SOURCE: Community Impact Newspaper
If all of Austin’s food service organizations had unlimited time and resources to connect with organizations that feed the hungry, there may be no need for a nonprofit such as Keep Austin Fed.
But connecting unused food to those in need takes more than goodwill. It takes connections, relationships and time that many businesses do not have.
That is where Keep Austin Fed comes in. The nonprofit funded by grants and private donations provides a network of volunteers who run food every day from places such as Trader Joe’s or the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to recipients such as schools, churches or affordable housing complexes.
“Our volunteers, we play the logistics and the middleman transport more than anything. We match the food donor with the recipient organization, and our volunteers take it directly from Point A to Point B,” said Lisa Barden, Keep Austin Fed executive director. “We don’t have any storage facility at all.”
Staff at Keep Austin Fed coordinate the schedules for their food donors and recipients, matching up the two based on the sizes the donation and locations, then scheduling volunteers for each run.