The San Antonio Food Bank Case Study

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Pages: 5

The San Antonio Food Bank has always been known to service the local community’s food necessities, along with the surrounding counties. Their main facility from where they operate, is on fourteen acres of land. Seven of those acres are used for the actual building and the other seven is where their farm is located at. The farm however took a full year to be fully operational, because there was no good soil in the area for crops to grow and flourishes. Therefore, the first year was dedicated to making sure the soil was getting the nutrients it needed. They are also one of two hundred food banks in the nation and take part in Feed America. The local food bank also has ties with local business to fight hunger. Right now at the moment they have …show more content…
I asked if he had any words of wisdom about leading a nonprofit and fundraising. For the nonprofit part he showed me that you have to run it like a business. There must be a mission and that mission must be needed in the community. Which is the reason why the pervious nonprofit that he was at had to shut down. It was simply because their services were no longer needed in the local area. On the fundraising part he said that the key behind it is to build relationships. The example he gave was to treat as if you are going on a date. You have to get to know the person and see what they want to help in. I proceed to ask Mr. Guerra if he had any fundraising success of failures. The one story he told me was about how he had built a relationship with a donor and through that donor he got a hold of another donor. He explained to me that they were at an event and started talking about the food bank. One of people setting next to them had no interested in feeding the community in need. However, when he heard that The San Antonio Food Bank had a farm he warmed up to that idea, because he loved farming and actually ended up donating to the farm. This person even donated a tractor to them. So whenever he goes in to see Mr. Guerra he always asks about “their” tractor. Mr. Guerra told me he was glad to hear this donor call the tractor “theirs” because now he could see that he was not solving …show more content…
He told me that the best way to think of the food bank was as if it was an actual bank. That other nonprofit such as Big Brothers Big Sisters comes in and withdraw food. The way the food bank sees them as paying back is that this other nonprofit is helping them reach their goal and complete their mission of fighting hunger. Next we talked about strategic planning and their development plan. He broke it down for me and said their goal was to give out 78 million meals this year. They want to at least give out 50 million of those meals already cooked and ready to service. They also want to give 25 million of those meals in food stamps that they help people apply for. Their goal with this is to lower their hunger margin in their community every