‘We cannot overlook the poor. Talking about minimum wage is the single most effective way to push the potential presidential candidates to talk about how they will solve this problem and how they will address the growing numbers of poor.’ — Michelle Riley, CEO of the Foodbank
In Montgomery County, 18.5 percent of residents — close to one in every five people – live in poverty, according to The Ohio Poverty Report released in February.
About 1.7 million Ohioans last year received benefits through SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), but according to a report released in 2014 by the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, nearly half the households receiving those benefits deplete their monthly allotment within the first two weeks.
That means many people rely on food agencies to keep their families from going hungry. The Foodbank, Inc., serves as the main source of hunger relief in Montgomery, Greene and Preble counties. Someone at the epicenter of fighting area hunger is Michelle Riley, the Chief Executive Officer of the Foodbank. — Connie Post & Ron Rollins
Q: Describe your job.
Michelle Riley: My colleagues and I operate/run a warehouse. Last year, we distributed more than 9 million pounds of food to 106 other non-profits that feed the hungry. As the team leader of The Foodbank, my primary job is maintaining a positive culture where everyone can be successful and raising the funds necessary to make sure everyone has the tools they need to do their job.
Q: How did you get involved with the Foodbank?
Riley: I grew up on the east end of Dayton. At one time, four generations were living in our home, which was less than 1,000 square feet. Poverty is unacceptable at the rate we have it today. Prior to coming to The Foodbank, I was the Chief Operating Officer at the Dayton YWCA. We were working on issues like domestic violence, homelessness and mental health. Chief Operating Officer is not the Chief Executive Officer. The roles are very different. I knew that if I wanted to effect real change and create an environment with a vision and mission that was important to me, one that I could lead, I had to switch seats.
Q: What was the most challenging part of that?
Riley: Building a fantastic team takes work. I had to make changes that are never easy. We are committed to hiring individuals from our lines. I'm very committed to re-entry work, working to hire ex-felons returning to the community who are hoping to get their lives back in order. Those individuals come with barriers that are often hard to overcome. As a result, we often have a higher turnover rate during our probation period. Once someone is trained the results are amazing — but the journey can be difficult.
Q: The Foodbank is at the center of the local hunger situation – how would you describe that situation in our community?
Riley: The hunger situation in Montgomery, Greene and Preble counties is a very serious problem, especially since 2008. Traditionally, we had neighbors visiting food programs who were served by the pantries, shelters and community meals sites. Since the recession, the need has doubled. We now see many more seniors, children and the working poor.
Q: What are some of the causes?
Riley: People cannot support themselves making minimum wages. The old sayings, "Pull yourself up by your boot straps" or "Just get a job," no longer apply. If someone works minimum wage, that means they make $16,848 a year. To put that in perspective, in 2008 the median income was $46,214. In 2013, the median income was $42,794.
Q: Who are the people affected?
Riley: Seniors who saw their life savings wiped out, baby boomers who saved all their lives only to be let go and are re-entering the work force at much lower wages, children whose parents aren't making enough to put three meals on the table. Poverty affects everyone, including people who have good jobs and pay taxes. It is a bad situation.
Q: Hunger has emerged among Dayton area leaders as a key issue to be attacked in a coordinated way in the coming years, which has gotten publicity. Thoughts on this?
Riley: Dayton-area leaders recently focused on food access as the top priority, not just hunger. That means much more than feeding the hungry. It means looking at food deserts, inner-city grocery stores and food hubs. It means looking at new and innovative ways to get food to people who don't have access to fresh and nutritious food. Many of the ideas that were listed as priorities are already happening, such as mobile markets for seniors who are home-bound in residential living facilities, or farmers markets. The ideas have to be listed as priorities to get funding, but that doesn't mean that we are not doing the work and providing funds for the program already in place. The Hall Hunger Initiative and Ambassador Tony Hall will help organize all of these groups, in each of the areas listed above, to prioritize issues and come up with a plan to go forward. Our goal, working as a partner with the Hall Hunger Initiative and United Way, is to continue to reduce hunger and make food more available in areas that need it. We are grateful for Ambassador Hall's help and efforts.
Q: You mentioned seniors before — what proportion are they of the people you serve?
Riley: Last year, we served over 66,000 seniors. We have three different senior programs. The mobile market that goes straight to senior centers, for people on fixed incomes. Then we have the Del Mar grant from the Dayton Foundation, which helps pay for wholesale food for senior boxes, which are delivered to households — food with higher protein and the like. Then we have a Wal-Mart grant for senior boxes, for those people who don't qualify for food assistance under the U.S.D.A.
Q: Meaning what, exactly?
Riley: To qualify under U.S.D.A., people have to be at 200 percent under the federal poverty level. And for any state or federal money to be spent on seniors, they have to be pre-qualified, and that doesn't really work for our mobile market — which is why it's nice to have Dayton Foundation money to pay for it.
Q: What are some other programs you’re proud of?
Riley: One is Snack Back Our Streets, a program introduced by Dayton police Sgt. Terry Perdue. The program helps strengthen the relationship between Dayton police officers and youths 13 and under in the communities they protect and serve. The community is encouraged to collect and donate healthy nonperishable snacks, which are made into snack bags and stored at the Foodbank, and then picked up by Dayton police. Officers distribute the bags to youth encountered in the community in hopes that the positive interactions can later transition into a long-term relationship.
Q: Talk about the big sculpture you recently added in front of your building — it’s a giant apple that looks like it’s made out of old knives, forks and spoons? It’s really cool — what’s the story?
Riley: So, that resulted from a collaboration with the K-12 Gallery downtown and a local artist named Chad Johnson, paid for by a grant from Montgomery County Recycling. That's why it's made out of old, recycled silverware. It's 5-by-4 feet, and if you look really close there's a butterfly hidden in it. I'll go outside and see families have kids getting their pictures taken with it.
Q: Why an apple?
Riley: It symbolizes how our focus here has changed to get the most nutritious food that we can to people in need — our commitment to fresh produce. Part of our product rebranding is an apple as the symbol. Our logo now has an apple on it, and we're making Cora, a big papier-mache talking apple, as our mascot in the warehouse.
Q: We just walked through the warehouse. I missed a giant talking apple.
Riley: She isn't here yet, but she'll be out. We have a great college extern working here who's going to wear the costume, a big fat red apple body, and she'll talk to everyone who visits.
Q: I didn’t realize you have that many visitors to a warehouse.
Riley: We do. All our volunteers, our members when they come to pick up food, and a lot of people want to walk through and visit before they commit to volunteering, to learn what they're signing up for.
Q: How many volunteers do you have?
Riley: Last year, we had 2,100 who gave 13,000 volunteer hours. My favorite thing for volunteers to help with is food distribution to senior citizen centers. We also have a lot of people helping right how putting our raised, urban gardens together. Those are brand new, and we've wanted them for a long time — we have 2½ acres of gardens, raising the main seven shelf-stable crops — carrots, oranges, potatoes, cabbage, apples, sweet potatoes, onions — and some specialty crops. We also have a constant need for food sorting — everything that comes in has to be checked for the expiration date and the integrity of the package, before it's repackaged and sent out to our member agencies.
Q: Staff and budget?
Riley: Staff is 27, 15 of whom work in the warehouse. I run the place like a business, like I'm giving every dollar myself. Our 990 will show a $10 million operation, but most of that is food, which is in-kind. So if you take that off, the actual operation budget is around $1.6 million. We're lean and mean that way.
Q: So, where does the food come from?
Riley: We have five streams. First is local merchants, many — actually, most — of whom donate their past-sell-date food to us. Then there are two state grants, both for $376,000, coming to us out of the state farm bill. One is for shelf-stable canned goods, and one is for fresh produce that has to be spent in the state of Ohio, going to our farmers, so that the money goes full circle.
Q: There’s a nice symmetry to that, I guess.
Riley: There really is. Then there's federal — where we don't get the dollars, we get actual food. Say, if a farmer has too much corn and the federal government is leveling off the price of corn by buying it up, then food banks get the corn. Fourth is wholesale purchase, where we are buying food directly — that amounts to about $500,000 a year, and we spend it on specialty food products for such things as the Good-to-Go backpack program for school kids, and senior boxes. Finally, we get food from local food drives. Those are very important to us.
Q: How many food banks like yours are there in Ohio?
Riley: Twelve. We're the smallest — as in the smallest delivery area, but with the sixth-highest need in the state.
Q: Are they similar to your operation, or all different?
Riley: Every single one is different. We're mostly a central warehouse that distributes food through member organizations, which range from range from soup kitchens to shelters, pantries — a lot of which are in churches — to mobile sites, and kids-cafe after-school food programs. But each Ohio food bank is different — the one in Cincinnati, for instance, has a pantry right on site, and has social services built in. The same with Akron, Columbus. Cincinnati also has cooking training programs to help teach re-entry felons skills they need to get back into society with good jobs. We don't get involved in programs, we serve other non-profits. If we see a need no one else can fill, we'll try it — which is why we do the senior programs, and the after-school backpacks. Nobody else can do 1,400 backpacks a week, which is what we're up to now. Really, though, keeping us mostly a pure food bank was one of the smartest things our founders did.
Q: Remind us of the history.
Riley: Burma Rai, the original director, started it as a food recovery program, saving and using what people threw out, and then it became the Emergency Resource Food Bank under the Red Cross. Then in 2004, they brought it out as a standalone non-profit. Next year will be our 40th anniversary.
Q: If you could speak to prospective presidential candidates on behalf of those living in poverty, what would you say?
Riley: Raise the minimum wage. That would eliminate a lot of the people needing assistance.
Q: What else could be done to fight hunger effectively in our area?
Riley: Support your local food bank and/or the 106 local nonprofits who feed the hungry. Push elected officials to address poverty with legislation that makes sense. Do your homework regarding poverty issues. While we have a very high poverty rate, I think it is because we do a great job signing people up for help. I think the nation is a lot poorer than we know. Poverty and the issues surrounding poverty are not popular. Many rural counties lack the transportation and many states deny they have the same issues, but I think that is because they don't do as good of a job in reporting the true numbers of poor citizens in their respective areas. Poverty out of sight is out of mind. We have the opportunity to showcase what is good about this area when the presidential debate comes to Wright State this year. As a community leader, I agree that this is not the time to disparage our community. However, we cannot overlook the poor. Talking about minimum wage is the single most effective way to push the potential Presidential candidates to talk about how they will solve this problem and how they will address the growing numbers of poor.
Q: Do you think things will get better for the poor, or worse?
Riley: Depends on who's elected.
Q: What else are you passionate about?
Riley: Friends, billiards, poker, bourbon, writing and photography. Oh, and I really like napping.
Q: What inspires you about Dayton?
Riley: I was born in Dayton. Everything inspires me about Dayton. I have traveled the world and still I choose Dayton. It is a great pond to fish in. Dayton is my never-ending project.
Q: If you could change or bring one thing to Dayton, what would it be?
Riley: I would put a spell on all Dayton residents that only allowed them to talk positive about this area. In this context, we are our own worst enemies. If I could bring one thing, it would be continuous economic development around the water, from one end of Dayton to the other.
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