A letter from Founder & CEO, Ashley Stanley: Death by a thousand cuts
Dear friends,
We’ve seen a lot over the last 15 years, particularly over the last five. Frankly, though, my senior leadership team and I have never seen anything quite like this.
Just this morning, we convened with over 20 of the food programs in our network: pantries, meal programs, shelters, community centers and others across the state that receive Spoonfuls’ deliveries. We held space to come together and talk… to discuss shared challenges, opportunities for collaboration, and ways Spoonfuls could support. And what we heard – what we already knew – is that this isn’t business as usual.
In 15 years of Spoonfuls (including the years we worked continuously to be a food resource for our neighbors throughout a global pandemic), we and our partners have never seen anything like what we’re seeing now. With near daily announcements of various federal and state program and funding cuts (the latest just yesterday as we learned that USDA is canceling $3.3 million dollars’ worth of food deliveries to Massachusetts’ food banks, causing ripple effects for our partners and for Spoonfuls), programs we know and love in communities where we live and work, and people we care about, are in trouble. Because of this, we are no longer treating our work as “business as usual” and, instead, are proactively moving into emergency response.
Right now:
- Our team is on the road, having recovered and delivered around 115,000 pounds of food to organizations reaching over 56,000 of our neighbors since Monday.
- We’re working to source additional food for programs that have seen reduced supply and greater demand. That’s most of them.
- We’re optimizing our routes and working with our partners to ensure we’re operating in the most efficient and effective way possible to reach as many communities and as many programs as we can in our current service area. It’s always been our focus, but now more than ever it is critical that we leave no good food behind. People so badly need it.
- We’re gearing up for expansion to other parts of the state (coming later this year to Bristol County, Bridgewater, and Brockton).
- We’re lending our voice and perspective to coalition conversations aimed at building awareness of the ways federal and state policies impact people in our own backyards.
We have more to do. More than ever. Like we’ve said before, we’re in this together.
In solidarity,
Ashley Stanley
Founder & CEO
