Feeding the Richmond District As We Shelter in Place
Mar 19, 2020
The Richmond Neighborhood Center’s food security services are still up and running, ensuring that everyone is able to get enough to eat during this emergency. All of our weekly food pantries have been relocated to The Richmond Neighborhood Center headquarters at 741 30th Avenue. The pantries will continue to operate during their normal hours:
- Monday, 4:00-5:00PM
- Tuesday, 3:30-4:30PM
- Thursday, 2:30-4:00PM
We are also taking extra precautions:
- Limiting group size and maintaining a distance between volunteers and participants
- Providing masks and gloves to pantry volunteers and staff
- Pre-packing groceries in single-use bags and leaving deliveries at participants’ doors
Additionally, we are helping spread the message that the San Francisco Unified School District is providing free breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks for all children under 18 at school sites throughout the city.
Thank you for the outpouring of support from our community!
We’re grateful that we have been receiving many, many offers to help over the past week.
Our loyal weekly volunteers were joined by staff from the Richmond Senior Center to make grocery deliveries, and two of our longtime partners, the National Charity League and Katherine Delmar Burke School, have coordinated extra volunteers to fill in.
We truly couldn’t do this without our amazing volunteers. Your dedication to serving this community gives us the confidence to say yes when our organization is called on for help.
We are also grateful for the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank’s instrumental response in meeting our community’s needs during this emergency.
If you’d like to get involved and volunteer on an ongoing basis, please sign up online. We’re currently receiving a large number of inquiries, so please be patient and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Our Commitment to Keeping Staff on Payroll
To ensure that our youth programs will be ready for students to return to when schools reopen, we are keeping all 150+ salaried and hourly employees on payroll for as long as we can. Youth program staff are helping with our food programs, planning lessons, doing professional development, exploring options for distance learning, and continuing to plan for summer offerings (as of right now).
Our leadership team is looking into shared solutions with other nonprofits during closures, taking into consideration that some families have limited internet and hardware access.
Raising Critical Funds
Like many nonprofits, we are expecting reduced revenue as we refund tuition during school closures, shift our largest fundraising event online after months of planning, and face uncertain sponsorship prospects during economic uncertainty.
But our community’s outpouring of support is making us very hopeful. Some parents have redirected their tuition refunds back to our organization. Ad-hoc fundraisers through Slack channels at two tech companies have generated over $1,500 in only a few days. Foggy Notion, a local shop, has been donating shipping fees to us (check out their online store!). Some people are buying gift cards from their favorite businesses to donate to our online auction—and we invite you to do the same as a way to support both local merchants and the Neighborhood Center.
Join Our Gala-At-Home List!
Thank you for supporting our work during the COVID-19 crisis and throughout the year. We are getting ready to launch our online auction and paddle raises next week—please sign up to be part of this fundraiser and be the first to hear when we launch!