Food Bank Employee Newsletter

I wanted to share with you a recent letter I sent to our employees at the food bank. It appeared in our monthly internal newsletter for December called the “Bank Teller”. Our employees are our most valuable resource……without their commitment to our mission we would not be successful in meeting the needs of the hungry in our community.

It is hard to believe that it has been 3 months since the formation of the St Mary’s/Westside Food Bank Alliance. Everyone has spent an incredible amount of time focused on integration of the two food banks into one. Blending food distribution programs, integrating accounting ledgers, connecting computer and data base systems, coordinating food movement between the food bank locations, working to insure our volunteer workforce is well utilized and much more have challenged everyone involved with the new organization.

It is difficult to express how proud I am of how far we have come in 3 months and the willingness of each of you to adapt to change and take on new responsibility. Trying something new and being willing to work through the unknown challenges builds incredible character and I have seen a very positive personal growth in the majority of our employees. Now the challenge becomes transitioning our focus from the internal merger activities to focusing the power of the Alliance externally to eliminate hunger in our community. From the very beginning, the overall goal of our effort has always been “More Food to More People”. Together with over 900 of our partner agencies we will have a significant impact on achieving that goal.