Board Minutes
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Members Present:, Pat Danehy, Will Hudson, Joe Webb, Sonia Walker, Gwen Tucker, Nadeem
Zafar, Jane Nuckolls, Otis Sanford, Perre Magness, Cindy Rantanen, James Huffman
Guest: Donna Pope, PNE consultant
Members Absent: Amy Langston, Bill Platten, Rafael Durand, JJ Zmudzinski, Greg Campbell, Rod
Halsell, Lane Whitehead
Staff Present: Estella Mayhue-Greer, Janet Dykes, Brittany Church, Tom Livers
The meeting was called to order at 8:00 a.m. with a welcome from Pat Danehy. He thanked the
board committees for their hard work.
Committee Reports:
COMMUNICATIONS & COMMUNITY RELATIONS: Perre asked for suggestions that anyone
has for this committee and the work they are doing because there has been some attrition.
This committee is really focusing on Hunger Action Month and coming up with projects and
goals to promote the various things going on during that month. We want to come up with
a project that people can feel some ownership. If the board has any suggestions, this
committee would love to hear them.
There will be cross-over with this committee and the fund development committee. The
action plan is still pretty vague. We need to start with a tangible project and then move into
an action plan. We have to be realistic about how much we want a committee to do. We
want productive committee meetings. Paula Rushing, volunteer coordinator, and the
volunteers should link with this committee.
FOOD ADVISORY: Cindy: The Food Bank is signed up for the Kroger Community program.
The new system is simple--customers register a customer card with the program. When
they use their card, a donation automatically goes to the Food Bank. We need to inform
people of the program and get them to register their cards. We must link the Kroger
program on the website for easier access.
The Kroger Cultural Council Summit schedule for July 18 is focused on the Food Bank and
the senior demographic. Estella will be there to speak. Boxes will be put together by the
employees at the Summit. Upon completion of this project we should have an “Event in a
Box”--something that is very generic that can be given to a variety of different companies or
groups to execute. It is a box with directions that anyone could use to execute a program to
raise funds for the Food Bank.
Cindy is trying to make contact with the head of purchasing at Kroger to allow Mid-South
Food Bank to buy directly from General Mills, Heinz, and ConAgra instead of going through
a third party. The committee is also looking for a connection with Ledbetter meat
processing plant.
FACILITIES: Pat: We are very interested in a site that would meet our needs in many ways.
We've made an offer to the group that owns it for a lease/purchase option, which would
give us a window to decide whether we want to buy it or not once we’re in. We're expecting
a counter offer today. January 1 is the projected move-in date, with possession before in
order to make the necessary changes and updates needed. It looks promising. We made an
offer of $3.1 million for the building and $4 to $4.5 million is presumably the top of the
estimated cost. It's off of Lamar near Knight Arnold and only about 20 years old. It is very
secure. It's a long-term solution, making it even better. This gives us time to conduct a
capital campaign correctly.
The biggest expense will be the coolers. We'll be interviewing potential project managers to
see what ideas they propose and what the cost would be. We're looking at five companies,
some recommended by Kroger that have worked on Food Banks before. We must have a set
agenda for each group. We can vary from that as the conversation goes along, but a set
agenda will ensure we cove all the questions.
Joe expressed the need to explore a system for moving inventory. The technology has
gotten cheaper. We need to look at some best practices for managing inventory once we get
to the new warehouse. We need to look at what other Food Banks have done and if they are
not using a similar system, then we could look to other companies for ideas. Kroger could
be a great resource for us. We should be innovative, but also be aware of what is already
out there.
FUND DEVELOPMENT: Nadeem: We are working on an incremental development of the
committee’s agenda. The Latino community is a focus right now. Asian and Latino
communities are the most rapidly expanding in our area and across the nation. Estella will
spearhead the effort to reach out to the Latino community and determine how we can help
and be helped by that demographic. You cannot ask for money until you know the needs of
the community. We will be working to connect with these communities both in helping
them and harvesting resources directly from them. We will try to get the Latino
organizations into the Food Bank to show them what we're doing and get them involved.
We are trying to gain more presence in Mississippi. James Huffman will help us link to the
hospital system there and create a strong relationship. A large part of this relationship
building should be fostered by the community needs assessment that hospitals are
responsible for crafting. We can get fully integrated into system and process by highlighting
the community needs and how acutely the Food Bank aids in lessening the need and
improving the community. The key is how efficiently the Food Bank can develop
cooperation with the hospital system. The Food Bank is a key stakeholder in the
community and could be a huge benefit to non-profit hospitals. We should be very
successful in this arena.
This committee is working to increase faith-based support. Nadeem is pioneering the food
drive efforts for the month of Ramadan in an attempt to strongly connect with both native
and immigrant Muslims. Joe will provide the committee with the research regarding
involving faith-based organizations.
We need to make sure that our overhead remains low and our guarantee to donors that
their money is going directly to the cause for which they are donating. We need to make
sure that we are seeing results and are not simply aiming for the lowest overhead. We have
to deliver more with less in order to maintain donors for whom fund usage is crucial. We
have four stars on Charity Navigator, which is great, but we need to make sure that
overhead is not the only thing we are looking at to measure success. We also have to make
sure that the people we are hiring are efficient workers that are worth their cost.
The committee will examine our gift acceptance policies.
BOARD DEVELOPMENT: Gwen: Lane is medical leave. We have one resignation: Larry
Hardy, as he will be spending more time in Florida. George Coswell, the president and
publisher of the Commercial Appeal, has agreed to serve on the Board.
The Board Retreat will be held after the employee retreat.
EDUCATION & ADVOCACY: Jane: The symposium is cancelled due to the resignation of the
Surgeon General, but we will have an event. We are working hard to promote awareness of
the malnutrition within hospitals that goes highly unrecognized. Hunger and poverty are
huge contributors to poor health and mal-nourishment is a huge addition to medical bills.
We’re going to put together an event in September to raise the awareness of this issue.
The farm bill has passed in the Senate and is headed to the House. The bill impacts SNAP,
WIC, commodities, school lunches, and nutrition education. Tennessee is already lacking
SNAP education and many other nutrition education programs will go away due to this bill.
In order for the bill to be vetoed, we need a high volume of emails sent to all congressmen.
The suffering that the farm bill would induce is monumental for the work we are doing
here at the Food Bank. It will impact every business and hospital in the community if these
benefits are cut leading to poorer nutrition and therefore poorer health and less money to
spend elsewhere throughout the market without the help of food stamps.
The email should be on the Mid-South Food Bank website, so we can direct people there to
send it. The more conservative representatives especially are the ones to get the message
to, as they are the least likely to support social programs.
CAPITAL CAMPAIGN: Tom: In a capital campaign, there is a quiet phase (50-75% of the
money is raised) and public phase (outstanding funds raised). Campaign General Chair and
all chairs within the campaign must first be donors and secondly be donor acquisitionists.
These are the people who will open the major donor doors for us. They should be linked in
and know a lot of the right people. We are currently looking at a $5 million campaign. The
top tiers of the pyramid are the ones that take the longest to cultivate.
The board has to be critically involved in the next 18 to 36 months to identify the
prospects. Lexus Nexus will also help us to identify a pool of donors. It has to be a team
effort of knocking on doors and utilizing connections of everyone on the board.
Campaign chairs are strictly volunteers. A five to ten million-dollar campaign probably will
not need any third party help raising money based on our name’s significance within the
community. Those firms manage the campaign but they don't actually raise the money or
talk with potential donors, so we are ultimately responsible for making the ask. The board
is going to be responsible for gathering the names of people who could fit the top of the
pyramid. We must start with friends of the Food Bank who could really help aid the
process. By October/November, we should have more information laid out for potential
donors and campaign details.
FINANCIAL REPORT: Things are not much different from what was presented in the last
meeting. Cash standing is great. Assets and liabilities are normal. We haven't had any
challenges, which is a huge success.
18-month Period: We have one more month left in this period. Operations revenues are
better than last year: $7.1 million. Our expenses are 6 million, so we have a net increase of
just over $1 million. That number will change when we purchase food this month. We are
very close to our projected budget- 95%. FedEx will not participate in Op Feed this year;
however, we will still be in good standing for the year end.
Joe said we need to be cognizant of the ratio of administrative overhead and income. So if
the numerator (cost) increases, the denominator (revenue) needs to as well. Strategically,
we need to plan to offset our costs in order to maintain the positive relationship between
the outgoing and incoming funds.
Nadeem suggested that this might be a good time to look at potential within the stock
market that is at a peak right now and may not be in a few years. We could book some of
that profit now in stock that will be valuable down the line. The executive committee can
take a look at this.
2013-2014 Proposed Budget: We are going to a June-June fiscal year. The executive
committee has not been able to look at budget; therefore, we will not be voting on the new
budget until the next board meeting. In the meantime, we will give approval for staff to
operate under the proposed budget so that we're not wasting time.
If the budget has to change with the new facility, we can revise it if needed. We will not
have new numbers in place until we know more about the new building/are in the new
building.
Clarification: We do not have to be out of our current building by a certain date as dictated
by Feeding America; we just have to be doing something toward the effort, which we are
doing.
PNE: The work plan is moving along. As we move into the fall, there will be more details to
report on. The staff is very engaged and making a lot of progress on the culture within the
Food Bank. There is passion for the Food Bank and we are moving ahead on many fronts.
Voting: A motion was made to accept the resignation of Larry Hardy. Motion approved.
A motion was made to accept the allowance of the staff to operate under the staff-created
budget thus far, prior to the review by the executive committee. Motion approved.
A motion was made to accept the minutes from the last meeting. Motion approved.
CEO’s REPORT: The new truck got here yesterday. Weekly update refresher: A retail pickup coordinator will be in place on July 1 due to a grant from Feeding America. Another
truck will be coming to us from Walmart in August. We received a grant from Cargill to
maintain and clean the building and will be having an AIB training audit soon. The Feeding
America audit will take place during the first week of August.
John Livingston, the new COO, will join us in August. He was the COO at the Las Vegas food
bank. He is strong in operations and inventory so he was the absolute best candidate.
We had to buy a new freezer compressor for $7000 this week.
We received a $100,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation, thanks to Marcia, strictly to
buy food for Mississippi. We will receive the funding from the State of Tennessee to food
purchasing for Tennessee in the fall.
Based on the Map the Meal Gap from Feeding America, we have found that one of our
biggest focuses should be in Mississippi, where food insecurity has gone up. We are in
compliance in half of our counties. We have some yellow counties- meaning that we've
increased pound distribution over the year, but we are not at full PPIP in those counties.
Our nutritional value is at 85%. For future reference, we need a report on PPIP, compliance
percentage within our service area, and nutritional value.
We are moving forward and making progress, thanks to the work of the board and their
faith in the Food Bank staff.
Respectfully submitted,
Nadeem Zafar
Secretary