Keeping the Focus on Hunger

The December morning was damp and gray here when the Robin Hood Foundation held a special meeting in a ninth-floor conference room at its Manhattan offices. The principal speaker was Lucy Cabrera, president of the Food Bank for New York City, a charity that supplies more than 1,000 emergency feeding programs throughout the city.

About 30 or so past donors to the food bank and leaders of soup kitchens and food pantries served by the group had come in from the early morning rain to hear Ms. Cabrera and others expound on a timely topic: the financial crisis and its impact on citywide efforts to fight hunger. Fully half of the charity’s fund raising happens in the last quarter of the year, and the outlook was not good.

“We’ve seen a decrease in food donations of 40 percent, an increase in demand for food in communities of over 30 percent, and we’ve seen an increase in all of our operating costs,” Ms. Cabrera told the room. “When, in 2007, our data showed us that 1.3 million people were accessing emergency food programs, it did not take into consideration the spiraling down of the economic situation, so we are extremely concerned.”

Ms. Cabrera noted that, while economists said the country has been in a recession since December 2007, the drop in food donations to food banks such as hers began a year or more earlier. The early slump occurred in large part because food manufacturers and wholesalers took steps to reduce the production overruns and errant shipments that generated surplus food routinely donated to food banks. Hunger charities must now raise additional money to purchase food.

Then September ushered in the Wall Street meltdown and the collapse of some financial giants, such as Lehman Brothers (which gave $15,000 to the Food Bank last year). The Wall Street downturn’s impact quickly expanded, as donations by individuals dropped by more than 20 percent through November.

For Ms. Cabrera, who has led the food bank for 21 years and seen her share of economic turbulence, these are uncharted waters.

“What makes me most nervous is we don’t yet know what the final impact is going to be of all of this,” she said. “We just know at the food bank that it is our mission to meet the challenge.”

12-Percent Gain

The Food Bank for New York City ended the year better than expected, with cash donations of $8.9-million, nearly 12 percent more than in 2007.

That is in part because donors responded generously to a matching grant from the Robin Hood Foundation and the Joseph & Sylvia Slifka Foundation, in New York. The grant makers offered to match new or increased donations raised with $2 for every $1 contributed, up to $1-million.

“It was overwhelmingly clear that need was rising, and the food bank works on the immediate frontline of poverty,” says Eric Weingartner, a Robin Hood Foundation managing director.

The matching offer has brought in $700,000 so far, with pledges of another $300,000 to come. When $1-million is reached, Robin Hood will provide another $2-million to the food bank. All told, the money will be enough to provide some 15 million meals.

The end-of-year fund-raising push also included one of the food bank¿s most glamorous events: a star-studded kick-off party for an online auction of dozens of lunch boxes decorated by celebrities. The auction ultimately grossed over $117,000, 10-percent more than the year before.

However, the first weeks of 2009 have left little time for celebrations.

While giving fared better during the holidays than expected, the Robin Hood money can be used only to pay for food, not operating costs.

And looking ahead to the next several months — which even in the best of times are slow in terms of donations — the food bank has less of a cushion to carry it through than in years past.

“Because the financial crisis started in September, we’ve been having challenges meeting our monthly budgets,” says Daniel LaRosa, director of individual and major giving. “The money we are raising through the holiday season is helping to pay for food that we’re getting out to our member network now. There is no special bank account that we have to help cover the cost of operations for the winter months. We are very concerned about January, February, and March.”

In the Spotlight

From Ms. Cabrera perspective, one thing that is different about this economic downturn is that, through efforts on the part of her group, other human-needs advocacy charities, and the news media, hunger is no longer a “hidden issue.”

“No one can deny that there’s a problem, so now it’s about ltting the public know the extent of the problem, instead of putting a face on it,” she says. To advance that idea, her charity redoubled its efforts to collect data on the hunger and the food pressures New Yorkers face. In November it repeated its annual survey of hunger in New York, conducted in February, hiring the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to conduct telephone interviews with nearly 1,000 city residents.

Among the survey’s most troubling findings was that the number of New Yorkers reporting difficulty affording food grew by 26 percent from February to November, to some four million. The number of residents who said they would be unable to afford food immediately after losing their household income grew from 1.6 million in February, to 1.9 million in the fall.

The charity publicized the findings in a press release that led to articles in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and other news sources. And the charity has incorporated the information into fund-raising mailings and materials.

Earlier in the fall, the charity also began keeping track of donations on a weekly, rather than monthly, basis. The frequent updates have revealed some interesting trends. For instance, the week after the Wall Street troubles began the number of donations from individuals increased, although the amounts donated were down. Direct-mail appeals, as of November, had brought in $12,000 less than in 2007 — a 4-percent drop — but rebounded in December.

“The heartening news is that many people still wanted to give and support hungry New Yorkers,” says Mr. LaRosa, the food bank’s fund raiser. “But I can infer from the types of donations coming in compared to previous years, while people want to help, they don’t have the means or don’t feel comfortable giving at the same level, or increasing their gifts.”

The food bank also made the decision to extend its holiday-season campaign “NYC Goes Orange” — so-named because orange is the color of hunger awareness — from the usual one week to 11 weeks, starting October 20th.

As in past years, the campaign kicked off with the Empire State Building illuminated in orange lights during an event featuring the celebrity chef Mario Batali, a Food Bank for New York City board member.

NYC Goes Orange activities include grocery-store chains providing special opportunities for shoppers to donate to the food bank at checkout lines citywide. On a smaller scale, a single New York City bakeshop sold orange cookies to benefit the food bank.

“It’s really just to keep attention and focus on hunger as an issue over the holiday season and to encourage partners and the public to do something extra to raise funds and awareness around hunger,” says Gregory Boroff, the food bank’s senior vice president of external relations. “Right now we have over 250 partners who are registered to do something. It has definitely been a success this year and we’re hoping it continues the momentum.”

More than five times as many groups and individuals participated in NYC Goes Orange events this year as in 2007.

Virtual Cans

One Orange activity that attracted more than double the participation this year was “virtual food drives,” the Internet version of a traditional canned-food drive. Individuals and corporate teams sign up to raise money for the food bank from their friends and colleagues. Participants are provided with a customizable Web page to list the donations they obtain through e-mail messages they send to their many contacts. The charity’s Web site maintains a tally of what each virtual food drive has brought in, giving the undertaking a competitive atmosphere. Last year¿s more than 70 virtual drives brought in more than $133,000, a 104-percent increase from 2007.

Among the charity’s more successful new approaches is one of the most simple: breakfast meetings.

Once a quarter, starting in the summer, the food bank has run a morning session for donors with its executive director, an event informally called “Breakfast with Lucy.” And though they are more informational in nature, rather than overt pleas for donations, a handful of donors gave checks totaling $35,000 following the last meeting, in December. And a day later, an anonymous donor who had attended gave $100,000.

“When I might not normally have picked up the phone, these are a great excuse to contact donors and say, ‘Can you come to a breakfast?’” says Patrick Mooney, the charity’s director of philanthropy, of the meetings that draw anywhere from a dozen guests to as many as 50. “Even if they can’t make it, we can still let them know what’s going on. It’s all about being proactive and it’s helped a lot.”

The Food Bank for New York City’s efforts at fiscal responsibility and financial openness have also helped in this climate of more prudent giving. Mr. Mooney says several first-time donors have said they selected the food bank after seeing it had earned the top rating of four stars from Charity Navigator, an organization that evaluates and ranks charities based largely on their financial efficiency.

Mr. Mooney says the food bank’s good reputation, together with the urgent nature of its mission, have put it in a good position to attract donors. “Because of donor desire to make grants to meet people’s most basic needs, we’re not hurting as much as, say, an arts group might be,” he says.

Many food organizations also are now beginning to see some increased help from the federal government, thanks to the 2008 farm bill that provides more than a billion dollars in new aid for hunger programs. The federal money will start being distributed in earnest this year.

However, with some of the soup kitchens and food pantries supplied by the Food Bank for New York City reporting a 25-percent rise in demand just since September, the charity’s leaders know a challenging year lies ahead.

“I don’t think the economy is going to rebound anytime soon,” Mr. Mooney says. “The need is there, and we need to be proactive in communicating with donors and not wait for them to read about it in the newspaper.”