Food bank donations down sharply

Michael E. Ross Reporter • Profile • E-mail

Some of the nation’s bigger food charities and food banks are reporting that donations have continued long-standing declines, decreases that may well continue through the holidays.

Officials at the charities fear that “donor fatigue” may have set in, with people’s charitable instincts stretched to the limit in a year of an uncommon number of weather-related tragedies.

At food charities in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and Milwaukee, donations are down in large measure because of the one-two punch of serial disasters at home and abroad.

The desperate call for donations for victims of Hurricane Katrina, and other Gulf Coast storms, was only compounded by the staggering need in Pakistan after an earthquake killed 70,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

Less food, more people who need it
Those dire situations have a parallel in America's growing food needs. An October report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 2004 was the fifth consecutive year in which the number of Americans in households at risk of hunger increased. The number of people living in what the USDA calls “food-insecure” households rose to 38.2 million last year, including 13.8 million children.

Food-bank officials say the problem's only gotten worse since then. The effect has been the worst of scenarios: a decrease in food donations and an increase in the number of people who need them.

NBC VIDEO Food banks hit by donor fatigue Nov. 20: What’s Thanksgiving without the trimmings? More of America’s homeless and working poor are finding out this year as food banks face a drop in donations. NBC’s Michael Okwu reports. Nightly News

“Our food donations are significantly down this year compared to last year — they’re down about 20 percent,” said Becky Guerra, community affairs director for Northwest Harvest, a Washington state-based charity with offices in Seattle and warehouses serving 300 food banks throughout western Washington. “But our client numbers are up.”

Guerra said the charity’s Cherry Street Food Bank in Seattle “is serving 3,000 more households a month compared to last year.”

“We’re seeing people being pushed over the edge, struggling to feed themselves and heat their homes. They're having to stretch that much more. People are having to choose between medical expenses and good as other social services are cut,” Guerra said. “We're hoping it’s a temporary situation, but we just don know at this point.”

The young and the old
Guerra noted that those most vulnerable in society — the very young and the very old — bear the brunt. “Forty percent of the people we serve are children, and that’s held steady from year to year,” she said. “Another 17 percent are elderly.”

Guerra admitted that, because her organization doesn't put the needy through the hassle of paperwork in order to get assistance, some of her information was anecdotal in nature. “We don't have detailed demographics; we just know what we see every day — we're seeing more, more, more.”

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