Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank Society
November 14, 2005
By Nicole Zummach
CALGARY, AB // "When food banking started in Canada twenty-five years ago, the thought was that 'next year they won't need us, or the year after that,'" says Chris Harris, CEO of the Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank Society. "We've had a culture of short-term thinking." Today, food banks are as tightly embedded in the community as the Salvation Army or the YMCA, and this is especially true of Harris's organization, which has positioned itself as a food distributor throughout Western Canada. "I think we are going to be here as long as society is here. It's sad, but true," comments Harris. He feels it's time for food banks to start thinking provincially, nationally, and even globally, but it all starts at the local level by finding creative ways to address the needs of the community. Clearly, the Calgary food bank is on the right track. It has been a Donner Award finalist five times, and received the award for Provision of Basic Necessities in 2004. CharityVillage spoke with Harris about the challenges of operating a food bank, and the larger issue of poverty in Canada.
CharityVillage: I'm sure you are aware of initiatives such as Campaign 2000 to eliminate child poverty. Given your line of work, what do you feel is your role in addressing poverty in Canada?
Chris Harris: There was the 1992 government pledge to eliminate child poverty and hunger by the year 2000, and it doubled in that particular space of time. One has to wonder. You look at cause and effect and I think food banks know very well that our job is very much a Band-Aid. We have very little effect, as an individual charity, on the root causes that send people to us. We feed them while they are going through a transition period that may or may not end. They may come out the other end having solved the underlying root cause that sent them to us in the first place, or they may become chronic users of food banks or whatever else. We're sort of like a halfway house. We don't see the initial condition that sends someone to a food bank, and we very rarely see the end result.
Demand always outstrips supply, that's a given, so we're in the business of making hard choices. There are those who will be in real trouble unless you give them something right now; those who are in a chronic condition, which we can't really do very much about; and then there are those who are in a transitionary position, who we can probably have the biggest effect on. All food banks, all charities I think, are in that position no matter what their services. You have to make hard choices about where you can have the most effect with the resources you have, knowing that the resources are always less than what is needed.
CV: Do you work at all in collaboration with other local nonprofits or government agencies?
CH: We have a model here that we initiated about two and half years ago, which we call the Referral System. We started it with ourselves and 30 other agencies. We recognize that we do food; if it's not food, we don't do it. You can't do everything for everybody. You need to concentrate on your core business and try to do it as effectively as you can. Five or six years ago we had some counselling services, some kids programs and things like that, and we realized we couldn't do everything. We needed to pull ourselves back in and concentrate on doing what we do well and allowing those agencies who have that expertise to do that. But when they need food to support their efforts, they draw it from us. So we set ourselves up to become a centralized collection and distribution service for food, as well as running our own hamper programs. In the last five years we've gone from having about 150,000 pounds of food per year donated by the food industry, to last year, when we did more than six million pounds.
CV: You have a huge operation that is primarily volunteer-driven. What challenges does this present?
CH: We have about 30 staff and a volunteer base of 5,500. About five or six years ago the board and the volunteer society had to recognize that we'd grown beyond the size where the board and volunteers could manage operations, and secondly, to recognize that if you choose a direction and have a vision and a mission then you need qualified staff that can drive it and make it happen. They have supported us every step of the way, and we actually have a growing volunteer base.
CV: You've been a Donner finalist for five years, including 2005, and received the award for Provision of Basic Necessities last year. How has this impacted your organization?
CH: It's a really great awards program. Internally, it subjects you to an objective assessment of people who, to a certain extent, have some influence on your destiny - donors, the general public. If you can get someone like the Fraser Institute to say you are well run, the best, or one of the best in your field, it has a huge impact internally. Our volunteers feel vindicated for their support, and our donors do as well. Externally, it has almost the same effect. I'll give you an example. There is a major foundation that has supported the food bank for years. Last year, after we won, the VP of grants and applications at that organization called me and said, "Don't bother filling out the application. Just fill the front in with what you want and sign it. We don't need to do all this due diligence and scrutiny of your organization. Donner, and by default, the Fraser Institute have done it all, and that is perfectly acceptable for our panel and our council." So, I thought that was kind of neat. Just a few days ago another foundation called us and made a very similar comment. They take it that we've already been subjected to the closest scrutiny that is available.
CV: What have you learned from the evaluations provided by the Donner Foundation. What areas are you working to improve upon?
CH: Measurable outcomes is the buzzword being used by many grantmaking organizations, and certainly for government grants. If you are a food bank it is very, very difficult to actually provide outcome measurements in competition with the other finalists, who may have a much more defined and focused charity that has very clear objectives and easily quantified outcome measurements. With us, once our client is gone with their hamper, we have no way of actually following up to find out about the quality of their life or whether they've resolved their problems. So we are weaker on the outcome measurements, and one of the things we've been talking to Donner about is that type of problem for organizations that are, if I might say, a 'halfway house' type of situation. How do we put in outcome measurements that you take as being equally valid and judge us in the same way that you do organizations that are much clearer on their throughput? What sort of things would your panel accept as outcome measurements that were equally valid, given the nature of our business? So, we've been doing some work with them on that.
One of the things we've learned, having gone through the Donner experience and working with them, is that we shouldn't accept the simple myth that because we are a food bank and clients come in and go out the door and we never see them again, that we can't do and provide outcome measurements. We can, we just have to do it in a different way. It has prompted us to think outside the box, but we wouldn't have been able to do it unless they were prepared to think outside the box as well.
For more information about Calgary Inter-Faith Food Bank Society,
visit: www.calgaryfoodbank.com.
To learn more about the Donner Awards, visit: www.fraserinstitute.ca/donner/index.asp.
