunities, and providing $1.2M in capacity-building grants.
As we look ahead to the coming year, we know the challenges are real. But we will continue to innovate and advocate to help everyone in Northern Illinois have access to the food they need to thrive.
I’ll close by sharing a favorite quote from Mr. Rogers. His words speak to our work each day here at the Food Bank and the difference we can all make when we work together:
“All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connects us as neighbors—in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.”
Thank you for being our neighbor.
Gratefully,
Julie Yurko
President & CEO
Learn more about the Food Bank’s future as we implement Strategic Plan UNITE and join us in fulfilling our mission of providing nutritious food and resources for our neighbors with dignity, equity and convenience, through partnerships and innovation.