Berkeley Food Network (BFN) is taking up administration of the Berkeley Food Pantry, in what each organizations have characterised as a merger that can have minimal influence on operations for the foreseeable future.
In keeping with Andrew Crispin, govt director of the community, contract particulars are nonetheless being finalized. Nonetheless, talks have concluded and the pantry will now enter a six-month transition interval, the place BFN will conduct analysis to judge how the pantry presently operates. BFN additionally plans to host listening periods with present workers and volunteers to get their suggestions and tackle any of their issues. The primary session is being held subsequent Wednesday, July 30, on the Berkeley Associates Church.
The Berkeley Meals Pantry, situated at 1600 Sacramento St, was established in 1969 on the Berkeley Associates Church the place it nonetheless operates. For 56 years, the pantry has offered recent produce to roughly 4,000 Berkeley and Albany residents every month going through meals insecurity. It additionally companions with a lot of native grocers and donors, together with Berkeley Pure Grocery, Thistle and Alameda Neighborhood Meals Financial institution.
For now, the Berkeley Meals Pantry will stay open and function as regular.
Genie Stowers, head of the Berkeley Meals Pantry Oversight Committee, mentioned there aren’t any plans to pause distribution or shut the pantry sooner or later and the 2 organizations hope the merger will really feel seamless to the general public.
“It’s such as you actually received’t discover a distinction. Meals continues to be going to be obtainable, and for us, that’s the necessary factor,” Stowers mentioned.
In keeping with Crispin, talks started in July 2024 when representatives from the Berkeley Associates Church and Berkeley Meals Pantry Oversight Committee approached Crispin, asking him to discover the thought of a merger. Crispin, who got here into his place as govt director over a yr in the past, agreed, feeling open and optimistic concerning the concept.
BFN was based in 2016 by a Sara Webber, a former director of Berkeley Meals Pantry. BFN operates its main meals pantry out of its 9th Street facility, but it surely additionally runs a cell pantry and a number of other seasonal ones. Final yr, the community distributed over 2 million kilos of meals to their 74 distribution companions and residents throughout the East Bay.
“Berkeley Associates Church and Berkeley Meals Pantry have been sourcing meals from Berkeley Meals Community’s warehouse to run their pantry for a number of years,” Crispin mentioned. “What has come up is that the church in the end needs to get again to church enterprise, and, via this partnership with Berkeley Meals Community, depart pantry administration to us.”
Stowers, who echoed Crispin’s account, has been a member of the oversight committee for eight years, and served as its chief for the three. Stowers stresses that the merger will not be as a result of a scarcity of funding, however extra so a scarcity of bandwidth.
“We simply felt like they had been geared up to deal with this. They’ve extra workers than we do, and they’d be geared up to deal with the variety of folks we now have coming,” she mentioned.
Because the pandemic, the pantry has seen a big uptick in residents requiring meals help. In January 2022, the pantry was offering assist to 1,028 households, however by December 2024, they had been offering for 1815 households, a large 77% enhance. This unprecedented progress drove Stowers and different committee members to strategy BFN, which Stowers believes is best geared up to deal with the heightened demand.
In keeping with Crispin, BFN and its accomplice organizations have additionally witnessed this rising want for meals help. The community expects that the necessity for assist will proceed to develop within the space, and it’s working to make sure that it might probably keep its dedication to the Berkeley public. There are additionally issues that cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) within the lately handed federal spending invoice will additional exacerbate the scenario.
“Being in a nonprofit will not be straightforward proper now, and I believe it’s [become] very clear that the longer term [holds] extra challenges, and better ranges of competitors for a similar or fewer {dollars} throughout,” Crispin mentioned. “From our perspective, it is sensible to accomplice with organizations in our shared neighborhood who’ve the identical volunteers, the identical donors, among the identical neighborhood members, and assist it, and make our influence stronger in order that the {dollars} that we’re fundraising for are going extra in direction of addressing starvation and meals insecurity and fewer in direction of administrative prices and burdens.”
