Dear friends,
As a community-powered nonprofit, we’re chartered to think and work creatively to respond to community trends and opportunities. Our core values drive us to design our work with our guests’ needs & perspectives at the center of our decision-making, and to work together with our entire community to find the better way, in areas big and small. Today, I am excited to share about three big new initiatives. You’re an important part of our work, so I want to keep you informed on the big steps we’re taking to better serve our community!
Growing Food Club’s Capacity
With the launch of the Food Club & Opportunity Hub, we worked with so many of you to re-imagine our core programming. This is an amazing, six-day-a-week service that so many of our neighbors rely on. With more turning to us, our donors have stepped up again to further expand our presence. In the coming quarter, you’ll notice more work at Food Club! Our community’s generous support has empowered us to take several big steps forward, on top of the additional freezer and cooler space installed last autumn.
We're paving our back parking lot, creating a better experience for our volunteers, and freeing up space for guests (who fill the parking lot!) during our busiest hours.
A ‘Food Donation’ shelter will be added on the back of the building (at door C), to provide a weather-protected experience for all the generous neighbors who continue to donate thousands of pounds of food each week! And in keeping with our welcoming environment, we’ll be unveiling a new Joel Schoon-Tanis mural!
We’ll be expanding our office and meeting room space into our adjoining building, as our neighbors move on to the bigger space they need. This will come with interior access connecting the two buildings, to unlock even more meeting room space for our one-on-one work with guests as we partner with them on a way forward.
2. Announcing our Affordable Housing Partnership with Dwelling Place
Since the beginning of our Food Club campaign, we’ve strategized on the best use of our building at 345 W 14th Street. With helpful guidance from Housing Next and our partners at the City of Holland, we aspired to use our parcel to catalyze a larger mixed-income, affordable housing development, to play our part in addressing the critical housing shortage that impacts so many of our neighbors.
We’re pleased to share that we’ve agreed on a joint venture with Dwelling Place, a well regarded non-profit affordable housing developer who has done previous work in Holland. Dwelling Place will be the lead partner, taking ownership of all the financing, building, and property management while we focus on community services & connections.
Our former building alone isn't large enough for an affordable housing complex. We’ve collaborated with our city officials throughout this process, dreaming about the option of acquiring the adjacent city-owned property needed to make this project possible.
At the beginning of March, the City of Holland formally approved their property sale! Combining the city’s parcel with our own, we have the space for a two-building scattered site approach to mixed-income, affordable housing - featuring a 40-45 unit, 1-2 bedroom building, as well as five three-bedroom rowhomes.
There are other hurdles to pass - including earning MSDHA funding to support this building. Dwelling Place intends to apply for this funding in October, and we’re hopeful to secure the support we need to make this impactful work happen!
Stay tuned for updates on our progress, and for information on public engagement sessions that Dwelling Place will host to share about this exciting project!
3. Taking Lakeshore Food Rescue County-Wide
We’ve celebrated the addition of new food partners who have joined our efforts to provide fresh, healthy food at Food Club every day. We expanded our logistics team and their Food Rescue efforts, growing from under 20,000 pounds of donated food (that we collect, sort, and share monthly) to well over 100,000 pounds. But there is still good food that goes to waste in our community.
Food Club was strategically designed to expand not only our own food rescue and partnerships efforts, but to find ways to benefit the entire food access system.
Our partners at Ottawa Food have been key allies, and together we submitted a proposal to significantly expand our joint efforts in this space.
In December, Ottawa County graciously allocated $486k to Ottawa Food to expand local food rescue efforts throughout the county. They're granting us the funding needed to add new vehicles and staff, expanding our critical behind the scenes work. One new vehicle is purchased, another is on the way, and we’re recruiting for three new teammates to help drive this forward. Look for more ‘Lakeshore Food Rescue’ vehicles on the road soon!
This summer, we’ll launch a new app (Food Rescue Hero) to better mobilize a growing community of food donors and volunteer partners who are critical to getting all good food to those in need. Because good food belongs with people, not landfills.
We’ll be the 16th community in the USA expanding food rescue with this award-winning technology, and we’ve been working closely with them and learning from their other partners for the last several years as we planned this big step forward.
Look for further announcements later this summer - including on how to connect your favorite food establishments to our network, and how to volunteer a few minutes of your time to ‘rescue’ food throughout the county.
We are grateful to you, and our entire community of support, for the trust and partnership you provide. Your support makes this work happen - allowing us to dream, plan, and deliver programs that provide results, while prioritizing the dignity of all our neighbors. On behalf of our entire team, board, and all of our guests - thank you for believing in us, and for staying with us through this journey. We cannot do this without you!
And as always, be in touch with any questions, or to find further ways to get involved in our community-serving work. We’re in this together.
Onward,
Scott Rumpsa | CEO
