Spokane County’s Emergency Food Bank Network

Built on Collaboration

Second Harvest has spent more than three decades developing strong partnerships with Spokane County’s neighborhood food banks to supply them with donated food for people in need. Today, the collaboration between Second Harvest’s charitable food distribution center and 20 community-based emergency food outlets creates an innovative and effective system for feeding low-income families and seniors in local neighborhoods.

Leveraging Resources

The Spokane County emergency food network is funded through a unique combination of resources. Second Harvest leverages city, county and state grant money with private contributions, food industry donations, federal commodities, community food drives and dedicated volunteers to transform every donated dollar into six pounds of food for hungry people.

Second Harvest puts a broad base of public and private support toward securing, warehousing and distributing donated food for its Spokane County outlet network. Pooling community resources creates economies of scale that generate semi-truck loads of donated food from growers, grocers and manufacturers throughout Spokane, the region and nationally that help stock the shelves of neighborhood food banks.

Feeding Hungry People

Second Harvest’s Spokane County emergency food network helps more than 15,000 people each month. The system was founded on a concept of fairness. Each outlet receives a share of Second Harvest’s donated food inventory based on the number of clients served.

An advisory committee of Spokane County outlet representatives meets monthly to discuss service trends and make decisions about changes in resource allocations. Outlet members selected Second Harvest as the lead agency and distribution center for the state-funded Emergency Food Assistance Program contract. Thanks to this support, along with significant private donations from the community, Second Harvest provides millions of pounds of food each year to neighborhood food banks.

With the unemployment rate on the rise and other uncertain economic factors, there is a growing number of Spokane families and seniors at risk of hunger and malnutrition. To keep pace with rising need, Second Harvest’s goal for 2010 is to increase food distributed to Spokane County outlets by 10 percent – from 4 million to 4.4 million pounds.

Accountability Report - Outlet Results for 2009