Dear friend,
Keep Choice on the Shelf
25,000 pounds of food + $75,000
September is Hunger Action Month, and this year it arrives while the landscape around food access is shifting.
SNAP is becoming harder to navigate for some households, grocery costs remain high, and the same household budget still has to cover rent, utilities, medication, transportation, and everything else a month requires. A change in one place rarely stays there for long. Eventually, it can show up in the grocery cart.
Carrie*, who receives Delivered Groceries from Lift UP, put it simply:
"My benefits have been cut and I have very little money coming in. I don't have much by the end of the month, so the food boxes are what help me have enough food each month."
She especially values eggs, meat, and produce, foods that have become harder for her to afford on her own.
Carrie's experience is her own, but the household math behind it is familiar. When there is less money coming in, or more of it is already spoken for, something has to move. Sometimes there is enough cushion to absorb that. Sometimes there isn't.
Food assistance can make more room in that equation. It cannot replace SNAP, lower the rent, restore a transit route, or change the cost of healthcare. Nor should we pretend it can.
What it can do is make groceries one less thing competing for the same limited dollars.
That is part of the thinking behind this year's Food + Fund Drive.
Our goal this fall
25,000 pounds of food
$75,000 raised
There are a couple of ways to take part.
Host a Food + Fund Drive
Bring one to your workplace, apartment community, congregation, school, business, neighborhood group, or another place where people already gather.
Contribute directly
Donate food or make a financial gift toward the community-wide goal.
Why food and funds?
Because what comes through the door and what people are looking for do not always line up perfectly.
Food donations help keep more variety available. Financial contributions give Lift UP more flexibility to purchase what is missing.
And variety matters.
Anyone who buys groceries knows a full shelf is not automatically a useful one. We have foods we know how to cook, foods that work for our health, ingredients connected to family or culture, and things that bring us comfort and joy. None of that disappears when someone needs food support.
That is what Keep Choice on the Shelf is getting at.
The goal is not simply to move the largest possible quantity of food. It is to have enough range that someone shopping at Preston's Pantry, receiving Delivered Groceries, or accessing food through one of our housing partners has a better chance of finding something that actually works for their life.
And none of this food moves through Portland by itself. It moves through farms and food businesses, apartment buildings and community organizations, delivery routes, volunteers, donors, and households. A Food + Fund Drive is one place those relationships become visible.
This fall, we're inviting more people into that network.
25,000 pounds of food. $75,000. More variety on the shelf and more flexibility to fill what's missing.
With gratitude,
Stephanie Barr, Executive Director
Food brings us together.
