You say you want to start a food pantry? Well, you’ve come to the right place! Second Harvest Food Bank can tell you just how to do it. Go to our website at www.curehunger.org and click on the ‘Agency Forms’ tab on the left. Then click on ‘Application packet total.doc’ to download the entire application packet. This packet walks you through the process and gives you contact information if you need help.

You say you are really just in the thinking stages? Great! Here are some things to consider. Are you part of a charitable organization that has an IRS designation of 501(c)(3)? If you are starting from scratch you will need a board of directors, articles of incorporation and bylaws. There may be other requirements and you can find them all on line. You can operate a pantry without these things but you will not be able to get food from Second Harvest Food Bank nor access other charitable gifts without that all important 501(c)(3).

Have you thought about your location? Will the pantry be close to a bus line? Is it to be located within a low-income neighborhood? Is it to serve a rural area? The idea is to be close to the people you plan to serve or to have a dependable way to get food to them.

Do you have enough space in the facility you have in mind? How will clients enter the building and how will they exit? Do you have an area for them to shop from and an area for food storage? You will need to keep the storage area secure and to follow safe food handling and storage rules.

Families in your community and from other areas may come to depend on the resources you will provide. Do you have a plan for staying open for the long run? Where will you get the food you plan to distribute? Where will your funds come from and how much will you need? Do you have refrigerators and freezers? Which days and times will you be open and how will you let the community know your hours?

Who will help you with the pantry? If you are going to be located in a church, have parishioners looked at the issue of hunger? Have they embraced the mission to provide food for those in need? Have they visited other food pantries to see how they operate? Do they understand that their support in money, time and accommodations is needed?

If you are not considering a church pantry, who will you enlist as your volunteer base? Some pantries in this area serve hundreds of families each time they are open. These large distributions are usually done once a week or once or twice a month. Other pantries are limiting access. One pantry can only accommodate 13 families a day and another can only serve 34 families a day. Both of these pantries are open several days each week.

There are 49,000 people living in poverty in the 8 counties served by Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. Pantries are Second Harvest Food Bank’s number one line of defense against hunger. Second Harvest provides millions of pounds of donated food to pantries each year. The pantries provide the food to hungry families. We need more pantry outlets. We need to help current pantries work to capacity.

The food going from Second Harvest to pantries carries a small fee. If your pantry is part of our network, you will help us get more food by contributing up to 18 cents a pound for the donated food we find and haul in. This will be part of your plan of doing business as a pantry. Where will the money come from? One of our largest pantries budgets $24,000 to access and distribute 250,000 pounds of food a year from Second Harvest. If they were to buy that food or ask others to buy it and donated it, it would cost $422,500.

If you are a part of the Second Harvest Food Bank network, you may find additional helps. Each year we ask for FEMA funds to help pantries get more food. We use allocations from some United Ways to help agencies cover their costs to access our food. We look for other grants that are helpful and last spring spent more than $32,000 on refrigerators and freezers to help pantries help more people. That money came from a Kraft Community Nutrition Program grant and was the second time Kraft gave us money to buy equipment for agencies.

I hope I haven’t discouraged you! If you have it in your heart to start a pantry, these questions and ideas might help you move forward. If it sounds daunting, please consider contacting a pantry near you and offering to volunteer. You will learn even more about your dream and they can certainly use your help. Look for pantries at www.curehunger.org, click on the ‘Where to Get Help’ tab. Or call 2-1-1 and they can help you find one near you.

Lois Rockhill is executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana. She can be reached at lrockhill@curehunger.org.