Building Capacity

This past year, The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) gave more hunger relief capacity grants to our partner agencies than ever before. And this spring we delivered our biggest grant ever—$25,000 toward the purchase of a new refrigerated truck at Interfaith Social Services, one of our partner agencies in Quincy.

We’re only as strong as our network of over 500 partner agencies, and we try to make it stronger every year by providing capacity grants to help agencies order, store and distribute more high-quality food to struggling families in their community.

“Over the past few years we have seen the number of clients we serve steadily increase while the amount of food that we could collect from GBFB was capped because of the size of our truck,” said Rick Doane, executive director of Interfaith Social Services.

According to Rick, the number of clients visiting his pantry has more than doubled in the past decade; they now help nearly 1,800 people a month.

The new refrigerated truck is helping them pick up more fresh, perishable food at GBFB and bolster their food rescue program, which accounts for more than half of the food they distribute annually. Rick said since getting the new truck they spend half as much money buying produce from distributors and wholesalers and expects that number to keep dropping.

“We knew the food was there waiting for us, but we couldn’t access it,” Rick said. “Now we can.”