In addition to caring for my 1-year old son, Josh, I also care for my 87-year old mother.ﾠ It's rewarding and overwhelming at the same time.ﾠ So I was very touched by a recent letter from a client's daughter.ﾠ Her dad, John is a 95 year old client, struggling with cardiac disease, renal disease and dementia, who we've been feeding for 2 years.ﾠ His daughter wrote, "Thanks for helping to make molehills out of my mountains.ﾠ What would I do without you?ﾠ The way you come to the aid of others is a treasure.ﾠ There are no words to express our gratitude for allyou have done for my dad and me.ﾠ You are all a treasure.ﾠ Thank you so much!"ﾠ
Like anyone who has cared for a loved one with a serious illness, I know how overwhelming those mountains can be.ﾠ And how important a sense of community and support can be in the midst of caregiving.ﾠ I also know that the YOU that she refers to, isn't me or our staff.ﾠ It is the whole CS community that funds the meals,ﾠvolunteers in the kitchen andﾠhelps us deliver the meals.ﾠ Together, we're making "molehills out of mountains", and that's worthy of a bumpersticker all its own!ﾠ
I am blessed this holiday season to do such meaningful work with amazing colleagues and supporters.ﾠ To know that we can capitalize on the generosity of the community to care for so many sick neighbors, while offering other impressive food-relatedﾠprograms, is so rewarding and fulfilling.
Our senior team of professionals average 10 years of service at Community Servings, which allows us to be efficient and ambitious in our programs and fundraising!ﾠ Sadly, this week we are losing two of our Senior Managers, who are moving on to other endeavors.ﾠ Brad Stevens, has been our Executive Chef for 6+ years.ﾠ In that time, we've expanded our meal production, improved our menus, incorporated beautiful local produce and herbs from our garden, and developed a program to sell meals toﾠschools and nonprofits.ﾠ His team produces over 2000 appetizing meals per day toﾠﾠserve our sick clients and school children!ﾠ Similarly, Rosario Dominguez, our VP of Programs came to us when we were a relatively small HIV program.ﾠ During her 8 year tenure, she has guided our staff in expanding our mission to serve those with other life-threatening illnesses, and developed new programs in food service job training, nutrition education and local foods, including our weekly farmers' market.ﾠ I know one of her favorite accomplishments was providing Community Servings' brand of technical assistance to an HIV program in the townships around Cape Town, South Africa!ﾠ
Over my 22 years affiliated with the agency, we've had many talented staff offer their experience and dedication to serving our sick clients.ﾠ But few have made as big an impact as Brad and Rosario, for which we are eternally grateful.ﾠ Through their contribution, we are both more "impactful" and more ambitious in our programming.ﾠ Seeing them depart our daily operation only makes me more conscious that this important work must continue -- with more volunteers serving more sick clients.ﾠ I wish you the best of holidays and a New Year filled with health and happiness.ﾠ Hope to see you in our kitchen soon!
The holidays are a special time at Community Servings.ﾠ We start planning our holiday activities in July with weekly meetings with teams of staff and volunteers, focused on each big holiday project.ﾠ In the course of 6-8 weeks in November and December, we produce "Pie in the Sky" our Thanksgiving pie sale, deliver lavish Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to our clients and their families, and coordinate the Holiday Gift Basket program which provides gifts for our sick clients and their children -- on top of our regular programs, including preparing 2,000 mealsﾠeach day!
One of the challenges in our business is how to keep in contact with over 100 referral sources and community partners across the state that refer clients to our various programs.ﾠ If you've just met with a human service agency or doctor's office, your intakes for potential clients always spike.ﾠ If you seeﾠ a drop-off in the submission of intakes from a particular source, you can generally bet that your best friend in that office has left the agency, which necessitates another visit.ﾠ If you want to have a diverse client-base representing all the communities you serve, you have to constantly be doing outreach--even when you don't have the resources to do it.ﾠ Some would see this as counter-intuitive that you can offer excellent free programs and still need to "get the word out"!
This week I got a long letter from a group of volunteers, singing the praises of one of our staff--my favorite kind of letter! ﾠ"The Slice & Dice Crew" is our self-named group of volunteers who come each Saturday to work with Milford Jenkins who leads our Saturday kitchen activities. ﾠIt's an amazing group of people. ﾠAll strangers initially who now act like family. ﾠThere are about 30 in the group who came as individuals, fell in love with the Saturday experience and bonded as a group. ﾠThey attribute their spirit to Milford's leadership and management skills. ﾠTasks are clearly defined each week, a lot of prep work gets done, but a lot of socializing, too! ﾠThe regulars have taken on roles as task managers, allowing Milford to manage a big group without a lot of extra staff support. ﾠ
For many of us that came of age in the 1980's, the AIDS epidemic was our defining moment.ﾠ Tremendously scary, overwhelming and tragic.ﾠ But out of that tragedy, came some good things, too.ﾠ A call to action, a sense of community, and in our case, the discovery that FOOD can play an equal role with Western medicine in the fight against life-threatening illnesses.
Robert B. Parker was one of the most prolific and acclaimed authors in American literature, publishing over 70 best-selling books over 40 years.ﾠCreator of the memorable private-investigator, Spenser as well as Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, Bob won awards and fans around the world.ﾠHere in Boston, he was a hometown hero, an adoring husband to his wife, Joan, and a regular fixture at Community Servings' events.
As we've grown our sustainable agriculture activities, we've started working with multiple farmers for our CSA, Farmer's Market etc, and are developing relationships with the Federation of Mass Farmers Markets (FMFM) and Northeast Organic ﾠFarmers (NOFA) as well as the state Agricultural Resources Dept (MDAR). In the process, we're learning a lot about the economic realities of farming in New England. ﾠ To illustrate, I had lunch with one of our farmers last week, since he's in the "off season" and starting to plan for next year. ﾠOut of it came two brainteasers, we've yet to solve...
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Our Sunday Farmers Market began last summer with just one farmer, a bakery and several other vendors (coffee etc). ﾠThe farmer and other vendors seemed really happy with our outreach to draw a crowd and the customers seemed excited to support this new community resource. ﾠAfter several weeks, we added a second farmer to diversify the offerings and encourage more customers to visit the market. ﾠWe were careful to pick a second farmer that ﾠshould have complemented the selection of the first one. ﾠUnfortunately the numbers of customers each week didn't go up, but rather went down over the course of late summer/fall. ﾠWhen I met with Farmer #1 last week, he brought along graphs and spreadsheets to illustrate his sales for the season, which dropped off precipitously when we added the second farmer. ﾠ He limped along through the fall, but can't afford to join us next year unless we can develop a plan to improve his sales. ﾠDo we go back to one farmer, invest in more marketing to draw a bigger crowd, or move the market off our property to another location, which might help the farmer but would not serve our own marketing needs for the agency and our food programs. ﾠIdeas?
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We also asked Farmer #1 if he would be interested in growing crops specifically for our kitchen and meals program. ﾠAn institutional CSA, I think it's called. ﾠBeautiful local fare for our sick clients, and a large guaranteed contract for the farmer to grow one crop earmarked specifically for us. ﾠ"You can't afford me," he said. ﾠ"Farmers in New England can't grow crops at a low enough cost to suit the institutional buyer. ﾠWe can only make the numbers work, selling retail to the customer willing to pay a premium for local fare." ﾠBrad, our Executive Chef, responded, "But the ﾠveggies we buy now are trucked across the country and often frozen. ﾠWe're prepared to offer you the same price we pay the long distance wholesaler with his mark-ups. ﾠWe can guarantee you a high volume of sales, pay up front if necessary." ﾠThe farmer rattled off his numbers, "you can probably afford to pay $120 a case, but I need $300 a case to make it worth it. ﾠWith the cost of labor and land in New England, I can't compete with the out of state growers, unless you can pay the premium for local." ﾠOuch!
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ﾠﾠI'm not giving up on either project, but we haven't come up with an obvious solution to these new economic realities. ﾠFirst step is to talk to other farmers to confirm the info. ﾠBut if readers have ideas you've seen work elsewhere, we'd love to hear it! ﾠComments?
The kitchen is overflowing with volunteers this morning, helping us make our holiday meal delivery to sick clients. 30 or 40 folks helping us to fill the meal bags at 8 am, and another 60+ coming at 10 or 11am to load their cars and make deliveries. ﾠLast weekend, we had another 100 friends visiting Basket Central to deliver beautiful holiday gift baskets to clients across Eastern Massachusetts, who probably have no other Christmas gifts under their tree. Each of the 500 baskets were generously donated by another huge team of generous donors, providing clients with necessities like socks and gloves, comforters and winter coats. Even laundry detergent was on several client's 'wish lists' this year!
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At Community Servings, we start planning for the holidays in July, orchestrating our huge Pie sale, our Thanksgiving meal delivery program, Holiday Gift Baskets and Christmas meal delivery. ﾠIt is a bit like planning the invasion of Normandy! ﾠTeams of staff meet weekly for several months reviewing the very precise program model for each event, determining changes that need to be made based on last year's feedback, and analyzing the process step-by-step so that no small detail is missed. ﾠ
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We have rules like "no one changes a process without the buy-in of the rest of the team", "no one takes a vacation in November or December" and, most importantly, "make this a great experience for our clients, our volunteers and our donors." ﾠMany of our supporters find their Community Servings activities to be the most rewarding experience of the holiday season, and we don't want to disappoint them. ﾠLast year, we had one volunteer rush back from his father's funeral, just because he felt the need to be a part of this amazing effort. He said it was the most satisfying thing he did all year long and wanted to do it in his dad's memory.
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We're proud to play such an integral role in the community, and grateful for the commitment of so many kind and generous folks. I always say, "it reminds you of what the holiday is supposed to be about!" ﾠ
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From all the Community Servings family, Happy Holidays to you and yours!
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David
Amidst the holiday rush, I had an interesting day this week with back-to-back meetings that illustrate the broad scope of our work, as well as our crazy fundraising schedule. (Each year, we have to raise about $3M in private donations to keep our meals going out!)
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The day began with a meeting at the gorgeous new W Hotel in the Theatre District, (www.whotels.com <http://www.whotels.com> ) discussing a "gay singles event" for Valentine's Day where we will be auctioning off eligible singles featured in the pages of Boston Spirit magazine's February issue -- www.bostonspiritmagazine.com <http://www.bostonspiritmagazine.com> ). ﾠTentatively titled Cupid's Coming Out, the event is February 13th, and the hotel is generously donating their space and food!
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Then it was out to Worcester for a meeting of the new Massachusetts Food Policy Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of food, farming and public health groups interested in supporting the pending legislation to create a Mass Food Policy Council.
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Late afternoon was back in Jamaica Plain to officiate at the graduation ceremony for our fourth class of food service job trainees! ﾠThis group was especially moving, since one of the graduates came from our new Step Forward program, supporting recent parolees. ﾠAfter 10 years in federal penitentiary, this young man made the commitment to volunteer with us every day for four months and then join our 12 week job training program. ﾠHe is such a success that the Mass. Parole Board came to congratulate him and wish him well!
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Immediately after the graduation, was our Pie in the Sky wrap-up party downtown, congratulating our 35 committee members for their phenomenal work producing our giant Thanksgiving pie sale. ﾠThis year's bake sale raised $430,000 to feed the critically ill -- up $50k over last year. They are already making notes for how to raise the bar next year!
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After 10 years in the role of CEO, it's the variety of the work and the diversity of the community that keeps me going! ﾠ
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David