Last month we introduced this series with the story of the 1993 United Way news conference that identified hunger as this community’s worst unmet need.  In the wake of that announcement, John and his staff began pondering what could or should be done differently or more efficiently to meet the need – and concluded that a thorough study and assessment of how the charity food system worked was needed.  The Food Bank hoped to contract with Michigan State University to do that research.  John calls the story of their first meeting “Dr. Gail Imig and the Candy Bars.”

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Three weeks ago we introduced this series with the story of the 1993 United Way community needs assessment that identified hunger as this community’s worst unmet need.  In the wake of that announcement, John and his staff began pondering what they could do differently or more efficiently to meet the need, and in the last two stories became concerned about how some of the agencies the Food Bank served were operating.  In today’s stories – “Macaroni and Cheese” and “The Family Casserole” – John began recollecting that the same sorts of habits were typical of agencies at his first food bank in the early 1980s.

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Two weeks ago we introduced this series with the story of the 1993 United Way community needs assessment that identified hunger as this community’s worst unmet need. In the wake of that conference, John and his staff began pondering what they could do differently or more efficiently to meet the need. In last week’s story, they saw an agency representative follow a carefully planned shopping list – at the food bank, where the goods available vary from day to day; this week, another piece of the puzzle falls into place with the tale of “The Starving Diabetic.”

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Last week we introduced this series with the story of the 1993 United Way news conference that identified hunger as this community’s worst unmet need. In the wake of that conference, John and his staff began pondering what they could do differently or more efficiently to distribute enough food via charitable food assistance programs to meet the need. And pretty soon a piece of the answer arrived with an agency representative in a story we’ll call “The Fruit Cocktail and Rice Guy.”

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Our executive director, John Arnold, has a lot of experience in the food banking field. He had worked with two other food banks and for the national network before he came home to West Michigan to direct our food bank in 1989. Over the years, he has learned a lot about how to achieve more efficient, effective, and cost-effective distribution of charitable food aid. He has worked to help agencies change to the more efficient, effective methods he has discovered. Now he wants to share the stories that led him to make those discoveries. Today’s story is about the origins of the Waste Not Want Not Project, a formal study conducted with researchers from Michigan State University. The findings of that study were published in Charity Food Programs That Can End Hunger in America.

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