Our Strategic Plan for 2018-2020 includes these strategic directions: 1. Ensure that FOOD for Lane County's facilities remain adaptable and adequately sized to allow for efficient operations and sustainable growth to better serve the community.
2. Address community needs through expanding existing programming and developing innovative programming to reach identified populations and high needs areas.
3. Work toward our vision of eliminating hunger in Lane County by focusing on programs, partnerships, and activities that affect hunger's root causes.

1. Adjust emergency food and supplemental programs as community needs change
2. Focus on feeding programs that help the increasing senior population
3. Focus on programs that meet the needs of children and youth
4. Develop programs and support efforts that help service users learn skills to obtain and maintain employment or stretch existing financial resources
5. Increase access to healthy food and nutrition information through healthcare partnerships
6. Partner with affordable housing sites for coordinated service delivery, education, and advocacy
7. Expand education efforts to increase the ability to grow and prepare healthy food

FFLC has been feeding those who are in need of food for 33 years. Our programs and services accomplished the following during fiscal year 2016-17: Distributed 5,166,993 pounds of food to 31 pantries in our Food Distribution Network, which provided 95,594 Emergency Food Boxes; served approximately 53,800 hot meals to children this summer at 56 sites through the Summer Food Program; rescued, prepared and packaged a record amount of food—more than a million pounds—through our Food Rescue Express (FREX) program; In 2016-17 our Gardens Program grew and harvested over 155,000 pounds of fresh, organic produce from FFLC's two educational gardens; delivered over 7,000 Weekend Snack Packs to elementary school-aged children in need; the Rural Delivery program provided rural Lane County residents with 197,751 pounds of produce, dairy, and perishable items; the Extra Helping program provided 1,724 low-income households access to fresh produce and dairy items.
FFLC programs and partnerships respond to the immediate crisis of hunger while other programs help individuals and families address chronic food insecurity through self-sufficiency and education programs. The majority of the food we distribute is given to clients at our partner agencies through our Emergency Food Box Program. The eligibility criteria for this program are: household income at or below 185% of the federal poverty level or currently participating in the Food Stamp Program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Social Security Income (SSI) or Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP).
As the second largest food bank in Oregon, FFLC is a member of the Oregon Food Bank Network, United Way of Lane County and a distribution partner of Feeding America, the national food bank network.

Each strategic direction has a management team member who stewards, oversees, and is accountable for the delivery of the proposed actions and results. Each strategic action has a staff member or team of staff who are responsible for the completion of the action. Progress on the Strategic Plan is reported to the Board of Directors and FFLC staff every six months. Staff make adjustments as needed in our expectations and our annual work plans as our environment, capabilities, and possibilities change over the three-year period.

FOOD for Lane County has successfully met the food needs for the emergency food system for over 30 years. We have adapted and responded to changes in community demographics by expanding outreach to multicultural populations, seniors, and children. We have responded to changes in food supply by creating produce-only programs and sourcing and growing our own food. Nutrition education offers participants a chance to learn to use the food they get from a food program, and gardening education teaches participants to grow their own food. Our future holds the development of a job training program that provides short-term vocational training to help people with skills that lead to jobs that create self-sufficiency. We have purchased a new warehouse space, which will be ready for our use in the spring of 2018.