Welcome to Tampa Bay Harvest
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COOL NEWS
TBH Newsletters
(Note: The following article was taken from the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's 2003 VISIONS magazine) Recognition
HONORING
NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT
The
winners at the 11th annual Future of The Region Awards are making
innovative changes
that are elevating the quality of life in the Tampa Bay region Mark DeLillo likes to think of
Tampa Bay Harvest (TBH), as a charity of "food raisers not
fundraisers." With
1,130 local volunteers scouting out leftover or sale-dated food from grocery
stores, hospitals, schools, restaurants and hotels, it's all about feeding the
hungry. Fruit, vegetables, baked goods, even banquet meals headed for the
Dumpster now heap the plates of the area's homeless and poor. DeLillo, a board member for the Tampa Bay chapter of the international charity, is just happy to know food isn't going to waste. "We're so unique because we're not begging for money, but instead taking food that would otherwise go in the garbage
and getting it to the people who need it the most," DeLillo. "There
are thousands and thousands of hungry people out there." Volunteers deliver the items -
often perishable - with pizza-delivery speed to 200 local charities that serve
the needy. That's 36 million pounds delivered since 1989, when TBH was founded
in the Tampa Bay area. Their efforts earned them a first- place Future of the
Region community service award from the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. Tampa Bay Harvest was one of
six organizations honored at the 11th annual awards ceremony, which honored
notable achievement in resource planning and management in the Tampa Bay area. Other first-place winners
included Tampa Bay Water lauded for its Master Water Plan - a drinking water
supply plan that shifts supply to areas of greatest need - and the Southwest
Florida Water Management District, which took home high honors for a water
conservation kit that also teaches K-3 students better reading skills. This year's event, a luncheon,
was held at the historic Belleview Biltmore Resort and Spa in Clearwater.
Presentations were made by Pasco County Commissioner, Steve Simon, who kept the
audience laughing as plaques were presented and pictures snapped. DeLillo decided to enter the
competition as a way of getting the word out about his organization - one of
the "best kept secrets" locally. A Future of the Region award
is important because it sheds light on his charity. Hiring a public relations
specialist is simply out of the question, he said. To stay within its budget,
TBH has only one paid staffer, a full-time Operations Manager, who works from
home. It is essentially a
"virtual organization," with no office, secretary or overhead. All
services go directly to the needy. Their largest donor is Publix. DeLillo, who serves on the all
volunteer 20-member board of directors, is a commercial insurance broker by
trade. He estimates the value of the salvaged food at $1.50 a pound. That's
about $7 million yearly that would have otherwise been spent to purchase food
for the hungry. He hopes that the money saved
will help pay for the kinds of services charities need the most: schooling, job
training, day care and medical care. Whatever you do don’t write them a check.
“If somebody walked up and said here’s $100, I’d tell them to drive to
Publix and buy a bag of food.” (The
article goes on to describe the other award winners. The article is published in
VISIONS, published twice annually by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council,
9455 Koger Blvd, Suite 219, St. Petersburg, FL
33702 Telephone 727-570-5151)
PRELIMINARY ALLEGANY FOUNDATION GRANT FINDINGS The Allegany Franciscan Foundation, Tampa Bay, Inc. is a Catholic Foundation guided by the mission and rooted in the tradition of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany. They commit resources and work collaboratively with others to promote physical, mental, spiritual, societal, and cultural well-being in the communities served. The Tampa Bay Foundation awarded us with a $2,500 grant for family assistance. Family assistance is defined as support to families in need via food, clothing, Christmas gifts, and financial assistance for household needs. Since most of our efforts focus on feeding the hungry, and many of the hungry are families, the grant made sense. Tampa Bay Harvest last year delivered 4.9 million pounds of food to recipient agencies and has managed to deliver a similar amount annually for the last 5 years. We have become successful at delivering food. But the human face of hunger appears to have changed in the 15 years TBH has been in the food delivery business. Because the TBH Board of Directors realized the demographics of the hungry may be changing, they also realized that the food we deliver might not be adequately meeting the needs of our recipient agencies that feed the hungry. The foundation grant was therefore used to develop a questionnaire sent out to some 220 recipient agencies, which aimed to: 1. Update our records, and 2: Find out the demographics of our agencies clients. The cutoff for reporting to the Foundation was 6/30/04 so that at this time only a limited number of replies to the questionnaire were available for analysis. Never the less the preliminary results are interesting. Of the 13,685 clients served by agencies who have responded to date, the number of infants and children (33%) outnumber the men (31%). Some 43% of the clients in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties are families. The ethnic backgrounds of the clients are as follows: Hispanic (16%), African American (33%), Asian (6%), Caucasian (43%), and other (2%). In response to a question as to how TBH might serve the agencies better, the questionnaire revealed that most were thankful for the food our volunteers delivered and thought they were doing a good job. The next prevalent response was for more food. Perhaps the most poignant responses where those that asked for cold cereal, rice, juice, and beans emphasizing again that the family has really become the prevalent “human face of hunger” in the Tampa Bay area. The responses we obtain when the remaining questionnaires are returned will serve to further quantify the demographics of hunger in this two-county area.
Companies Help the Hungry A special thanks goes to some of our volunteers that held food drives at their place of employment.. Julie Chalhoub has been a volunteer with TBH for many years and has help in many different ways. This year she was able to hold a food drive at the Time Warner office in St. Pete. Thank you for "watching" out for the hungry. Thank you to Skip and Alison Payne for their "vision" to end hunger by holding a food drive at all the Opti-Mart locations throughout the Tampa Bay area. They too are long time TBH volunteers and are always there to help. The next time you need eye wear please consider Opti-Mart. If at any time you would like to hold a food drive please contact Anne Bromberg at 727-538-7777 ext 1 or tbhgm@aol.com.
Community Partnership Plan with Express Press The owners of Express Press created this plan in an attempt to find a way to support the non-profit community while, at the same time, continue to fulfill their goal of maintaining a viable business. This Community Partnership Plan is open to any business or individual, not already a client of Express Press. Here is how the program works: Any non-profit service or community based organization registered on www.NPCalendar.com is eligible:
This program was designed to benefit everyone. The business or individual that purchases from Express gets a great vendor, the non-profit gets FREE money (10% of all registered purchases without limit). Express gets new friends and clients. Thanks to Tom Harrison at Express Press for printing our newsletter. Express Press is located at 5137 Rio Vista Ave, Tampa 33634, phone 813-884-3310.
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