Virginia Peninsula Foodbank

The Virginia Peninsula Foodbank has three main objectives that we aim to accomplish each and every day. We aim to ensure future capability to acquire, store, and distribute food effectively for those in need throughout our greater Peninsula community. We continue to develop and grow partnerships with agencies, other nonprofit organizations, foundations, corporations, community donors, and volunteers in order to work collaboratively to provide food for those who are facing food insecurity. Finally, we ensure that we maintain a constant focus on providing nutritious food options for our neighbors in need so that we are helping them live a healthy lifestyle.

The Virginia Peninsula Foodbank strives to provide hunger relief and hope to individuals, families, children, senior citizens, and veterans who face food insecurity each day. We partner with over 170 member agencies made up of faith-based organizations, food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and community centers across our service area for people to turn to in times of need, and together, we have provided over 147 million meals. We maintain a strong, visible presence in the community, and make sure all of our programs are executed efficiently. We acquire food through donations and purchasing and distribute effectively in collaboration with community partner agencies as well as our own programs. While we are fully aware of the meaningful impact we can make, we cannot do it without strong partnerships, food and fund donations, volunteer energy, and community grants.

The Virginia Peninsula Foodbank is composed of a strong, committed, and dedicated staff led by an experienced and highly skilled management team. There is no organization on the Peninsula that is able to distribute food as effectively as we do on such a large scale with access to as many resources. It is undeniably true that we could not do the work that we do without the help of our over 120 partner agencies. Without them, it would be very difficult to reach as many people as we do. They expand our impact beyond what we could achieve with our small staff and fleet of trucks alone. However, it is the Foodbank that has the capability to seek and obtain food from sources and entities that no one else can, and we can often receive rates for purchasing food that are cost-effective and competitively priced. It is our staff that trains partner agency representatives in food safety and proper distribution methods. We have a large warehouse that is unrivaled among other food distribution organizations, and we continue to strengthen our relationships with local print and television media to raise awareness of food insecurity and promote our hunger relief efforts. Our partnerships with other nonprofit organizations and our visible presence in the community makes the Foodbank the premier hunger relief resource in the community, and we are proud of the work that we do to alleviate the challenges faced by people who are facing food insecurity.

Last fiscal year (ending June 30, 2020), we distributed over 12.7 million pounds of food, which equates to nearly 10.6 million meals provided to our neighbors in need. This is a record amount of food distributed in any year throughout our organization's history, and we always strive to increase our impact if possible with each new year. We consistently focus on locating new avenues for collaboration, discovering innovative ways to distribute food effectively, acquiring and distributing food items with an emphasis on nutrition and community health, identifying populations and communities that are not being served, and honing and strengthening our programs to maximize their effectiveness. Food insecurity occurs during all seasons and can affect any person or family. The Virginia Peninsula Foodbank will continue to work tirelessly to meet this need and give our community the hope and comfort that accompanies being properly nourished.

In 2020, we also reaffirmed our role as an essential human services and basic needs resource following a disaster or emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic brought new faces of food insecurity to our agencies and programs. Our ability to be flexible, adapting our distributions and volunteer opportunities to a safer, social distanced model, enabled us to meet increased requests for food assistance. Our community donors, volunteers, and advocates also stepped up remarkably to help make our mission possible. For 35 years, our community has remained our most valuable resource.