Generosity. Patience. Persistence. Thrift.
All those qualities came together to deliver 108 large macro-bins to hold donated potatoes and other produce destined for our neighbors in need.
Generosity: It started with a $10,000 donation from the Washington State Potato Commission.
Patience and persistence: The commission made that contribution last March, but we didn’t get the bins in our Pasco and Spokane warehouses until September.
Thrift: Combining the generosity of Washington Potato Growers with our patience and persistence, we were able to more than double the number of bins.
Admittedly, big plastic bins aren’t the most exciting things, but they’re vital to our ability to get food to people facing hunger. They enable us to receive, store and distribute spuds, apples, cukes, peppers and all sorts of great food grown in our region.
“Our commissioners were more than happy to support Second Harvest with this $10,000 donation to help them acquire much-needed bins for their organization,” said Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission. “By partnering with organizations like Second Harvest, Washington Potato Growers can make a meaningful impact and help those in need on a larger scale. Together, we’re making a difference in our community.”
Second Harvest CEO Jason Clark agreed. “This financial donation is just one example of the generosity of potato growers,” Clark said. “Year in, year out, they give us thousands of pounds of quality potatoes, often by the semitruck-load. That’s a big reason we’re able to distribute 80,000 meals per day.”
Wanting to be thrifty and maximize every dollar, we went shopping. Supply-chain issues and other factors meant that shopping took longer than we’d hoped. Yet we found that by combining the $10,000 donation with another $6,000 and some patience, we were able to buy a large enough quantity to get the per-bin price reduced to about half. Half the price means twice as many bins to store the thousands of pounds of nutritious produce that we receive, repack and distribute every week — bringing generosity full circle.