Coop Scoop Blog
Another $10K Donation Drive to Benefit The Food Pantries!
From left to right: Rick Mausert, Honest Weight Chief Cooperative Officer; John Akots, Honest Weight Director of Marketing; Natasha Pernicka, The Food Pantries Executive Director; Al DeSalvo and Susan Fountain, Honest Weight Front End; Amy Ellis, Honest Weight Outreach Coordinator
January 15, 2019
Albany, NY – On January 11th, Honest Weight Food Co-op presented a check worth $11,204.47 to The Food Pantries for the Capital District at the offices of the Food Pantries on Essex Avenue in Albany. The funds are the result of a two-month long donations drive held at the neighboring grocery store and may provide as many as 70,028 meals for hungry people in the Capital District.
Through the generosity of 3,910 holiday shoppers and efforts of Honest Weight’s Front End team, the register drive raised $9,370.55. Honest Weight Food Co-op donated an additional $792.45 to match donations made over the weekend of Saturday, December 22nd and Sunday, December 23rd. Honest Weight also donated an additional $1,037.38 from the Honest Weight Community Fund, an endowment started in 2008 for the purpose of annual giving. All of the money raised will be put towards meals for the hungry and programs to improve food access in the Capital District, where over 97,000 people, including more than 30,000 children, are food insecure.
“More than 1 in 10 of our community members are currently struggling with food insecurity.” says Natasha Pernicka, Executive Director of the Food Pantries for the Capital District. “Support from partners like Honest Weight Food Coop and their customers is vital. It is with this support that we are able to provide enough groceries for more than 3.3 million meals to more than 59,000 of our neighbors in need in 2017. We are grateful for their support and generosity.”
The donation drive, which ran for the last two months of the year, was the second annual at Honest Weight. Last year, a similar effort raised $9,269 from shoppers over November and December. Honest Weight donated an additional $958 from the Honest Weight Community Fund, an endowment started in 2008 for the purpose of annual giving, to bring the total to over $10,000.
Honest Weight Food Co-op, an independent community-owned grocery store with a focus of offering natural, organic, and locally-sourced food and products, is committed to donating 5% of its annual net income to local non-profit organizations. The donations are allocated through a variety of programs, many of which are managed by Honest Weight’s Outreach Coordinator, Amy Ellis.
“Outreach is one of the ways Honest Weight fulfills its mission of giving back to our community,” offered Ellis. “Along with our free in-store classes, our outreach team travels to schools, libraries, and partner organizations to teach cooking and nutrition classes to kids and adults. We also provide gift cards, food, catering, service, and cash donations to about 150 organizations every year, all of which work in the same local communities we do.”
The non-profit and the grocery store have more than just a neighborhood in common. Both seek to make healthy food accessible to their communities and the Greater Capital District. At Honest Weight, shoppers will find a collection bin for a non-perishables to accept food donations for The Food Pantries year-round. The grocery store also donates bread and produce to The Food Pantries and other local organizations weekly.
Honest Weight Food Co-op is open to the public seven days a week. Additional information on Honest Weight can be found online at www.honestweight.coop or by calling 518-482-2667. The Food Pantries for the Capital District can be reached at 518-458-1246. More information, including food bank locations, can be found online at www.thefoodpantries.org.