Agency News | March 2024

From the Director of Partnerships and Programs Desk: Ashley Hall

These past two months as a new organization have flown by!! It has been such a pleasure getting to know our partners and learning about your communities and neighbors. As we begin to implement new ways of reporting, ordering, and communicating, our team acknowledges that change is hard. These changes allow us to get necessary information into one virtual location more quickly and efficiently, which in turn frees up staff time to work with you to create new innovative ways to approach food insecurity across our region.

Stay tuned for dates on when we will begin training for Service Insights on Meal Connect (SIMC), our new neighbor intake software, and Agency Express (AE), our online ordering system, in your area.

Please feel free to reach out and share your successes, struggles and ideas on how we can better support your organization and community.

Thank you for all that you do,

Ashley Hall

Director of Partnerships and Programs

Agency Portal Password: It's Here!

Please note that on February 26, we transitioned to a password-protected Agency Portal on our website. This change has allowed us to share more detailed information exclusive to you. The password will be SHN2024 in case you missed it.

Contact: Ashley Hall, Director of Partnerships and Programs

Friendly Reminder: Product Usage

Product donated to Second Harvest and you, our network of agency and community partners, is intended to support our neighbors experiencing hunger in our Northland communities. In fact, it’s a requirement of our partnership with Feeding America and your partnership with us due to regulations surrounding the federal tax code for donated products. Please remember that donated products may not be consumed by volunteers or staff or utilized by your organization in its course of business (e.g. cleaning products, toilet tissue, lightbulbs, etc.). Thank you for ensuring our product makes it into the hands of our neighbors who need it most.

Contact: Ashley Hall, Director of Partnerships and Programs

Agency Spotlight: We want to feature you!

As a newly merged organization, we want to give opportunities for partners to learn with and from one another. This is an opportunity to share your best practices, success and innovative ideas. One way we want to do this is through partner spotlights. We will use these in our monthly Agency News and maybe even on our social media channels to share your good work with one another and the public.

We hope to gather as many answers as possible. So please fill out the four-question questionnaire and send it back to Samantha.

Contact: Samantha Bergum, Marketing and Communications Manager

SNAP: A Resource for Our Neighbors

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal program that provides food benefits to low-income individuals and families to supplement their grocery budget. This program offers an easy-to-use EBT card that neighbors experiencing hunger can use at their local grocer. Please help us promote this important program to individuals and families in your local community. Not only will it supplement the food you’re able to distribute at your agency it will also allow our neighbors to access even more nutritious food.

Please feel free to utilize the poster attached to promote the SNAP program.

Contact: Ashley Hall, Director of Partnerships and Programs

More Information: SNAP Poster

Emergency Grant Applications: Register Now

Hunger Solutions Minnesota is accepting applications for emergency funding from food shelves who are experiencing an emergency that is causing an interruption of service. This can include but is not exclusive to natural disasters, breakdown of equipment that will severely limit distribution and services, etc. The maximum amount per request is $5,000. Please note: these funds are not available to purchase food in response to an increased demand at your food shelf. You must be a TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) food shelf and have completed the MSFP (Minnesota Food Shelf Program) application to apply for these funds.

If your food shelf or hunger program qualifies for this special pool of funding, please feel free to reach out to Hunger Solutions Minnesota to learn more or to apply.

Contact: Stephanie Robinson

More information: Emergency Grants

Product Sourcing Update: March

One of the programs that Second Harvest Northland operates is called “Fresh Connect”. This program matches local retailers with agency and community partners for a regular fresh donation collection. Several of our partners are already involved in this program and the benefits speak for themselves – more frequent fresh and nutritious foods that can be distributed directly to our neighbors in need, the ability to receive bonus donations during peak times and fostering a local connection with the retailers in your community.

Partners in our program use Feeding America’s MealConnect app. This easy-to-use software platform provides a place to record donations that are shared with each retailer and our organization. It also provides reporting functionality for both our partners and retailers.

Food collected through MealConnect now accounts for about 20% of the six billion pounds of food distributed last year by Feeding America’s national network of food banks – including ours.

If you’d like to learn more about this program and how it could supplement your local food donations please feel free to contact us.

Contact: Tim Noake, Food Resource Developer

Monthly Partner Meetings: Please Join Us

Our Partnership and Programs team at Second Harvest Northland wants to connect with all of our partners across our 15-county region. Our goal is to bring the best of us together where we hope to learn from and with one another. Each month, we'll explore diverse topics related to food insecurity, hunger relief programming, and occasionally feature guest speakers. Would you like to share your expertise, have a topic in mind, or are seeking more information? Share your ideas with us!

To ensure we can have as many of you as we can, we will hold two meetings. Please feel free to attend one or both meetings.

Contact: Ashley Hall, Director of Partnerships and Programs

Ordering Process: West Partners

We want to make sure we can get your orders completed in the most efficient way possible. In order to do so, we ask that when you email your orders to orders@secondharvestncfb.com please put the name of your organization in the subject line of the email or somewhere in the body of your email.

Contact: Ashley Hall, Director of Partnerships and Programs

Our Schedule

Second Harvest Northland will be closed:

Friday, March 29, 2024 – for inventory (Distribution Center only)

Second Harvest Northland is the Northland's largest hunger-relief charity. Our mission is to feed the hungry of NE Minnesota and NW Wisconsin. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization recognized by the IRS, contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

info@secondharvestnorthland.org | secondharvestnorthland.org