The Midwest Food Bank was founded in Illinois in 2003 but quickly began expanding to include branches around the country, including one that covers Florida that’s located in Fort Myers – it opened in 2014. The faith-based organization provides food aid to about 217 local partner agencies with help from more than 3,000 volunteers and a small staff of just seven employees.
Through their volunteer-driven operation, Midwest Food Bank Florida provides tens of thousands of meals every month through their partners, and they make and distribute what are called Hope Packs for kids which provide nutritious weekend meals through local school partnerships to children facing food insecurity when school is not in session.
There is always some level of need for food assistance in Southwest Florida, but during times of economic stress — like many people are facing now because of rising prices and increased fuel costs — the need only grows, so we check in with Midwest Food Bank Florida to see how things are going.
Guests:
Dennis Hall, Executive Director of Midwest Food Bank Florida
Holly Taylor, Development Manager at Midwest Food Bank Florida
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Transcript created with Copilot. Please forgive any spelling errors or mistranslations.
Transcript
Mike Kiniry
This is Gulf Coast Life. I'm Mike Kiniry. Thanks for joining us. The Midwest Food Bank was founded in Illinois back in 2003, but quickly began expanding to include branches around the country, including one that covers Florida. It's located right here in Fort Myers. It opened in 2014. It's A faith-based organization that provides food aid to about 230 local partner agencies, with help from more than 2,000 volunteers and a small staff. Through their volunteer-driven operations, they provide 10s of thousands of meals every month through their partners, and they make and distribute what are called Hope Packs for kids, which provide nutritious weekend meals through local school partnerships to children facing insecurity when school's not in session. Midwest Food Bank National was recently featured in an episode of a documentary series called Possible World. It shines light on people and organizations who work to strengthen communities. The episode was called The Giving Economy. It's been about a year since we checked in with them, so I thought it was time to have them back. So I'm joined in studio by their executive director, Dennis Hall. Welcome back to the show, Dennis.
Dennis Hall
Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Mike Kiniry
And I'm also joined in studio for the first time by Holly Taylor. She's development manager at Midwest Food Bank Florida. Thanks for being here, Holly.
Holly Taylor
So excited to be here. Thank you.
Mike Kiniry
So Dennis, I had you on the show last year and I always like to start by asking guests to tell us a little bit about yourself. So let me try to summarize for you and then we'll have Holly do that. So you came from the corporate world. You wound up working for the other food bank here in town for how many years?
Dennis Hall
Eight.
Mike Kiniry
Eight years. And then like a year ago this week, basically, if I'm doing the math right, you became executive director.
Dennis Hall
Year ago, 2 days ago.
Mike Kiniry
Congratulations. I'm going to ask you how that year went in a second. But Holly, tell us about yourself and your background and how long you've been with the food bank, et cetera.
Holly Taylor
Sure. Just like Dennis, I was in the corporate world most of my career. Stepped out of it about four years ago. I was also with the other food bank. And I've been with Midwest Food Bank for nine months. So that's my story.
Mike Kiniry
Explain what the role of development director entails at an organization like Midwest Food Bank Florida.
Holly Taylor
Sure. Well, we wear a lot of hats at Midwest Food Bank, but the development manager is responsible for really stewarding donors and event planning. really working with the team with volunteer events outside. And I don't know, we do a lot of different things in the development world. We use a CRM system. And so we're always looking to make sure that we update our donor information. So a little bit in the field and also in the office.
Mike Kiniry
Last year, I think you said you had six paid employees. Is it still six or did she make 7 or did she replace somebody and it's still six?
Holly Taylor
I'm 6.
Dennis Hall
And as of And we just hired another. So we're up to seven. Seven, starting in July.
Holly Taylor
The growth is real.
Mike Kiniry
Which, you know, is really small. That's why I asked that question about the development director in the way that I did, because I know at nonprofits with a small team, you end up doing kind of everything.
Holly Taylor
Yeah, I am. And luckily we all work so well together. So under the development umbrella, marketing is also involved in that. But we have a volunteer coordinator that actually has taken on that a little bit. So it's kind of like my role a little bit so I can focus more on stewarding our donors and planning events. And then now with the new addition to our Midwest family, that also is going to start changing. So it's really streamlining some of our positions so we can really focus on the needs of the community.
Mike Kiniry
Understood. Okay, I had Dennis do this last time, but it's your turn. Give us the elevator pitch. Like if you meet somebody and they say, oh, you work where? What is that? Tell us what the Midwest Food Bank is.
Holly Taylor
I would say mine is, we're a faith-based organization that provides free meals to the communities. we work very well with other partners. We're always looking for donors to support us.
Mike Kiniry
Can you break down the geographic range, some of the partner agencies, that sort of thing?
Holly Taylor
Sure. We do service the entire state of Florida, but we are highly, we have a lot of agencies in Collier and Lee County. But we are continually to grow N, currently focusing on Charlotte County and Sarasota. But we have about 217 agencies currently. And I think when I came on board, I think we had like 207. So within nine months, I mean, the growth is real.
Mike Kiniry
Is adding new ones part of your role?
Holly Taylor
No, we have an agency coordinator that does that. But, no, that one's not my role.
Mike Kiniry
Dennis, so last year when I had you on, you'd been executive director for a couple weeks and you said it was kind of coming at you like a fire hose. I'm wondering, it's been a year, has it settled down to at least a smaller sized hose?
Holly Taylor
No.
Dennis Hall
Oh, not at all, Mike, not at all. It's very busy every day. Every day is different. There's always challenges and no excitements every day.
Mike Kiniry
You're still in the same location.
Dennis Hall
Still in the same location.
Mike Kiniry
Are there any areas that you've expanded in terms of operations that you can point to over the past year?
Dennis Hall
Yeah, we expanded a little bit into Sarasota, the Venice area. We started a mobile distribution out there in January. It's our third mobile distribution, so we're starting to speed up in that area as well.
Mike Kiniry
Were you doing mobile last year? I feel like you said you hadn't really done much mobile.
Dennis Hall
Well, it's a mobile, it's a distribution that's just like the ones we do in our facility, but at a... off-site location. So the agencies ought to travel so far. So you think about Sarasota traveling to Fort Myers, once a month, this way we're right in their backyard and it makes things a little easier for them.
Mike Kiniry
Are you still in the same place, same warehouse size, same truck number, all that stuff?
Dennis Hall
Yep, everything's still the same. Still 10,000 square foot building. back to the rim.
Mike Kiniry
So explain the mechanics of the distribution. So we'll get to where the food comes from, but once you have the food, explain, do you deliver it to partner agencies? Do they come pick it up from you? Explain just sort of how that network works.
Dennis Hall
So yeah, we don't deliver. So all our distributions are held at our facility. We do every Tuesday of the month, except the 5th, if there's a 5th Tuesday, we don't do that. And then every third Thursday. And then the first Thursday, The 3rd Thursday, the 4th Thursdays are mobile distributions at off-site locations. We do have other large agencies that come pick up like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that take like full box trucks. But yeah, we do not deliver anything to any of our agencies.
Mike Kiniry
Can you give some examples of the partner agencies?
Dennis Hall
So in Fort Myers, we have Word of Life in Fort Myers. In Collier, we work with Meals of Hope and Our Daily Bread down on Marco Island. So we go as far as that. We'll go up Second Chance in Sarasota.
Holly Taylor
We have 19 agencies in Charlotte County currently. So it's, yeah.
Mike Kiniry
Does your, do your operations overlap at all with Harry Chapin or do you guys have any kind of integration or are you guys kind of in your separate lanes?
Dennis Hall
We do support some of the same agencies. Like, one food bank can't do it all by themselves. So there's a big need out there. So we're just supporting each other.
Mike Kiniry
So now explain like where the food comes from, because you are a nationwide organization. Is the food sourced nationally and then distributed to you guys? Or are you guys... or are you guys trying to find food locally as well?
Dennis Hall
We're always trying to find food locally. I mean, it'd be easier for, our distribution, it'd be easier for our logistics. But we do source food nationally, like through Nestle, through Kraft Heinz, Kellogg's. But, you know, we don't purchase food at all? It's all donated food.
Mike Kiniry
Okay, so you aren't even purchasing food at like a bulk cost or anything like that. You're working with donated food.
Dennis Hall
Correct.
Mike Kiniry
Last year when I talked to you, said you were hoping to eventually maybe partner with some local growers. Has there been any movement on that?
Dennis Hall
No, it's been slow moving. A lot of the growers are, you know, they're looking for purchase the product and we're always looking for the donated food. We do work with, I think it was, I'm trying to think about the Five Star Gourmet in Collier County. We work very closely with them. They give us produce, they give us salads.
Mike Kiniry
So that's a local grower, like a small grower in Cody County? I've never heard of them. This is Gulf Coast Life. My guests today are Dennis Hall. He's executive director of Midwest Food Bank Florida, and Holly Taylor is development manager there. They're the Florida branch of the nationwide Midwest Food Bank. They operate out of a facility in Fort Myers. Each month they help out about, what'd you say, 217 now? That is true. Partner agencies, they distribute 10s of thousands of meals. Is the need growing? Is it fair to say the need is growing?
Holly Taylor
The need is growing.
Mike Kiniry
The need is growing, and we'll get to that. that. They also make and distribute hope packs for kids that provide nutritious meals for children who might be facing food insecurity when school is not in session. So let's talk about the need. Last year when we talked, the state and federal budget aid cuts had just kind of come down, and so we hadn't really understood what the impacts of that were. Let's start there. Like the kinds of support that you get, not from individual donors, I mean, are you able to tap into kind of food aid and has that gone away?
Dennis Hall
So all our funding comes privately. We don't rely on any government funding at all. So when the staff was cut, it didn't affect us. It actually increased our agencies for people reaching out to us.
Mike Kiniry
I see.
Dennis Hall
And we were able to source more food nationally just to cover that.
Mike Kiniry
I understand. So now let's talk about need. I've heard economists describe our economy as K-shaped. Have you guys heard that description? K-shaped? K, meaning for some people, it's great. If you own real estate and stocks, it's a good economy. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, the other side of the K, it's not so good. And you guys, well, I'm wondering, Does that help in some ways because people who do own a lot of stock have more money to give, but then does it also presumably it drives the need curve up?
Holly Taylor
Well, I do think that there is a lot of money out there that is going to be supporting some of these needs. You know, on the development team, we do talk a lot about people with bequest and things like that, it could, they'd need to be able to put their money somewhere. So I work with DAFs and things like that just to try to.
Mike Kiniry
What are DAFs?
Holly Taylor
Which is a donor account fund that will help food banks and they can pick Midwest as a place to put their money and they can actually get some tax benefits from that piece. So we work with our development team trying to figure out how we can support, how we can actually bring that to Midwest and get those additional funds to help those that are in need.
Mike Kiniry
And then on the other side of the coin, gas prices are high, rent seems to be settling down a little bit, but rent is really high. So now characterize for us, Dennis, the need among the people who live here.
Dennis Hall
Well, you hear it every day when we talk to our partner agencies about how many more clients are coming to their distributions. Some people are starting to see 100 people maybe a week, now they're seeing 250. So to me is real. It's out there. It's growing. Even with the, you say the renting going, the rent's going down and all, but the other things are out there, people's prescriptions, people's pets, pets and everything, they do. So it's not going away, Mike. You know, it's there.
Mike Kiniry
I've been doing this long enough that I've seen some curves go up and down in terms of need. Back in 2008 and 2009, when everything crashed, we would talk to people at the Harry Chapin Food Bank like ages ago, and they would talk about having people show up that had never been to a food distribution site before. Are we in a place like that now?
Holly Taylor
We are. We are. We're seeing people that have never been in this place in the past. And we can get them to an agency, we can to get them to food at least, but food insecurity is growing. and they stop in our facility weekly and we have to direct them to an agency that actually can get them some food. Because we are a food bank, so we can provide our, we provide the food to the-.
Mike Kiniry
They show up and you have to say, where do you live?
Holly Taylor
Correct.
Mike Kiniry
This is where you go.
Holly Taylor
Correct. So they can get that support weekly instead of just stopping in our office.
Mike Kiniry
Fuel costs. I know part of what you guys do is move things around. Presumably fuel cost increases in recent times has impacted your operations.
Dennis Hall
Yeah, it has. I think, just for example, I would say beginning of the year, we were probably, our fuel bills probably were about $4,500 for the month. Now we're over almost 8 grand a month in the fuel. So it does hit, you know, put a little strain on our logistics and where we want to go. and how far we can go. So we're relying on a lot of TLT carriers to come in and broker loads and all.
Mike Kiniry
Were you going to say something? Well, I was going to.
Holly Taylor
Say that when we do, when we are writing grants, we do put that in the operation piece for sure. It is a real piece of what the need is, and since we, that's where our funding comes from, is private funding. We, the grants will definitely help with that.
Mike Kiniry
Yeah. Speaking of grants, I got a press release fairly recently from you guys saying that you'd received a grant from the Richard M. Scholz Foundation, Scholz, Scholz. to support the purchase of a new transport van. So tell us about that and any other grants that, give us some examples of the kind of grants that you can get.
Holly Taylor
Yeah, so that was definitely one that Dennis was working on for transportation. He identified that we need a little bit more on our fleet. And we understand what organization or what foundation, what they're looking for. Some are looking for transportation. Some want to look for program growing. Some will look for logistics. Some just want to work in the community. So you kind of have to gear what those grants are going to look forward for you, the opportunity to get the most. And I think we asked for that amount and that's what we got. So it was a 60,000. 60,000 for that grant. So that van is already in works, I believe, and getting ready to be wrapped and brought here. So very much. And we do a little bit of retail pickup. So where we rescue food from retailers. We don't do a lot of it, but having that van will support that.
Mike Kiniry
I've mentioned the Hope Packs a couple times. Explain that program, Dennis, how they, you guys put them together or you explain it.
Dennis Hall
So we source all the food for that. And what we do is we work with our local schools and we, they come and pick up all the products for that program. But the children pick what they want out of that. So they're not taking something they don't want.
Mike Kiniry
So it's like a little food pantry that kids can have some choice.
Dennis Hall
So the school help them. And so it's a weekly program, a monthly program.
Holly Taylor
Monthly program. They pick up once, once a month, I believe. And we are growing that program. Currently we have four to five schools that are participating in our Hope Pack program. But we are communicating with schools currently on, hey, you want to be a part of the Hope Pack program. You provide the volunteers, and if you can pick up the food, we can provide the food. So a lot of that communication is going out throughout the counties, currently through our development team. And yeah, so and we also have a Give Healthy program that we're actually piggybacking on that.
Mike Kiniry
Explain what that is.
Holly Taylor
Yeah, Give Healthy is a healthy virtual food drive. A lot of the schools have pantries and they can support that K that you were talking about where the people that can support it could supply, do virtual shopping online. And it's all healthy food and it goes straight to the pantry. It'll be delivered straight through the Give Healthy program and they'll do the shopping and they actually will deliver it to the school.
Mike Kiniry
When it comes to the hope packs and the school partnerships, I guess then that you have to work with individual schools. There's no way to do it at the county level.
Holly Taylor
No, it is an individual because there's somebody that's going to be running it. They drive it. They're the host. So they have to drive it through. We're actually the platform for them.
Mike Kiniry
So it's like you need the PTA or something equivalent to say.
Holly Taylor
We're going to do this.
Mike Kiniry
Absolutely.
Holly Taylor
Pantry manager at the school, something like that. So a lot of communication going out now. We're looking forward to businesses, churches. We've got churches doing it. We actually had a community Who was it? Neil's community just did that. Gateway just did that community through, they did one of their runs and they did a virtual food drive and a regular food drive for tangible goods. So, you know, hey, this is all good stuff. We can get that poundage. We can see how many meals that we can provide to families. And it's, and nutritious food is huge right now, especially with grant writing.
Mike Kiniry
What do you mean by that?
Holly Taylor
Nutrition.
Mike Kiniry
Let me try to see if I'm going to guess at what you mean. We're all starting to understand that healthy food is actually important and that processed food is really bad for us.
Holly Taylor
This is true.
Mike Kiniry
That is exactly right.
Holly Taylor
That is exactly right. So you can provide food to kids or seniors, but is it healthy? So we are really, really focusing, I believe our percentage right now is at 63%. 65% it's grown and the national average is at 30% for be able to provide that healthy food. So that's why working with farms, working with virtual food drives that provide healthy food and working with these school pantries will allow us to enter that to kids and on weekends and during the summer.
Dennis Hall
And our grants, some of our grants are supporting that as well.
Holly Taylor
Yeah, some of our grants do support that nutrition fee, so there's a tracking on that. So we can see these numbers increasing by the food that we're bringing in. And our operations managers, when she's looking for those loads, she's not just grabbing any loads, she's grabbing some that She's looking for nutritious value because we go through our HER program, which is Healthy Eats, and we will label them red, green, or yellow. So we can see, and anybody can do this in their pantry. They can look and see the sodium intakes, and they can actually divide their own pantries into HER program and see how much sodium is in their own pantry.
Mike Kiniry
Let's talk about volunteers. So you just explained how the school program requires volunteers there. You guys have like more than 1000 or maybe more than thousands of volunteers.
Holly Taylor
Yeah, it was like 3,600.
Mike Kiniry
Okay.
Holly Taylor
We're the largest in the largest division of volunteers in the Midwest.
Mike Kiniry
Explain the scope of what a volunteer role can entail.
Dennis Hall
Oh, well, we wouldn't do anything without our volunteers. They support us.
Mike Kiniry
Well, yeah, you said you're up to seven employees. Clearly, you have help.
Dennis Hall
We have volunteers that do our bookkeeping. So we have accounts payable, receivable. We have a volunteer helping us support our grants. We have volunteer truck drivers, forklift drivers.
Holly Taylor
Event coordinator. I actually have an intern currently.
Mike Kiniry
I was going to ask about interns. Do you ever work with FGCU? All students need service learning.
Holly Taylor
Absolutely. We have big groups of FGCU that come in. A lot of them will do the Saturday programs. but we do have large groups. A lot of big companies are doing VTO currently, where it's volunteer time off. You serve your 8 hours, or you put in hours, you get time off. So we work with a lot of companies. We work with Mito Foundation. Enterprise is a huge one for us. You see these same businesses coming in, and we wouldn't be able to do it without them.
Mike Kiniry
I worked at a different nonprofit for a while, the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers. And we also were small staff that did many things that weren't on our job description, but we also had a ton of volunteers, some of which were like, they'd been there for longer than anybody. Do you have some volunteers that are like, you're like tried and true full-time people who are just, you know, they've been there longer than both of you?
Holly Taylor
Yeah, I think we just did our volunteer appreciation. We finished that up, I believe it was two months ago, and we have a volunteer that's currently that's at our desk, our front desk. And I don't know the exact hours, so I don't want to quote the wrong one, but I believe if you added it all up.
Dennis Hall
It was almost 10,000 hours.
Holly Taylor
It was almost over 10,000 hours.
Dennis Hall
So, you know, they.
Holly Taylor
And that's the thing, you know, we empower our volunteer group. I mean, they do our finances. So an input information for us in our intact program. So empowering our volunteers, we would not be able to do our job without having them on our staff or in our group.
Dennis Hall
So we were showing, we had a donor in, I think last week, we were showing them around during our distribution. And you had to see like, what, 50, 60 people out there. We had one person on our staff who was sitting at the table. And I went, see that person right there? You know, I said, that's our operations manager. And I said, everyone else? All volunteers.
Holly Taylor
Wow. And I think too, one of the things that Midwest does so well is, we really provide, we provide lunch after our loadout every Tuesday. And we work with our partner agencies that will provide that lunch. So it's just a dot-to-dot system where we're all interconnected. And so it gives the volunteers time instead of just volunteering and leaving. They actually get to sit down and talk with other volunteers and talk about what their experiences were. And also gives us an opportunity community like Dennis says, we sit with them too and just have a good conversation about what's going on at Midwest.
Mike Kiniry
How would one become a volunteer?
Dennis Hall
You can go to our website and go to the option where it just says the volunteer and it'll scroll down and give you all kinds of options that opportunities that we have available.
Mike Kiniry
I mentioned that documentary series. The filmmaker who made it was quoted in the press release I got as saying that His time at the Midwest Food Bank was a, he found it to be a joyous place. And I'm wondering, is joy something that you lean into, creating a collaborative, joyful environment?
Dennis Hall
Oh, absolutely.
Mike Kiniry
Can you vouch for him?
Dennis Hall
We'd love to have fun.
Holly Taylor
Yeah, we'd love to have fun. He has to, because I'm on the team.
Dennis Hall
No, we, it's just... It's so enlightening. It is. I drive into work every day and I'm like, I love it.
Holly Taylor
Yeah.
Dennis Hall
I don't cringe or anything. I know it's just going to be a great day. Everybody's going to chip in and help each other. We have fun.
Holly Taylor
We have fun.
Dennis Hall
We have fun.
Holly Taylor
We have to put fun in there. We have fun with our volunteers.
Dennis Hall
Absolutely.
Holly Taylor
If we get too deep in what we're doing, we take a break and go see each other in the other offices and just like sit down for a few minutes. We'll talk about whatever. You know, what are you doing this weekend? Things like that.
Dennis Hall
Exactly.
Holly Taylor
It just feels good. It's a feel good.
Mike Kiniry
When you believe in what you do, it's easy to do hard things. Not easy. It's easier.
Holly Taylor
It's easier.
Dennis Hall
Yeah. I mean, like, you know, this year just flew by.
Holly Taylor
It did.
Dennis Hall
I cannot believe I've been there a year already. It's because it's of days like we have.
Holly Taylor
Nonstop, trying to get things moving. I think when I started, I was, I think I was there for a month and Dennis says, here, you need to plan the Top Golf event, which is one of our donor events that we do annually. And it was the second annual. And then right after that, it was our gala in February. So my first six months was really about planning events and understanding Midwest and making sure I have that Midwest hat on.
Mike Kiniry
I appreciate you guys both coming in, and we will have you back. I've made it a goal, as I told you last year, I've made it a goal to build an ongoing relationship with you guys. Holly Taylor is Development Manager at Midwest Food Bank Florida. Great talking with you, Holly.
Holly Taylor
So much a pleasure, Mike.
Mike Kiniry
Dennis Hall is Midwest Food Bank Florida's Executive Director. Thank you, Dennis.
Dennis Hall
Thank you, Mike.
Holly Taylor
Thank you.
Transcript created with Copilot. Please forgive any spelling errors or mistranslations.