BANCO DE ALIMENTOS

Organizational Vision
Citizen Base Strategy
How It's Working
Lessons Learned

Organizational Vision

Fundación Banco de Alimentos - Calí (Food Bank Foundation Calí) has a new model for hunger relief: streamlining the operations of previously ineffective and poorly operated food banks. Before Ashoka Fellow Sofia Sarasti founded Banco de Alimentos, only one major food bank existed in Colombia. While the food bank supplied local distribution centers, it did not provide technical assistance, infrastructure, or business guidance. This led to waste and mismanagement in a system that could afford neither. For example, the food bank tended to supply the same distribution centers and soup kitchens, leaving some with an unusable surplus and others without enough to feed their clients.

To solve this, Banco de Alimentos develops systems to evaluate local demand for food and the capacity of various institutions to most effectively match the need, with the goal of determining how food banks can deliver precise amounts of food to the greatest number of distribution centers. In addition, the Banco de Alimentos helps centers and soup kitchens quantify and track their inventories, measure effectiveness, formalize accounting, and build capacity. By working with both food assistance organizations and their providers, Banco de Alimentos creates replicable systems to offer more effective hunger relief and increase overall efficiency. Currently, Banco de Alimentos provides more than 180 metric tons of food per month to 167 different institutions, directly benefiting 30,000 individuals.

Citizen Base Strategy

Transform daily waste into daily nourishment

Every day Banco de Alimentos sends someone to pick up donations of food from more than twenty stores and companies. In a month, Banco de Alimentos will go to pick up donations around 500 times, and once in a while a company will drop off the donation itself. The food donated is completely fit for consumption, but companies can no longer sell them due to their promise of freshly-baked goods. Banco de Alimentos assures that perishable foods are not wasted and can be either distributed or processed and frozen before they spoil, and all non-perishables are handled with consideration of their sell-by date. Banco de Alimentos’ process of receiving, handling and distributing prioritizes efficiency so that as much food as possible can be saved and as many people as possible can benefit from it.

Banco de Alimentos actively recruits and obtains large donations from those in the for-profit sector, and acts as a reliable intermediary between companies with goods which no longer have commercial value and the organizations and people for whom the food provides crucial sustenance.

In addition to facilitating the resourcing of foodstuffs from local merchants, Banco de Alimentos also promotes the use of formerly wasted products on an individual citizen level through various educational programs and workshops. One popular workshop offered by the organization trains female heads of household to use overripe foods in cooking rather than simply throwing them away.

Transform recipients into stakeholders

Banco de Alimentos charges small amounts for services and programs to a diverse array of community members, including other food banks. This both ensures the organization’s own sustainability and demonstrates to recipients that the services they receive from Banco de Alimentos are not free handouts, but valuable and powerful resources. In charging for their services, Banco de Alimentos encourages beneficiaries to support the organization by making them all stakeholders, directly placing them in charge of ensuring its viability.

To become affiliated with Banco de Alimentos, organizations must first go through a screening process, to ensure that all Banco de Alimentos food donations reach the intended recipients. Piracy and resale of food were common in the sector before the foundation created guidelines to ensure the veracity of food center clientele. The foundation requires that centers employ fully transparent management practices, and that they evaluate the impact of donations on their target population. Staff visit all new organizations that apply for food supplies, and perform up to four surprise follow-up visits each year, at which time they also assess the organizations' management needs and local demand. After becoming a part of Banco de Alimentos’ network, organizations must pay a service fee equal to 10% of the donated food's market value. This fee contributes to the Banco de Alimentos’ longevity, growth, and financial sustainability. In addition, it motivates the organization itself to look to its constituents to help recover costs, thus promoting a sustainable model.

How It’s Working

• In 2006, the foundation received $1.2 million worth of in-kind donations

• In 2006, the foundation had a net surplus of US$56,000

• At present, more than 100 additional institutions want to join the Bank’s network

• Banco de Alimentos – Calí plans to begin spreading to other areas, including Palmira and Cauca Valley

• New food banks in Bogotá, Buga, and Ibagué have already requested and received training in the foundation’s values and methods

Lessons Learned

• Involve the wider community. In an effort to increase the amount of nonperishables collected and diversify the donor network to include the citizen base, Banco de Alimentos launched a collection campaign in collaboration with various high schools. A media campaign in cooperation with the Foundation of the Autonomous University of Calí also significantly increases public awareness for greater citizen participation.

• Engage your resource base in even in the face of tragedy. Following a tragic fire that ravaged Banco de Alimentos Calí’s primary warehouse, destroying 700 square feet of the site and tons of food and supplies, overwhelming community response including support from the local government, newspaper, and volunteers helped the organization recover much of its capacity within less than a week.

• Tailor aid to fit the needs of the recipients. Banco de Alimentos Calí identifies each agency's operational and managerial weaknesses and then offers workshops specific to their organization. Programs include sustainability practices, transparency, customer service, and the proper use and expansion of computer systems and software. Distribution centers are also trained on database design and management to track and link with other citizen sector projects and volunteers in the area, expanding their capacity to address additional client needs like childcare and marketable job skills.