Longtime Fort Bragg Food Bank volunteer Donna Byers dodged being photographed for the Season of Sharing series several times before. Then one day in 2012 we were laughing with the Key Club volunteers and she consented to be in the paper for the fund drive series.
Last week, she told me the rather incredible outcome of that published photograph.
Her son, whom she had been estranged from during younger and wilder days, was searching for his mom, unknown to other relatives.
“He did a search and found me in that article and then contacted me,” Donna said.
Having turned 18, her son is now part of her life again. She gives me a big smile and update every time I see her.
The Food Bank is a place where many are trying to turn their lives around. Some do. I wish they all could. I look back through the years of stories and do see people have recovered and are now giving back. I also see a few in jail, two suicides and other people whose fates are unknown to all I ask.
Every writer loves reactions to what he puts into print. Fortunately, we have had many good reactions. For example, we helped the Food Bank with a call for volunteers when they turned up very short this year.
Laura Palacios, Debby Nicolson, Susan Munson, Susan Collins, Susan Larkin, Bill Sawyer and Barbara Dyche all came down and signed up with the Food Bank, thanks to the articles, says Executive Director Nancy Severy. I have met even more who have told me they were there because of articles.
The biggest need is still money. How to do better with that?
Food Bank faces deficit
Our publisher picks the Season of Sharing as the main charitable effort of our community newspapers the Advocate-News and The Beacon year after year, meaning the real reason for my writing about the Food Bank every week is to raise money that will help feed people after the holiday season ends. Others might see a conflict in that, but I don”t.
As the newspaperman assigned to write about the Food Bank, I have never been given orders from on high to make it look good. Instead, I have set out to make this nonprofit look, feel and taste real to readers.
At a time when other major community institutions are failing, is this tell-all approach really the best idea? Would it be better for us to simply beg readers for money, rather than tell them the good, bad and ugly that I see every week? After all, I haven”t even talked about a likely budget deficit of about $30,000.
“We did have a deficit of $26,000 in 2012. And we started out 2013 with a projected deficit of approximately $30,000,” Severy said. “Obviously this got our attention. While we do keep a prudent reserve so that the Food Bank”s service to the community does not get interrupted by unexpected events, and this reserve allowed us to weather the 2012 deficit, we cannot afford to sustain deficits of this size for too many years without seriously endangering the stability of the Food Bank.”
Personalizing a fundraising pitch using friends and neighbors I meet there is likely to be more interesting to readers than simply asking for money. But even that is subjective. I could ignore every unsavory character and write only about the numerous upstanding mass of elderly people I run into every week, along with the parents with kids and disabled people.
“I … found that our typical senior client”s income is between $700 and $900 a month. Think about that for a minute. That doesn”t go very far,” Severy told me.
My instinct is that I should tell as much of the story as I possibly can. The truth will prevail, even if it”s uglier than a polished pitch.
For that reason, I can”t leave out the mentally ill homeless who are served. In the end, despite our failings, telling the truth to the best of our ability is the triumph of newspapers, which doesn”t seem to be the case with newer media formats that feature opinion over reporting.
I asked what the Food Bank has done internally about the deficit.
“At the beginning of this year, we rolled up our sleeves to see what could be done to reduce the projected deficit,” Severy said. “We made decisions to freeze employee compensation at current levels (until such time as we could determine that we”re “out of the woods”), to be even more frugal than we normally are with routine expenses, and to add two brand new fundraisers.”
The Food Bank posts all its financial documents online. The Mendocino County Grand Jury reviewed all food banks last year and gave the Fort Bragg operation special praise.
Mystical bang
I won”t say I can tell the “whole story” of even something as small as the Food Bank because that simply isn”t possible on this side of the veil. What I chose to tell is colored by my own background, mortal biases and even personal appearance. Certain people never make it into the paper because of subconscious biases in me, or because they don”t want to talk to a gigantic white dude for their own reasons.
This is much more than a story about a nonprofit that knows how to both stretch money and provide services. I”m struggling a little on how to explain the mystical bang you will get for your bucks in contributions.
I think of the biblical miracle of the endless loaves and fishes when I see more goodwill coming out of the Food Bank than going in. I asked Severy to help me explain, as she seems to be able to put it into words.
“The whole community has the right to feel proud of our food bank. Approximately half our cash budget comes from local donations, large and small, as well as many tons of donated food annually,” Severy said. “Somehow this has so much more meaning than the proverbial “government hand out.” Not a day passes that several people don”t show up at the Food Bank door with a bag of groceries (obviously thoughtfully chosen), recycled grocery bags, hand-knitted caps, a bag of apples or a check. The giving of these donations is a deeply personal exchange,” she said.
At a time when our society and earth are in awful declines, this “deeply personal exchange” is where the power lurks. Spending your money this way is much, much better than spending on stuff, better even than barter.
Donations to the Food Bank provide life at several levels: for food that would have been thrown away, blessings for the receiver, and keeping retired and neglected poor people from feeling like they have been thrown away.
“We also have depended greatly on local private donations and so far our wonderful community has seen us through. We just hope that the bottom-line nature of our service to the community continues to be recognized. The Food Bank is where people go when it all comes crashing down and other safety nets disappear,” Severy said.
Despite all this, I still can”t bear to use the sales pitch for fundraising or to make the situation look as dire as other, larger community institutions. To seek money this way would be to miss the whole point, to deny the giver the flow of grace that comes from free giving and receiving.
But I do need to state the facts as I have found them. The Food Bank clientele never gets smaller in our world, where the gap between rich and poor gets wider all the time.
Human need & magic
“We greatly need the continued support of the community. The recession brought a big jump in the number of clients who come to us for help. It doesn”t look like we”re likely to return to pre-recession levels anytime soon, if ever. We need to keep finding enough food to fill the weekly food bags that sustain our clients,” Severy said.
The need for money is there now and figures to get much larger with the probable loss of three forms of government aid.
Having gathered all the facts I could, I don”t feel it compromises me as a neutral reporter to suggest that you do give what you can, despite all the others needing money. I”ve found an organization that has a talent for squeezing pennies and a culture of human magic.
When I took my first reporting job in 1984, I believed a reporter must never support any cause and must always balance any position with the opposite position. Since then I”ve learned that words always and never are the tools of a fool, that there are way more than two sides to every story, and that he said-she said is a recipe for ugly polarization.
I”ve become much more cynical about “rational” society but I”m back to believing in the spirit of Christmas. And I feel an optimism when I see people recycling, reusing and living like there really is a tomorrow, and maybe even a Santa Claus or at least the spirit of one.
Season of Sharing
Since 1996, the Advocate-News and The Mendocino Beacon have raised roughly $301,543 for the Food Bank through the Season of Sharing fund drive. Since 1999, the nonprofit Community Foundation of Mendocino County has administered the drive as a courtesy to the newspapers. Every penny donated goes directly to the Food Bank.
“There are many nonprofit organizations in our area, all very worthy of support, but the Food Bank addresses the most basic problem facing hundreds of individuals and families hunger,” said Publisher Sharon DiMauro. “The goal is to give the Food Bank money it can use year-round, not just during the holidays. It doesn”t matter a bit whether a person contributes through our fundraiser or directly to the Food Bank, the main thing is to contribute and if you”re able, to give year-round.”
How to donate
to Season of Sharing
– By check: Make check payable to The Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC) and mail or deliver to the Advocate-News, 450 N. Franklin St., Fort Bragg 95437.
– By credit card: Pay via CFMC”s website, www.communityfound.org. Click “Donate Online,” then “Poverty Related Funds” and select “Season of Sharing Fund (Fort Bragg Food Bank).
Questions? Please call us at 964-5642.
This week”s donors
The names of donors who contribute through the newspapers or CFMC”s website are printed each week, unless they ask to remain anonymous.
At the end of the drive, which runs through Dec. 31, the names of everyone who donates to the 2013 campaign will be reprinted.
As of press time Wednesday, donations from Michael and Mary Schuh, Rosanne McHenry, Bill and Gwen Jacobson, Alison Cebula, Deborah Smith, LauraLyn McDaniel, Charlene McAllister, Alice Einhorn, Barbara Barkovich, Debbie L. and David Holmer, Boyd and MaryKay Hight, Christina Cross and John Thomson, Fort Bragg Middle School”s Walk, Bike, Bus participants and Susan Holli Neidlinger brought the Season of Sharing fund drive total to $14,645.
