2015 ANNUAL REPORT

Transcription

1 2015 ANNUAL REPORT

2 Table of Contents 2015 In Review... 3 From Gary... 4 And The Survey Says... 6 Gardeners & Pantries... 7 Social Media... 8 Financial Summary... 9 Revenue & Expenses About Us Staff The Board of Directors and The Advisory Board AmpleHarvest.org Sponsors

3 2015 In Review America s problem is not that we don t have enough food. It is that we are not using the food we have. Gary Oppenheimer, Founder & Executive Director, AmpleHarvest.org AmpleHarvest.org bears witnesses to this truth each time a gardener shares their bounty with their local pantry and shows it to the world on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. AmpleHarvest.org s mission is to reduce food waste by making it possible for all gardeners across the country to be able to easily find local pantries and donate their excess harvest. This simple act allows each gardener to be part of eliminating hunger and malnutrition in their community. This was a landmark year for AmpleHarvest.org s nationwide movement. The 7,500 th pantry enrolled in its registry. The campaign to make food waste an urgent issue began to make strong headway. Food Waste was embraced in Davos, Switzerland where a coalition of executives from governments, businesses, international organizations, research institutions, farmer groups, and formed Champions 12.3 to take up the crusade. Today was an AMAZING day! I picked 71 pounds of cabbage, beets, Swiss chard, sweet peppers, Thai basil, and broccoli from my front lawn veggie garden, then filled my car to bursting and delivered it to the local food pantry. Donating your abundant fresh organic vegetables to local food pantries is a smart way to encourage and build community. Shawna Coronado Home Gardener AmpleHarvest.org took a critical step to learn about its impact. We conducted a survey. With the help of 660 growers across the country we gathered information from backyard and community gardeners. Cisco Systems analyzed the data to reveal critical statistics. More than 21 million gardeners are willing and able to donate more than 5 billion pounds of food enough to feed 13.8 million people. Every year. The value of the food plus the value of their improved health exceeds $66 billion. While the USDA, the National Resource Defense Council and others have documented America s staggering farm to table food waste, AmpleHarvest.org has uncovered and is addressing the additional but heretofore unrecognized losses that occur in these gardens. The results were astonishing. You can read about them in the And The Survey Says section. 3

4 From Gary AmpleHarvest.org, now almost seven years old, had an extraordinary year in It has also faced a number of challenges. It is now working with about 20% of the food pantries in America, about 19% of the gardeners nationwide are aware of AmpleHarvest.org, and an ever increasing number of people thanks to the USDA, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and AmpleHarvest.org s own public education efforts aware of food loss and the need to address it. AmpleHarvest.org is seen as the key nationwide solution bridging locally grown fresh food to the food pantries that help to feed 50 million hungry Americans. Our work has entailed two separate but parallel efforts an ever increasing database of opt-in food pantries eager for the food and an ever growing public education program helping gardeners learn about their opportunity to donate. AmpleHarvest.org is the digital connection between the two. AmpleHarvest.org partners with nearly all of the Feeding America food banks, the faith community, the government and others to reach the pantries and help them learn about the availability of the food and the opportunity to receive it at no cost, without the need for additional refrigeration or storage. AmpleHarvest.org also uses its social media resources, a $480K/year on-going advertising grant from Google and an ongoing grant for online PSA s from AppNexus, corporate and charitable partners, media, keynote speeches, and most importantly, the gardeners themselves to help spread the awareness of the opportunity to donate the food. Together, these have helped grow the program and the flow of food to pantries nationwide. The question I m asked time and time again is how much food? and my answer is that s the wrong question. AmpleHarvest.org is not a feeding program it s a program to eliminate the waste of food. Therefore, its metric of success is the size and scope of the opportunity to not waste food rather than the food itself. The more gardeners and the more pantries that are bridged together, the greater the opportunity for whatever food might have been lost to waste, to instead get to hungry families. This non-traditional solution which is AmpleHarvest.org s key contribution to America s food safety net has also been our biggest challenge because we re solving a problem most people never knew about by using an innovative solution most people never thought about. We knew it would work, anecdotal s and photos told us it was working, and our recently completed survey backs that up. In short, the survey said that in 2014, 42 million gardeners nationwide had 5.7 billion pounds of food, worth more than $9 billion, available for donation, that half were willing and able to donate. Additionally, 68% would consider actually growing more explicitly to donate the food meaning that instead of just eliminating food waste, many gardeners would actually engage in the act of charity of growing more to help eliminate hunger. 4

5 This was the first survey of its kind ever taken, and AmpleHarvest.org is about to expand on it more questions to a larger population of gardeners, both to refine the numbers and to further learn how AmpleHarvest.org can continue to improve its impact on America. While our program has expanded, our infrastructure is also being enhanced to support our work. The Board of Directors is being expanded to bring in the support the organization needs, expertise is being added to the staff and our technology is being upgraded. Our biggest challenge has been and remains funding. The number of foundations that are looking to support food waste alleviation is small but growing and the number of people who understand that the first step in ending hunger by using the food we already have, is also growing. AmpleHarvest.org s key strength is that its focus is on solving a problem rather than just reacting to it ending food waste rather than just repeating the cycle of buying food/feeding people, and thanks to the fact that the food is freely available and the logistics for harvesting, transporting and distributing the food already exists in the community, our ROI and efficiency is extraordinarily high. AmpleHarvest.org has a huge multiplier effect. We want to see No Food Left Behind, but making that happen really relies on the tens of millions of gardeners who have, up to now, grown food that was never consumed. A waste of food and a frustrating experience for the grower. AmpleHarvest.org is working hard to unleash both, so that the growers frustration can turn into satisfaction of seeing hungry families nourished and the fruits of their labor can become food on a table. The gardeners cannot do it without AmpleHarvest.org, and AmpleHarvest.org cannot do it without you. I hope you will continue to support our efforts to end food waste and hunger both by helping others learn about AmpleHarvest.org and by generously contributing to AmpleHarvest.org. The solution to hunger is in our backyards. 5

6 And The Survey Says 270 pounds average excess harvest 9 Billion worth of food 21 Million Gardeners willing and able to donate 13.8 Million People could be fed Every day, America wastes enough food to fill the Rose Bowl. Yes, that Rose Bowl the 90,000-seat football stadium in Pasadena, California. Jonathan Bloom, American Wasteland AmpleHarvest.org is working to end food waste. Specifically, it is working to the end the waste of fresh produce from America s home and community gardens. Research on the subject of food waste tallies the loss from farms, food service, groceries, and more but these reports do not include home and community gardens. So we set out to find the impact of our work. AmpleHarvest.org surveyed gardeners across the nation. We wanted to know how much food do they grow? What food do they grow? Is there extra harvest? Would they share their excess harvest? What is the impact when harvest is shared to pantries through AmpleHarvest.org? The collected data was analyzed by Cisco Systems. The results are staggering. Backyard and community gardeners harvest everything from rutabagas to watermelons, cucumbers to kale. Sixteen percent are urban gardeners. On average gardeners produce 277 pounds per harvest. Cisco calculated that more than 21 million gardeners are willing and able to donate more than 5 billion pounds of food enough to feed 13.8 million people. Every year. The value of the food plus the value of their improved health exceeds $66 billion. In only its second full season, 2012, with 2,000 pantries on its registry, the value of bounty donated to pantries nation-wide was $27 million and the impact of that donated produce in addressing the costs of nationwide food insecurity was $170 million. In 2015, more than 7,500 pantries were on our registry exponentially increasing our impact. And yet, AmpleHarvest.org has just scratched the surface. AmpleHarvest.org continues to expand its foodprint every year since. 6

7 Gardeners & Pantries There are genuinely sufficient resources in the world to ensure that no one, nowhere, at no time, should go hungry. Ed Asner AmpleHarvest.org is two parallel programs: one for pantries and one for gardeners. For pantries it runs an opt-in, online registry. There they post their address, hours of operation, and times when gardeners may drop off their produce. At the same time, AmpleHarvest.org reaches out to home and community gardeners letting them know pantries are eager to receive their excess produce. AmpleHarvest.org was conceived in 2009 and began with a single pantry. In 2010, 2,000 pantries were on the registry. In 2012 there were 5,000. Now over 7,500 can be found on the registry. More logon daily to make their pantries known to gardeners. Each month over 200 food banks receive the AmpleHarvest.org newsletter. Cassie om/2014/08/25/rowcommunity/ We calculate the reach of each pantry by assuming a grower is willing to travel about 20 minutes or 9 miles to a nearby food pantry; every new pantry adding itself to AmpleHarvest.org represents about 250 square miles of gardens brimming with food. AmpleHarvest.org s foodprint now extends across America with over 7,500 pantries on its registry. 7

8 Social Media Today, 7.5 million gardeners have learned about AmpleHarvest.org. Its web site gets 200,000 visits per month, its social media following is dramatically growing and the viral impact is further expanding that. Our blog traffic almost doubled in 2015 with 10,437 views. AmpleHarvest.org Facebook page, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram are filled with gardeners and pantry users, and pantries testifying to the success of our model. Gardeners in Connecticut delivering produce to a pantry Within one hour of registering Community Resource Center on the AmpleHarvest.org website I received a call from a local family of four with 10 orange trees. I spoke with the mother of the family and she said that until she heard of AmpleHarvest.org her family was spending time cleaning up rotten fruit off the ground. Now her family can spend time harvesting fruit to give to low income families in their community. Sarah, Community Resource Center Food Pantry, CA Long Island NY food pantry receiving an abundance of food from a grower 8

9 Financial Summary AmpleHarvest.org is a technology based, cost efficient, brick-and-mortar-free solution to food waste, hunger, and diet-related disease. With AmpleHarvest.org, the cost of the food as well as the logistics of warehousing and moving it, the two costliest parts of traditional food programs, vanish. The gardeners grow, harvest and transport the food themselves. It incurs no cost for food nor its storage, refrigeration, trucks, pickup or delivery. It therefore has no capital expenses. AmpleHarvest.org is the organization and a program. Its program is two-fold. The first part is encouraging and enabling millions of home/community gardeners across all 50 states to donate their excess garden bounty to a nearby food pantry. The second is locating pantries and urging them to enroll in the online registry. Both parts of the program are achieved through the work of staff. Salary expense is therefore considered primarily a program expense. Organizational work performed by staff is viewed as operational expenses. Since the AmpleHarvest.org program includes its website featuring the pantry registry and location service, the majority of technology costs are also considered program costs. This financial summary represents the end of year financials for Audited financial statements are posted on the AmpleHarvest.org website. Financial reports are inclusive of all AmpleHarvest.org operations and capital expenses. 9

10 Revenue & Expenses Revenue Expenses 2015 Overhead 3% Program Crew 24% Education & Outreach 70% Website & registry 3% Program Crew Website & registry Education & Outreach Overhead 10

11 About Us Staff Gary Oppenheimer, Founder and Executive Director, heads the AmpleHarvest.org team. A self described aging geek, he has worked with computers and communications going back to the 1970 s. As director of a community garden in 2009, he learned about the wasted food in many plots and created Ample Harvest to get the excess food to local food pantries. Realizing this as a nationwide problem, he created a nationwide solution called AmpleHarvest.org using the Internet educate, encourage and enable millions of growers nationwide to share their ample harvest with local food pantries in all 50 states. Emily Fulmer is Grower Outreach Coordinator. She brings to the table many years of community and faith-based organizing as well as volunteer recruitment and engagement experience. She lives in Memphis, TN and is an active volunteer with GrowMemphis, the region s only grassroots urban gardening and food justice organization. She grows vegetables in her front and back yards and has a small flock of Buff Orpington hens to her young family. Leanne Mazurick is the Food Pantry Outreach Coordinator. She has worked in higher education for the last 10 years engaging students through volunteer experiences both domestically and internationally. Through these experiences, Leanne gained valuable insight into the complexities of social justice issues that impact so many. Hunger relief and sustainable agriculture are of particular interest to Leanne and she is thrilled to be combining those two passions as Food Pantry Outreach Coordinator for AmpleHarvest.org. Etta Einschlag is the Administrative Manager. She has six years of experience in a range of administrative positions for a small non-profit organization. Prior to her work with charitable organizations, she taught karate and went to an acrobatics school in China. She is passionate about exercise, sports science, and engineering. In her free time, she enjoys outdoor activities, carpentry projects, photography, self-education, and spiritual studies. She has long been committed to the environment and social justice. 11

12 The Board of Directors and The Advisory Board Board of Directors President Steve Shah Chair of External Affairs Steven Finn Chair of Internal Affairs Terry McCrary David Karlin Board Governance Gary Oppenheimer Alisa Ahmadian Advisory Board Robert Egger Jonathan Bloom Tristam Stuart Stephen Beninanti 12

13 AmpleHarvest.org Sponsors 13