Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, Inc.
We're on a nutrition mission
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The mission of Second Harvest Food Bank is, in collaboration with our partners, to provide dignified, equitable and consistent access to nutritious food, creating a foundation for community health. Food insecurity is surprisingly prevalent in every city in Orange County. In FY20023 we served an average of 393,000 food-insecure people per month and distributed 36.3 million pounds of food.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Mobile Pantry
Mobile Pantries provide fresh produce and other nutritious foods directly to families and individuals who struggle to make ends meet. Mobile Pantries allow us to bring food into underserved and vulnerable communities where many people face transportation challenges in accessing healthy food.
Senior Hunger Strategy
Second Harvest's Senior Hunger Strategy helps meet the needs of one of our county's fastest growing vulnerable populations. Nearly half of seniors cannot afford basic necessities and often have to choose between paying for food, medications or rent. Our strategy, comprised of 2 programs, provides OC’s food-insecure seniors, many of whom suffer from medical conditions, with the nutritious food items, such as meat, produce, and prepared salads, that they need to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
- Senior Grocery Program: Distributes groceries twice a month at approximately 39 partner senior centers and low-income senior apartment complexes throughout Orange County. Following a compassionate, client-choice model, Senior Grocery provides seniors with the nutritious food they need in a community-based, easily accessible setting and enables seniors to select the food items they need, increasing their independence and reducing food wasted.
- Park-It Market: Launched in May 2018, the nation’s first-of-its-kind, full-service, partially refrigerated mobile market serves seniors living on fixed incomes. Called Park-It Market, the custom-built mobile trailer carries about 6,000 pounds of food, including fresh vegetables, fruit, shelf stable foods, and refrigerated items like eggs, cheese, yogurt, milk, meat, and prepared salads. Servicing 11 senior centers and low-income senior apartment complex, it is estimated more than 1 million meals will be distributed through it every year.
Child Hunger Strategy
OC is one of the wealthiest counties in this nation, yet 1 in 6 children are at-risk of hunger. Without proper nutrition children find it challenging to focus on learning and studies show that food insecurity leads to higher dropout rates. 49% of children in OC rely on free and reduced-price meals for much of their daily nutritional needs. Our Child Hunger Strategy works to bridge the meal gap for children in low-income areas when they need it most, after school, during school holidays, and during the summer. The distribution model has been temporarily modified to reach as many children as possible while schools are closed due to COVID.
- Kids Cafe: Provides nutritious meals and nutrition education to children 18 and under in low-income communities at after-school and summer program locations.
- Mobile School Pantry: Provides nutritious food directly to struggling children and families in OC through ‘pop-up’ farmer’s market style food distributions.
- Permanent School Pantry: An innovative approach to de-stigmatizing food distributions that provides a dignified, client-centered model to serving food-insecure children and families in a scaled-down food market on or near schools where clients can “shop” for the food their families prefer.
- College Pantry Program: Since an estimated 40% of the college students in OC are food-insecure, we introduced the College Pantry Program in 2019. These on-campus pantries support struggling college students so they can focus on their studies. We currently operate 13 sites, serving about 2,000 unique students each month.
CalFresh Outreach
Federally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the CalFresh Outreach Program at Second Harvest increases Orange County’s participation rate in CalFresh, one of the lowest in the state, and provides education, awareness, direct application assistance, and client advocacy through our strategic access points, our network of agency partners, our expanding CalFresh Intern Program, and our food assistance hotline. CalFresh benefits allow people to shop for their own food choices rather than depend on handouts from food bank agencies. In Fiscal Year 2020 this program provided the equivalent of more than 1,600,000 meals for the needy.
Where we work
Accreditations
Charity Navigator 2018
Awards
Affiliations & memberships
Orange County Business Council 2014
United Way Member Agency 2014
Feeding America 1989
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Average number of service recipients per month
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Through our own programming and network of community partners, we feed more than 393,000 people each month.
% of Total Expenses that Go Toward Fundraising and General Management
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Stewardship is a core value and as a result, SHFB is very efficient in the use of donors’ contributions. Our fundraising and general management expenses are less than 7% of total expenses.
Number of new grants received
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of press articles published
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
These numbers are for feature articles.
Number of return website visitors
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of unique website visitors
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of volunteers
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
The drop-off in FY20 is due to COVID-19 which necessitated that we drastically cut back on our volunteer opportunities.
Number of press releases developed and distributed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of Facebook followers
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of organizational partners
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Ex: churches, shelters, soup kitchens, etc. The # changed due to a reapplication process to ensure orgs with whom we partner meet our distribution & food safety standards, & want to grow with us.
Pounds of food distributed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Decreasing
Context Notes
Based on our fiscal year (July-June) food pounds distributed. The dramatic increase in FY20 is due to the economic fallout of COVID-19. Success is a reduction in need for our services, not growth.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The goal of Second Harvest's robust, diverse set of hunger-relief efforts is to ensure that families that are experiencing food insecurity, no matter the cause, can have reliable access to nutritious food in their community. Through its network of partners and direct distribution programs, Second Harvest provides food for over 393,000 people every month.
Strategic Initiatives
1. Food Sourcing & Nutrition: secure donations of food and funds for food purchases to provide those in need with consistent access to high-quality nutritious foods including whole fruits and vegetables, eggs, protein, dairy and shelf-stable items
2. Orange County Hunger Alliance: Join forces with CAP OC/Orange County Food Bank and Abound to end hunger, address the root causes of poverty, and recover and repurpose excess food to reduce food waste.
3. Peoples Market create a dignified food market option for high-quality nutritious food at lower-than-retail pricing for working families in low-income, under-served communities
4. Working Farm develop 1 acre farm using above-ground containers to grow top-quality, highly-nutritious greens for those in need
5. Community Art Projects: use the power of art to create awareness of the hunger problem and empower advocacy in the community for the most vulnerable among us.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
We are focused on providing the most basic of needs – food. Second Harvest provides consistent access to nutritious food to those in need in the community and, more specifically, to the most vulnerable among them, through our Child Hunger Strategy, including Permanent and Mobile School Pantries, after-school programs, College Pantries, and our Senior Grocery Program. Well-nourished children have better educational outcomes and better prospects for the future. College students can focus on learning and preparing to enter the workforce. Seniors whose nutritional needs are met are likely to be healthier and enjoy living independently for longer. Adults who are food secure can focus their time and energy on supporting themselves and their families and on becoming self-sufficient.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
We have a Partner pantries, after-school programs, Permanent School Pantries, senior centers, transitional housing and homeless shelters, who distribute the food we provide in locations in every one of Orange County’s 34 cities.
We are working with like-minded organizations – both non-profit and for-profit – to help alleviate hunger which in turn helps families to achieve financial stability. Through our efforts, our partnerships, and the support of individuals, corporations and other funders, we have been able to feed all who need our help. We continue to reach out to marginalized and vulnerable communities to create awareness of the resources available to them and help them find food distributions in their neighborhoods. Network of more than 300 community partners and programs including houses of worship, school and college
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Due to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020, 2021 and the continued economic aftermath will stand out historically as unprecedented years of community need and our food banks required emergency food response. Our team anticipated the extraordinary food-insecurity challenges resulting from COVID-19 and efficiently pivoted, quickly reworking distribution center operations, including how we source, process and distribute food. Our team successfully provided 60 million pounds of food in fiscal year 2021, a 41% increase from standard operations the preceding fiscal year.
Even in the throes of COVID, we continued to innovate co-creating in late 2020 the Orange County Hunger Alliance, a partnership with Community Action Partnership of Orange County, the OC Food Bank and Abound Food Care. Its the first time three anti-hunger organizations are pooling resources to end poverty by first ending hunger. We have also launched not one but two farm projects locally, providing nutritious locally grown produce to the pantry network while supporting the local farming economy. We continue to be nimble and flexible as we meet the needs of the community.
As we prepare for our 2023/2024 strategic planning, we are refining our focus on food security as foundational for a healthy community. We are redefining success as a reduction in need for food, not growth, led by consistent access to planned, not situational, nutrition. We are a purpose driven organization committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure all are well fed. Providing dignified, equitable and consistent access to nutritious foods creates a foundation for community health and is a catalyst for societal transformation.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To inform the development of new programs/projects, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 02/28/2024
Kathy Bronstein
KB Bronstein Merchandising
Term: 2022 -
Salman Alam
Western Digital
Kathy Bronstein
KB Bronstein Merchandising
Joe Fuszard
Bank of America
Dan Grable
Goodman North America
David Hasenbalg
City National Bank an RBC Company
Melissa Hill
Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions
Kate Klimow
University of California, Irvine
Brigid Noonan
Society of St. Vincent. de Paul
John Ralls
Community Health
Teddie Ray
Harvester
Katherine Le
Mortgage Service Providers
Jeff Dietrich
PricewaterhouseCoopers
William Doyle
Kerlin Capital Group
Dareen Khatib
Orange County Dept. of Ed.
Manishi Parikh
Wells Fargo Commercial Banking
Bill Schaal
Rutan & Tucker, LLP
Heidi Sirota
Nationwide
Maria Zlidar Richards
Mazda North America
Patrick Finnegan
Disneyland Resport
Bill Koschak
Advancement CFO
Neil Pardasani
Boston Consulting Group
Sunny Reelhorn Parr
Ralphs and Food 4 Less
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 08/12/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.