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Company Profile
St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance
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St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance 602-242-3663 www.firstfoodbank.org Non-Profit |
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About St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance:
St. Mary’s Food Bank has a prestigious Arizona heritage as
the birthplace of the world’s first food bank. Most food banks
around the world owe their start to St. Mary’s Food Bank as the
organization that pioneered and championed food banking in
America and then internationally. When John van Hengel created
the concept of food banking by founding St. Mary’s Food Bank in
1967, he believed that by “rescuing” food that might otherwise
be thrown away he could use that food to feed the hungry. That
vision evolved from the 250,000 pounds of food distributed in
his first year to the more than 72,000,000 pounds distributed in
2010. Using a combination of purchased and donated product, and
through a variety of programs, the Food Bank distributes enough
food to provide more than 275,000 meals per day in the
community. St. Mary’s Food Bank works with more than 520
agencies servicing 700 sites in two-thirds of Arizona counties.
These agencies range from domestic violence shelters to food
pantries, faith-based organizations to small food banks, from
Scottsdale to Cottonwood, and from Florence to the Hopi and
Navajo reservations. In addition, our Kids Cafe® program
provides 2,100 healthy meals to various after-school programs
each day. The Food Bank works directly with the public through
its Emergency Food Box/Emergency Baby Box distribution programs
and its Food Value Club/Value Marketplace locations. Our
Community Kitchen program provides low income adult students
with a tuition-free culinary arts education and successfully
places graduates in the workplace.
St. Mary’s Food Bank promotes a worker-friendly workplace
through company values, employee involvement, recognition, and
employee growth. The Food bank’s strategic plan emphasizes
career development as part of its succession planning program.
Career development plans, personality assessments, and 360˚
evaluations by supervisors, peers, and direct reports are used
to ensure that the right people are in the right jobs at the
right time. Employee recognition takes many forms including
quarterly all-staff meetings where employees receive service
anniversary awards and awards recognizing work that goes above
and beyond. St. Mary’s also has instituted a “Grass Roots”
program that allows employees to meet with senior staff monthly
to discuss workplace concerns and then work together to create
workable solutions. Employees are encouraged to have a good
work/life balance through telecommuting, flextime, generous paid
time off, and an exceptional benefits package that includes cash
wellness incentives. The Food Bank’s employees regularly say
that they love what they do and leadership at all levels work
very hard to create an environment that makes St. Mary’s Food
Bank a very rewarding and satisfying place to work.
- St. Mary’s Food Bank was selected as one of the “Best Places to Work” by The Business Journal in 2009 and 2011, receiving honorable mention in 2010.
- St. Mary’s was named the Sterling Award Winner by the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce in 2010 and a Finalist in 2009.
- Named Flagstaff Organization of the Year in 2009 by the Arizona Daily Sun Newspaper.
- Charity Navigator (the major non-profit rating service) has given St. Mary’s Food Bank its highest rating for eight consecutive years; only 2% of more than 5,400 non-profits can make that statement.
More Arizona citizens than ever before are living with the
threat of hunger. Now, one in five Arizonans live in poverty,
including one in four children and one in seven seniors. During
2010, St. Mary’s Food Bank distributed more than 370,000
emergency food boxes (more than 100,000 people received meals
through the holiday food box distribution during the 2010
holidays with more than 10,000 boxes distributed in the four
days leading up to Thanksgiving alone).
To help increase participation in SNAP (Food Stamps), St. Mary’s
has registered with the state of Arizona and has provided the
resources to train staff to help Food Bank patrons physically
register for food stamps at the St. Mary’s locations, thereby
helping to increase the number of eligible participants in the
program. While St. Mary’s cannot qualify individuals for food
stamps, officials with the Arizona Department of Economic
Security – including DES employees who work directly in the Food
Bank’s facilities – have lauded the outreach in this area
because it allows those who might otherwise be unable or
unwilling to visit a governmental office to feel more
comfortable in applying for the benefits to which they are
entitled. Last year, the Food Bank was able to successfully
enroll 924 individuals in SNAP.
St. Mary’s Food Bank partners with the WIC (Women, Infants &
Children) Program and they operate in the front of our 3003 W.
Thomas Road facility so their clients will have an easier time
picking up food from us. This partnership with WIC allows us to
better serve those in need in Arizona.
In order to better meet the increasing needs of the communities
served by St. Mary’s – including the very rural areas of
Northern Arizona, which include the Navajo, Hopi, Hualapai and
Havasupai nations – the Food Bank operations staff has developed
a series of mobile pantry programs and direct agency drop-off
arrangements by some grocery donors to get fresh food directly
to those in need as fast as possible (even going to far as to
partner with the United States Marine Corps to deliver food each
December to the Havasupai tribe living at the bottom of the
Grand Canyon. Reportedly the most remote community in the United
States, the village is home to about 400 people and is
accessible only by mule trails or helicopter.)
St. Mary’s Food Bank outreach into the rural areas most at risk
was highlighted in January 2010 when a major winter storm struck
three northern Arizona counties. Coordinating with the Arizona
National Guard and several other “Operation Winter Storm” relief
agencies, St. Mary’s delivered more than 2,700 emergency food
boxes, fresh produce and bottled water to areas of Apache,
Coconino and Navajo counties. The relief was needed when melting
snows measuring five to eight feet washed away roads and left
many families on the Hopi and Navajo Indian Reservations
stranded in their own homes.
Volunteers are critical to the Food Bank’s mission. Volunteers
work in every aspect of the organization from packing food
boxes, to providing clerical support, to speaking at public
events on our behalf. More than 86,400 volunteer visits provided
more than 386,000 hours during 2010. To put that figure in
proper perspective, that is equivalent to 185 full-time
employees, and saved the Food Bank more than $8,300,000 in wages
and benefits. It is one of the reasons that of each dollar
donated to St. Mary’s, $.96 goes to support programs.
As the world’s first food bank, St. Mary’s Food Bank has been
one of the most well known and respected charities in Arizona
for over 40 years. The concept of food banking that started with
St. Mary’s Food Bank in 1967 has helped alleviate hunger for
millions of people living in poverty around the world.
