Couple raises money to help launch food bank satellite site

At the time, the Winston-Salem-based operation, which covers an 18-county area including Guilford, had several projects on the table. The agency moves tons of donated food to nonprofit organizations locally that help the hungry, ranging from Greensboro Urban Ministry to the food pantries at local colleges.

Aft later asked Jim and Marianne Bennett, Greensboro supporters who had been working on a popular culinary arts training program, to instead be the public face of a capital campaign to open a satellite office in Greensboro.

It would mean raising the money during a pandemic.

“The need was right in front of you,” Marianne Bennett said. “It was undeniable.”

The 10,650-square-foot distribution center with the Second Harvest logo that now stands in northeast Greensboro includes 2,200 square feet of freezer/cooler storage lining the walls that will supply agency partners that range from community pantries, kitchens and shelters. Agencies can pull up to a loading dock at the rear of the building to pick up orders set aside on pallets.

The agency intentionally chose to base its operation in a location in one of the city’s food deserts — so-named because residents living in these areas have limited access to fresh fruit and produce.

It would take a team effort but more importantly, Aft and others say, capturing the attention of people in the city that didn’t know that 40% of the food Second Harvest distributes is to nonprofits and agencies in Greensboro and High Point that help to get the food onto dining room tables.

The group ended up raising nearly $2.5 million.

“If a Greensboro friend was to call you, it’s an easier story to listen to,” said the Weaver Foundation’s Kevin Gray of the Bennetts, “than one from someone you don’t know.”

A ‘GENEROUS PLACE’

The Bennetts have often been that friend for Greensboro, although they prefer being behind the scenes.

Years ago when Marianne Bennett, a member of Art Quest, the educational arm of Green Hill Center in the Greensboro Cultural Center building downtown, found out that a popular art program for non-members would be closing, she went to her friends.

Art Quest has been opening its doors to nonmembers on Wednesday nights so parents could come in and create with their children. On those nights, anyone interested in art could take a child there to paint, sculpt, draw, play dress up or act.

At the time, a sluggish economy meant that Art Quest had to cut its budget.

Art Quest’s director did not want to do away with the free Family Night. What she needed was at least $10,000 to fund the program for 52 weeks. Then-director Mary Young shared her money woes with Marianne Bennett.

Bennett started with the women from her New Irving Park Book Club. She asked each of those women to make a donation and to find nine other women who were willing to give.

Bennett and her committee of friends had soon collected $12,000 — enough to keep it going.

Greensboro had always been a generous place, Marianne Bennett said.

Greensboro had also been here before.

In late 2008, the president of the United Way of Greater Greensboro got a call from a concerned employer who suggested the nonprofit lead an urgent one-time public appeal for cash to offset the increased burden on emergency-assistance agencies.

The homeless shelters were overwhelmed after an early start to brutally cold weather and the near-collapse of the banking and housing markets, which tipped the balance for people who were barely making it.

Maj. Paul Egan, then-commander of the Salvation Army of Greensboro during what came to be known as the Great Recession, coined the phrase “economic hurricane.”

Some of those people on the verge of homelessness, emergency assistance workers found, just needed help with the power bill to stay in their own homes.

From the first phone call to rolling it out was a total of 10 days and raised more than $500,000 but also birthed the winter emergency shelters set up seasonally in local churches and nonprofits.

As a result of the coronavirus, the whole country was now suffering from a shaken economy resulting in lost wages from people already a paycheck away from not being able to pay their bills, but also people who had never had to ask for help before and were in emergency assistance lines in places like Urban Ministry.

“The Greensboro community has a history of being incredibly generous, especially when individuals understand the need and how their involvement can make a difference in that need,” Aft said.

LOOKING TO EXPAND

Collectively the programs working with Second Harvest get from them more than 80% of the food they provide for people in their communities.

For Second Harvest’s fiscal year, which ended in June 30, 2020, this equated to 10.8 million pounds of food — or 8.4 million meals — in Guilford County alone.

Second Harvest and its “Everyone Deserves to Eat” campaign is a coordinated response to hunger.

Most households receiving the group’s help report having at least one person employed at some point over the past year — many having worked two or three part-time jobs with no health insurance. An overwhelming majority often say they have to choose between paying for food and medical care.

While the pandemic pushed up the timetable to open, the agency had for years been looking to expand.

With a Greensboro location, local agencies and others stretching as far away as Caswell County won’t have to send volunteers and others to Winston-Salem to retrieve food for distribution. The distance prevented some from being able to more frequently pick up produce and other perishable items that they would also have to figure out how to store when they might have one or two refrigerators.

The Bennetts got involved in Second Harvest through a friend and had fallen in love with another project for Greensboro.

Marianne Bennett became excited about the agency’s Providence Kitchen Culinary School partnership with Forsyth Technical Community College, which focused on people who have barriers to employment, such as criminal records.

“It was giving them these tools that got them skilled jobs,” Marianne Bennett said.

That was about two years ago.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this could work for Greensboro,’ “ she recalled.

And she was all in.

“They said they had been trying to get into Greensboro for a long time,” Marianne Bennett said. “We thought this could be the moment.”

Michelle Gethers-Clark and Franklin McCain of the United Way of Greater Greensboro had been making an argument for training partnerships that get at the root of poverty, which is something they had focused their work on. Second Harvest also had a supporter in Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan.

“At the time we had a need for skilled culinary workers and it was a way to bring people out of poverty,” Marianne Bennett said. “It just seemed like a wonderful opportunity.”

And then the pandemic hit.

Restaurants were closing as part of an economy that was shutting down and laying off or reducing hours for employees.

“The leadership of Second Harvest is so fantastic,” Marianne Bennett said. “They said, ’Look, that’s not what we need now. Let’s listen to what Greensboro needs.”

The distribution center at the Renaissance Shops on Phillips Avenue not only offers space for non-perishable food but also cold storage.

“They said we believe in this and we want this to happen quickly,” she recalled.

As she had done with the Art Quest fundraiser, Marianne Bennett asked friends and asked them to ask their friends. They spread the gospel of Second Harvest.

They sought out individuals, corporations and foundations. And Aft and his team wrote grants. They also brought in other partners.

The team effort raised about $2.5 million and renovated existing space owned by the Self-Help Credit Union in a strip of businesses.

“It was amazing how people said, ’Oh yes, I want to be a part of that,” Marianne Bennett said. “When we asked people for money they often gave us twice as much. We couldn’t believe it.”

The fundraising is ongoing to stay there and for future projects, including the culinary training partnership that has been delayed.

The distribution center also opened a nutrition education center within the building as part of its outreach to the region that will also include classes for the community on healthy eating and food preparation. Neighbors include Cone Health’s Renaissance Family Medicine clinic, the GuilfordWorks workforce development agency and the city’s McGirt-Horton branch library. They have also gone door-to-door in the neighborhood looking for ways to be a stronger presence there.

“It came from a difficult place,” Marianne Bennett said of the circumstances that pushed it, “but it’s going to make life better for years and years to come.”