Business Spotlight: Meeting the Need

It was a flurry of activity the day before Halloween at Ozark food pantry Least of These Inc., which was filled with more than 200 volunteers assembling Thanksgiving meal bags.

“We packed 1,600 bags in an hour, and it was awesome,” says Kristy Carter, the nonprofit’s executive director, noting pantry recipients get to select a whole frozen turkey or ham to go with the meals that include canned vegetables and fruit, potatoes, stuffing and a dessert.

To provide Thanksgiving meals to those in need, Carter says Least of These is spending around $40,000 – an amount that also will be spent in time for Christmas meals.

“We were sourcing the food for those four or five months ago to get the best prices and to figure out the best way for delivery,” Carter says.

With a pool of roughly 300 volunteers, around 50 of them help during the nonprofit’s weekly distribution days to serve Christian County residents, held Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, as well as Thursday evenings. Volunteers serve as shoppers for clients in the Ozark facility’s 18,000-square-foot warehouse, as they assemble groceries based on the client’s preferences and needs. Items vary from week to week, but meat, dairy, canned fruits, vegetables and soups, along with bread, diapers and hygiene items, are among those most frequently provided.

Least of These also takes its distribution on the road to Chadwick, Clever and Spokane to offer monthly mobile pantries as a service to those in outlying areas of the county. It sources most of its food and other items from Ozarks Food Harvest Inc., Convoy of Hope and Associated Wholesale Grocers Inc.

“Being a member agency at Ozarks Food Harvest, that means that we’re able to get free food from them,” Carter says. “Our government commodities allotment comes from them, but we also can buy from them.”

On the rise
Least of These marked its 25th anniversary last year, starting in 1998 as a community outreach project of a Nixa church. By the end of the first year, 100 families were receiving food. Since then, service needs for the county have grown exponentially, Carter says, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Christian County is almost three percentage points below the U.S poverty rate, at 8.4%, that level isn’t keeping people from utilizing the food pantry. Last year, Least of These served 15,494 families – an all-time record. Officials say it’s averaging 1,400 families served per month this year, which would put it on pace to surpass the 2023 total.

“When you look at first quarter of 2019 and you look at first quarter of 2024, we are up 82% over that number. We’re seeing more clients than we’ve ever seen,” Carter says, adding that includes many new families, some of which are dual-income households. “Our donations are great because we are in such a gracious community, but there’s a gap still. The need is still higher than the donations that we have coming in.”

The nonprofit held an end-of-year fundraising campaign last year to absorb operational costs, noting if enough funds weren’t raised, drastic cuts to the amount of food assistance for families were likely. Carter says donors contributed nearly $600,000, exceeding the campaign’s roughly $500,000 target. As it doesn’t get government funding, Least of These relies on donations from individuals, businesses, churches and grantors.

Although a rainy day in September threatened to put a damper on the organization’s annual fundraiser, A Night at the Pantry, Carter says it was a success.

“We ended up raising a little over $95,000, which was our net amount, and it was up 14% over the year before,” she says. “We had everybody in a tent. We then had people inside because of the thunderstorm warnings and all kinds of stuff, but it was a great event.”

Being a steward
Staff constantly review the organization’s buying power, Carter says, adding that means seeking out numerous sources for its food products. Roughly $10 worth of food can be purchased for every $1 donated, officials say.

“We all work really, really hard to be the best stewards of the donor dollars that we get. And we’re able to do that because of our volunteer force, too,” she says, adding the volunteers help run the weekly distributions that free up staff for administrative and product pricing research work.

Aside from partnerships with other large nonprofits, Least of These also is connected to smaller ones in the community. One of those is The McCauley Foundation Inc., a Springfield 501(c)(3) committed to creating sustainable solutions to challenges of food insecurity and food deserts through the use of vertical gardens. Founder Nicole McCauley, who also is a pediatric and pregnancy chiropractor with Breath of Life Wellness Center LLC, started the nonprofit in 2019.

The McCauley Foundation connects with fellow nonprofits to create agriculture ecosystems with a goal to provide excess produce to a local food pantry. McCauley said one of its projects is the creation of a farm with Nixa Junior High School, which is donating around 1,000 heads of lettuce annually to Least of These.

At her home, McCauley also uses aeroponic towers to grow food to serve the equivalent of 12,000 people per year. She said the foundation is funded through public and private donations.

“I grow specifically just to donate the food to Least of These,” she says, noting her weekly donations to the food pantry includes lettuces, greens and herbs, along with seasonal offerings such as cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes and watermelon.

For McCauley, who says she was food insecure growing up, there’s no desire to be paid for her donations.

“This is about helping our neighbors. What Least of These is doing, I’m a complete supporter,” she says.

Such as in 2023, Carter has another fundraising goal in mind before year’s end. To purchase one month’s worth of food for those the nonprofit is serving monthly, she’s hoping the community will donate to the organization over a 24-hour period on Giving Tuesday, Dec. 3. Officials say $64 can provide a cart full of food to a family, and when multiplied by the 1,400 families receiving food assistance every month, that equates to $89,600.

Carter says it’s a lofty goal but one that is necessary for the organization to keep meeting the community needs.

“We don’t know where the peak is going to hit,” she says of the annual number of families it will serve. “And the best thing that we can do is to continue to be good stewards, take advantage of the buying power that we have with the resources that we have.”