Westside Food Bank
1710 22nd St.
Santa Monica, CA
90404
(310) 828-6016  (310) 828-2646 fax

7 for 1:
Fighting Hunger with Efficiency

Thanks to food donations and our extremely cost efficient operations we turn every $1 donation into 5 pounds of food --- that's 7 meals for every dollar! We maintain detailed records of each month's total food distribution and we require monthly service reports from each agency that show the number of people served in its program.

Food Bank Facts:

Ø       We provide the food for over 10,000 meals every day of the year for Westside families and individuals in need.

Ø We distribute 4 million pounds of food a year to 65 social service agencies throughout the community.

Ø Our food helps children in poverty, low-income families, unemployed and under-employed individuals, the elderly, and those who are homeless.

Ø Requests for food assistance at the pantries we serve increased by 14% in the first three months of 2008.  Many of those seeking help were families who had never before sought food assistance.

Executive Director Bruce Rankin and Board President Bruce Rosen

 

Simply put, Westside Food Bank is a community supported 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which collects donated surplus and salvageable food locally, as well as food purchased at wholesale, salvage and co-op prices, then distributes this emergency food to hungry people through more than 65 social service agencies.

In doing so the food bank solicits, collects, inspects, sorts, stores, and distributes surplus food donations from all sectors of the food industry including supermarket warehouses and food manufacturers, processors, wholesalers, and brokers. The Food Bank also solicits financial contributions which are used to buy warehouse equipment and supplies and to support specialized food programs and wholesale food purchases.

Westside Food Bank is a non-profit organization founded in 1981 as a project of the Westside Ecumenical Council. The Westside Food Bank's mission is to distribute as much nutritious food as possible to local food assistance charities, and to reduce food waste on the Westside. Over the years we have grown to the point that we now distribute nearly 4 million pounds of food a year to more than 60 social service agencies, thereby sustaining 80,000 of our most vulnerable neighbors--approximately half of them children.

In order to supply our member agencies, we acquire food through a variety of sources, including food industry donations, community food drives and the purchase of food supplies in bulk at wholesale prices. In addition, Extra Helpings Westside, our innovative prepared and perishable food recovery program, collects more than 130,000 pounds of food per month from restaurants, markets, bakeries, caterers, and farmers' markets and delivers it to our member agencies.

About Westside Food Bank

Over the past 10 years (in spite of a loss, annually, of $100,000 in federal funding and 500,000 pounds of government food):

Westside Food Bank's food distribution has more than doubled - from 1.5 million pounds per year, to nearly 4 million pounds. In the same period of time, the number of assistance requests at local food pantries has also doubled.

Our food cost index has improved from 28 cents per pound of food to 20 cents per pound. (That is, when all of our annual expenditures are related to total food distribution poundage, we now can distribute 5 pounds of food --- that's seven meals --- for every donated dollar.)

Westside Food Bank seeks to consistently provide a wide range of food types to the food assistance programs that use our warehouse. Most food banks concentrate on lower cost staples. Still, our food cost index is better than most food banks in California.