Bainbridge Community Foundation Grants $50,000 to Address Food Cutbacks
Federal funding cuts have had a profound impact on Bainbridge Island and across Kitsap County, and Bainbridge Community Foundation is mobilizing its resources to help fill the gap. This includes activating its Community Response Fund, which provides financial support to nonprofits addressing urgent health and human service needs, and alerting its fund advisors to these critical needs.
About one in ten community members, or 2,500 of our neighbors, rely on Helpline House annually for its services. Recent reductions in SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and other federal human service funding sources, including Local Food for Schools, Local Food Purchase Assistance, and The Emergency Food Assistance Program, have diminished funding for food banks by hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide. In turn, this has forced organizations to significantly limit access to much-needed food for families and individuals. Helpline House has experienced a sharp rise in demand for food coupled with a significant reduction in funding.
To help close this gap, Bainbridge Community Foundation (BCF) has recently awarded Helpline House $35,000 in grants to help make up for some of these gaps. Of this amount, $25,000 came from BCF’s Community Response Fund, and an additional $10,000 came from donor advised funds.
BCF has also recently awarded $15,000 to Friends of the Farms. In response to growing needs, Friends of the Farms created Share the Harvest, a program that raises funds to purchase food directly from local farms and delivers it to the food bank at Helpline House as soon as it’s harvested. This initiative addresses two urgent issues at once: helping families access healthy food while providing local farmers with revenue to sustain their operations. According to Kevin Block, owner of Sol Farm, “Nearly half of what we grew this year went straight to Helpline House. Knowing our food is feeding those most in need gives us purpose and hope.”
In addition to supporting food banks, BCF is also funding for other organizations experiencing funding shortages due to federal cuts. BCF awarded $7,500 to Kitsap Legal Aid, which has reported a major shortfall in funding for their Eviction Defense Program. This supports the “right to counsel” in home evictions implemented in 2021 by Governor Inslee, and pays for contract attorney fees and operation and administration costs to keep the program alive.
Learn more about BCF’s Area of Interest Funds, donate to BCF’s Community Response Fund, or donate directly to Helpline House, Friends of the Farms, or Kitsap Legal Aid.
