Help shoulder elderly need with two local nonprofits

THE WOODLANDS, Texas -- In the nonprofit world, competition for donors and innovative business models can be just as intense as it is for their capital-market driven peers. Both the Montgomery County Food Bank and the Friendship Center deal with acute need. Both had identified a problem that they couldn't solve on their own. Seizing on the synergy, rather than the differences in their mandates, they created a new program playing on each organization's strengths to serve a fragile, elderly population.

The Friendship Center provides for the needs of the elderly, providing Meals on Wheels, hot meals in a group setting, transportation, and resources to assist seniors with counseling, utilities and issues of well-bring. It has feet on the pavement all over local neighborhoods. Yet it is limited in the food it provides based on government funding for Meals on Wheels. Some seniors qualify for 7 days a week assistance, while others only get 5 days. The Friendship Center was limited in what it could do when it identified an elderly client who was going hungry over the weekend.

Over at the Montgomery County Food Bank, President and CEO Sean-Michael Hazuda and his staff are feeding more than 40,000 hungry people each month, a number that is set to increase at a dizzying rate as SNAP government meal-assistance reductions started November 2013. The Food Bank works with a network of suppliers to secure food at cut-rate prices, feeding the county's growing number of hungry working families, children and elderly. It needed a way to get its food to Montgomery County's housebound seniors who go are without food from Friday evening to Monday morning because they didn't qualify for Meals on Wheels over the weekend.

Many seniors don't have a way to get food because of poor health or lack of transportation. For others, the cost of medications hamper their ability to feed themselves properly. Perhaps they did save for retirement, but did not understand that prescriptions would be taking a hefty bite out of their money each month. "It's a terrible Catch-22," Hazuda said. "Because they either have to decide to buy food so they can live, or buy medicine so I can live. No one in Montgomery County should have to make that choice."

"These seniors have worked their whole lives, a lot of them have raised their families and taken care of grandchildren," Hazuda said. "In their senior years they have to worry about going hungry for the entire weekend. Can you imagine what a horrible feeling that is for them?

Care & Share takes boxes of non-perishable items put together by the Montgomery County Food Bank—with the help of premier sponsor Beaumont Foundation—and puts them in the hands of the Friendship Center for delivery. The Friendship Center can help identify new clients with food needs, and the Food Bank provides them with nutritionally sound meals over the weekend.

"We do this at very little additional cost to us, with little strain on our program," said Anna Claire Croghan, executive director at the Friendship Center. "This partnership has eliminated a gap in service."