In 2023, WSA Pantry distributed over 2.2 million pounds of food! You can help – we need you NOW, more than ever!
WSA Pantry is the only food pantry North of Santa Rosa that consistently provides over 80 lbs of a well-balanced nutritional mix of dry goods, legumes and grains, fresh produce, meat, eggs and dairy weekly. For 32 years, regardless of insane food costs, the current economy, on-going natural disasters, crazy weather, and the continuing COVID pandemic – WSA Pantry has remained open, distributing food to anyone in need.
Food insecurity is detrimental to everyone – with the abundance Sonoma County offers, no one should go to bed hungry. The Volunteers and Donors who make WSA Pantry what it is, firmly believe that food security is central to life and family. Food is a human right. That is why, for 32 years, we have consistently served the food needs of this community.
Sonoma County residents involvement in donating food, funds and/or their time to their neighbors in need is a barometer of care. It is also how government grant programs judge needs and assign funding. Please give.
We are struggling to keep up with the need, constantly stretching our decreased budget to give basic food items to the ever-increasing client base in Sonoma County. We are facing a serious long-term shortfall in funding. It is not easy to source affordable healthy or even basic food in this economy. Basic grocery items: produce, grains, legumes, canned items, cereal and dried fruit are expensive. Most of these items are no longer available through the normal channels that Food Pantries rely on. We are forced to source these items on the open market, buy at the source, hopefully at wholesale cost, better yet get it donated. Now, in 2023, donors expect us to pay for all delivery costs plus fuel surcharges. For example: Amy’s Kitchen offered WSA a donation of 11,236 lbs of canned soup, a $11,460 donation. While the soup is free, the trucking cost is $2,358.00 plus a $138.00 fuel surcharge making this donation cost WSA $.23 per can, $2,496.00 for a single grocery item that will go in 6,000 grocery bags and be completely distributed out in four months.
During the last year, our annual cost for food, food transport, food packaging, food storage and vegetable seeds/amendments was over $82,100.00. This does not include our increased labor cost for strong, young labor to move around over a million pounds of food in bulk – that cost was over $54,000.00. All costs are significantly higher than the previous year, and again from the year prior to that. Actual wholesale, basic food item costs are up 61% over last year, fuel for our gleaning vehicles remains at $5/Gal. and brown bags and other food bags are up 26% from 2022. Absolutely nothing is free from Redwood Empire Food Bank (REFB). Nothing. WSA paid REFB over $7,000 last year just to purchase Feeding America “donated” produce and other community “donated food “ for the Pantry to give away. We expect our food service costs this year to top $180,000.00 based on our current numbers.
In Windsor, January of each year is historically WSA’s median month – typically we serve the average monthly number of households in January and it is a great indicator for projecting need for the calendar year. In January 2021, WSA distributed food to 1739 separate households, January 2022 was 2302 separate households and this year, January 2023, we served 3361 separate households. That is a 93% increase in clients in only two years, 93%. Weekly low-income Senior Outreach delivers food to over 900 households every month. On average, WSA Pantry gave 191,019 lbs. of food to 4,285 households each month in 2023. That is 96 tons monthly! Our hope and desire is to continue our mission, and in order to meet the demand, we need funds from the members of this community in addition corporate donations and grants.
Our data clearly shows that there is an annual increase each year of residents struggling with food insecurity which directly correlates to the challenges presented by the current economy, on-going natural disasters, the reality that low-pay jobs do not provide a living wage and the continuing COVID pandemic. Our food distribution service at WSA Pantry directly addresses this ever-growing need in the Town of Windsor and in the Northern part of Sonoma County. It is our goal to not only mitigate but provide the additional resource of education for sustainable home food production and nutrition to help move residents into food security.
Food insecurity is detrimental to everyone – with the abundance Sonoma County offers, no one should go to bed hungry.
We need your financial help to continue to help our neighbors in need!
To donate money online, please use this convenient PayPal button:
To donate with a check, please send it to our P.O. box address.
You can also donate using the Roundup App. This simple, secure phone app rounds up each purchase on a credit or debit card to the nearest dollar, and once per month, donates the “spare change” to Windsor Service Alliance. To get started, download RoundUp App to your phone and choose Windsor Service Alliance to support us.
You can also help by shopping locally at Oliver’s Market. Oliver’s donates a small portion of your purchases to the WSA Pantry when you choose Windsor Service Alliance on your Oliver’s Market Community Card.