2024 was a big year for Alameda County Community Food Bank.
In February, it became one of the first food banks in the country to get paid by an insurer for providing healthy food to patients, marking the start of a Food is Medicine effort that it expects will generate more than $1 million in annual revenue by fiscal year 2026. And over the summer, it heated up its food justice efforts with a large commitment to a BIPOC-led farm that will move the farm toward independence and sustainability, while also serving the food bank’s growing Food is Medicine initiative.
The two efforts underscore the ability of Executive Director Regi Young to both lead and follow the lead of others as he carries out the food bank’s mission. The balancing act of leveraging the food bank’s strengths, while also centering the needs of the community, helped Young earn our Food Bank Leader of the Year for 2024.
How we did it: We received more than 130 nominations for Food Bank CEO of the Year, after putting out a call to all of our subscribers. A single nomination qualified the nominee for consideration, and our editors chose our 2024 Food Bank CEO of the Year after careful consideration of all the nominees.
Young is like most food bankers in realizing that food distribution alone is not enough to fix hunger. Now, after coming from Houston Food Bank three years ago to become head of ACCFB, he’s putting his own spin on what an action plan against hunger should look like.
”As a food bank, we’re never going to be set up in the way in which we can end hunger and food insecurity by ourselves,” he said. “But we have a primary role to play in it.” The crux of the issue, as he sees it: “How do we build coalitions, to center the needs and desires of our community, while leveraging our assets and strengths?”
The food bank’s investment in BIPOC-led Dig Deep Farms, which will amount to a minimum of $4 million over two years, is a good example of how the food bank is using its resources to lift up others in the community. The food bank will act as a fiscal sponsor for the nonprofit farm for at least two years, helping it to strengthen its operations with the goal of eventually spinning it off to become its own independent entity.
“We’re not trying to be a farm, but we see the value in what they’re trying to accomplish as it relates to creating a just infrastructure within Alameda County where Black and Indigenous and People of Color in our community can be successful in doing things that they love, while feeding and nurturing and nourishing our community,” he said.
It’s an approach that will require the food bank to be more adaptive. “We’re going to have to think differently. We’re going to have to step back in support of the goals of community members in a lot of ways, and that’s going to look very different from what our past looked like,” he said.
All food banks have the ability to build on their past, especially given the goodwill that they’ve built up over the years by being reliable providers of food within their communities. “Our brands typically are the strongest brands of any nonprofit in our respective regions or states,” Young said. “So we’ve built up a lot of social capital that we can leverage alongside the food distribution.”
ACCFB’s new mission statement, which will become official next year after more than a year of deliberation, reflects its expanded view of its purpose. Previously, the food bank’s mission was to “passionately pursue a hunger-free community.” Now, its mission statement is to “partner with our community to end hunger and its root causes.”
As ambitious as the mission is, Young’s plan for the future also includes a good measure of practicality, evident in his approach to Food is Medicine. Currently, ACCFB is preparing food boxes for hundreds of food-insecure patients, and eventually anticipates serving thousands, generating an estimated $1.1 million in fiscal 2026 and $1.3 million in fiscal 2027.
The effort allows the food bank to get reimbursed for work that it already does, while also using that revenue stream to support its food justice work, such as by paying Dig Deep Farm for the produce it grows. “It’s not only an opportunity to provide healthy meals into our community that improve health outcomes, but it’s also a means potentially to provide a revenue source to fund our food justice initiatives,” Young said.
While the idea of moving food banking from a charitable endeavor to one embedded in justice is not entirely foreign to food bankers, there is no well-worn pathway for getting there. Young is making progress in establishing one. “Charity is not going to get us to the finish line,” he said. “It’s going to be that justice frame.” – Chris Costanzo
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