The Food Bank of Central Louisiana

The Food Bank of Central Louisiana's mission is to alleviate hunger in central Louisiana. In order to fulfill our mission, the organization is working to meet these strategic goals: Distribute more food, build member agency capacity, expand funding, strengthen food bank operations, and develop a strong team.

Distribute more food - increase cold storage capacity, increase mobile pantry distribution, expand retail donation program, establish food drive with faith-based community, expand school food pantry program. Build member agency capacity - evaluate member agency strengths and capacity and assess annually, create plan of action for agency growth and succession, and determine agencies storage capacity and seek funding to support agency capacity building. Engage the community - develop marketing and communications plan, access and adjust plan annually, develop key messages to tell the Food Bank story, successfully conclude the capital campaign, expand grant funds to expand programming and food distribution, can increase the number of volunteers and donors. Strengthen operations - conduct assessment of equipment, determine technology recourses and operational/administrative processes, secure an expert resource to assist in streamlining workflow, and maintain policies, processes and training required to meet all food safety certification standards. Develop a strong team - evaluate staffing structure and update as needed to support our growth, continue to implement best practices for board engagement and development, and identify volunteer roles needed in new facility and recruit volunteers to fill those needs.

The Food Bank of Central Louisiana has a 30 year track record of operation. During the past 30 years, the Food Bank has created and modified programs in order to meet the needs of the clients and the organization. The Food Bank staff works to accept, process, warehouse, and distribute food throughout our 11-parish service on a daily basis. This is done so through many different programs and procedures, using staff members with a wide range of expertise and experience. The Food Bank of Central Louisiana is able to distribute more than 11 million pounds of food annually with the coordinated efforts of the 14 full-time and 11 part-time staff.

The Food Bank of Central Louisiana recently completed our 3 year strategic plan, so many of our goals and objectives were just established. Our organization recently completed our $3.5 million capital campaign to increase our capacity to store and distribute more food throughout our service area.