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Capital Campaign Fully Funded

Capital Campaign Fully Funded

February 1, 2018 in Major giving

Supporters step up to meet the Mabee Challenge Grant.

Ozarks Food Harvest donors helped us meet a $700,000 J.E. & L.E. Mabee Foundation Challenge Grant. These funds will go toward building our 56,000-foot expansion.

The walls are already going up, and a grand opening of the new warehouse space will take place this summer.
That will mean more room to accept, process and store food donations, more fresh food in our dedicated produce cooler, more freezer space, more space for volunteer projects … and, most importantly, more hungry Ozarks families fed.

For nearly 35 years, Ozarks Food Harvest has had a mission of Transforming Hunger into Hope. The Food Bank provides food and supplies to 270 nonprofit hunger-relief organizations across southwest Missouri. Currently, Ozarks Food Harvest provides 16.8 million meals to more than 261,000 unduplicated individuals annually.
But that leaves a meal gap of 15 million more meals needed by food insecure individuals in our 28 counties to improve food security.

We will take a giant step toward closing that gap when we no longer have to turn away a million pounds of food a year because of lack of space, leaving children, families and seniors without needed food.

A lead gift from the O’Reilly family, all of our generous donors and the Mabee Foundation Challenge Grant made it possible to meet the $4.6 million goal to build, furnish and operate the new expansion.

Thanks to our four star rating from Charity Navigator, donors know that the money they give is being used to support our mission.

That mission is to reach all of the children, families and seniors who face the reality of not knowing where or when their next meal is coming. Michelle and her children are one of those families.

Michelle is a single mother of two teenagers. She is disabled and recently broke her hip, making it even more difficult to get around.

“I’ve been having a rough week,” she told us. “My kids are going to their dad’s, but their dad does not have any money for groceries. I was worried about how I was going to afford to get groceries to send them with.” Michelle was able to get assistance from Ozarks Food Harvest. “[Now I have] some groceries to send with my kids when they visit their dad. It takes a big stress off,” she said.

Michelle has also been struggling with high utility bills, but she is still very thankful for the support from Ozarks Food Harvest.
“It came on a day that I was stressing out and needed it,” she said. “It was so great to get that. It took the weight off my shoulders. … We really appreciate it.”

Thanks to all our Capital Campaign donors, when our new expansion is completed, we will have the ability to help more families like Michelle’s across our service area. We will be another step closer to closing the meal gap and Transforming Hunger into Hope.