Clifton Christian Church Food Bank seeks greater visibility as it eyes getting more donations

Tim Harty, The Business Times

Standing around before things got going with the March 13 ribbon cutting for the new Panda Express restaurant in Clifton, Jackie Feaster saw a person she did not know and introduced herself.

That person was the reporter for The Business Times who was at the event to get a photo.

She told him she was with the Clifton Christian Church Food Bank, then continued with a few facts about the food bank.

It led to her acknowledging, “When people think of food banks here (in the Grand Valley), they think of a couple.” She paused for a split second, then added, “And not us.”

It’s the “and not us” that got the reporter’s attention, as he admitted, “I’m one of those people.”

But there ended the ignorance for the reporter. And it begot this story now.

Feaster wasn’t shy about speaking up to a stranger, because she’s done being shy about discussing the Clifton Christian Church Food Bank, which operates out of the back of the church at 3241 F 1/4 Road, where she’s the 501(c)3 nonprofit’s executive director.

Last year, the food bank provided food to more than 66,000 individuals (that includes people who come week after week), and Feaster’s positive it will need to provide more this year. That will require money. That money primarily must come from donations.

So, Feaster is ready to go to businesses and events and get the word out that there’s this food bank in Clifton that they may not have heard about, but it’s a worthwhile cause, and they would appreciate it if you keep them in mind.

“Our hope is just to get our name out there to businesses that might want to do a food drive for us or might want to fund us or might want to send someone here to volunteer,” she said. “This year, I’ve done some different things about being a little more proactive, or taking more time away from here to go out to businesses and go to outreaches to get our name out there.”

A little help goes a long way, she said.

Feaster and Carrie Daugherty, the Clifton Christian Church Food Bank’s outreach and operation coordinator, were at the Panda Express ribbon cutting, because Panda Express management knew about the food bank and wanted to make a donation of $1,000 to it.

What does $1,000 get the Clifton Christian Church Food Bank? A couple days worth of food, Feaster said.

“My grocery bill will be $225,000,” she said. “That’s what I’m planning on spending this year. It’s up from last year.”

One reason it’s increasing is because the amount of free food they could depend on from Grocery Rescue is decreasing. Clifton Christian Church Food Bank then needs to spend money to make up that difference and provide the food another way.

“The poundage is down so much,” Feaster said. “We’re having to buy more meat, and we’re having to buy eggs this year.”

So, the food bank needs more donations, and Feaster is seeking them. She added that she does write requests for grants, but those are local or in-state.

She was alerted by one donor from Denver recently – “It’s a major donor in the state,” she said – that this year is “gonna be a hard year” for getting grant money.

Not the news any nonprofit wants to hear, but it’s the reality, so Feaster said Clifton Christian Church Food Bank needs to adapt.

Adapting has been continual since Clifton Christian Church Food Bank became a nonprofit in 2019.

Feaster said she has been with the food bank for 14 years. Initially, “it just kind of was low-key,” she said. “In my first year, we gave food to not even 5,000 individuals.”

She reiterated that number was for the year, then added, “We do that in a month now.”

The growing number of people who come to the food bank goes against what Feaster once thought would constitute success for a food bank.

“I used to think, well, when I didn’t have any line (of people), that would be success. I was out of business,” she said.

That’s not the way the world works, though. There always will be people who need a helping hand, such as a bag of groceries from a food bank.

“I realized in the last three years, probably success is the huge lines,” Feaster said, “because then I’ve shown enough respect to individuals that they will tell their family, and they will tell friends to come here. Because if we didn’t have that compassion piece, people wouldn’t come here. I mean, we hear that, that people don’t go (to a different food bank) because they don’t get very much, or they weren’t respected.

“And so, my new thought is now that we are doing an amazing job, loving on our clients and our community and helping our community one person at a time and being world changers, because I think everybody has a great purpose in the world. They just need some encouragement. So, that’s what success looks like to me now.”

She wants more people to know that, because she knows Clifton Christian Church Food Bank, despite its growth and its noble mission, remains a relative unknown.

“A lot of people don’t even know about us, especially individuals that never dealt with food insecurity,” Feaster said. “They had no idea. You know, they thought we were just a church.”

Clifton Christian Church Food Bank is located at 3241 F 1/4 Road, readily visible to traffic on the Interstate 70 Business Loop as drivers are coming into Clifton or headed out to the interstate.

For more information, go online to cccfoodbank.com, call 970-434-7392 or email info@cccfoodbank.com. Also, follow them on social media, such as Facebook and YouTube.

Food pantry, not bank

Clifton Christian Church Food Bank’s executive director, Jackie Feaster, said despite what her 501(c)3 nonprofit organization’s name says, it is not a food bank. It’s a food pantry.

To clarify she said Food Bank of the Rockies is a food bank. It’s not the place individuals go to pick up food; it’s the place food pantries go to pick up food. And Clifton Christian Church Food Bank is a food pantry.

“A food pantry serves directly to the clients,” Feaster said. “Food Bank of the Rockies is my grocery store. … They have some outreaches that they reach out, mobile pantries and stuff like that. But their facility is my grocery store.”

Nonprofit separate from the church

Feaster had another clarification to make: Clifton Christian Church Food Bank operates out of the church, but it is not the church. It is a separate nonprofit organization. She said that distinction is important to make to potential donors.

“We are our own 501(c)3, so people really need to understand that we’re not the church,” she said. “We are a nonprofit, so they are going to get their tax deduction and it’s not going through the church.”

She added, “What we call faith is loving on everybody. And no one’s ever turned away, and we want to respect and give everyone compassion.

“All of our money goes pretty much to food. We don’t pay lights, we don’t pay for our space. That’s the church. The church, their donation is that they give us this. They pay our car insurance. You know, we pay our maintenance on our vehicles and our coolers, but they take care of everything else. So, when you’re giving to us, you’re giving directly, you know, 98 percent of it goes to food, or 99 percent of it goes to the whole program.”

No one gets turned away

Feaster said Clifton Christian Church Food Bank exists to help people who are experiencing food insecurity, and it’s important to respect how difficult it can be for some people to come to a food bank.

Hence, it doesn’t require any qualifying information. No one will ask for proof of income.

“We do ask their address if they have one. We ask how many people are in their house, but there’s no qualifications,” she said. “There’s nobody ever turned away. … Multiple people come weekly, and we just serve them, because they need the food.”

The food pantry also provides some nonfood items, such as dog food, diapers and toiletries.