Food bank cuts off agencies

BOISE – The Idaho Foodbank has suspended food distribution to many agencies in the southern part of the state because some were collecting fees in exchange for food.

Selling food is against the policies of the food bank and America’s Second Harvest, a national charity affiliated with the food bank. It could cause the Boise food bank to lose its tax-exempt status with the IRS, officials said.

But officials with the Inland Northwest chapter of Second Harvest, the Spokane-based group that includes North Idaho, said the problem hasn’t affected food banks here.

“We have no concerns,” said Ann Price, the local director of development and community relations. “They were literally doing something illegal. We don’t charge our clients for food.”

Officials with the Idaho Foodbank suspended distributions to some groups this week.

“I realized the only way to make things change was to force it,” Roger Simon, executive director of the Idaho Foodbank. told the Idaho Statesman newspaper. “We’re seeing a problem, we’re stepping in. It woke people up.”

The food bank has formed a task force to investigate the problem, which officials said could take up to 60 days.

Officials at the Idaho Foodbank said they would pay for the costs usually charged to food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters for the rest of April to meet an expected higher demand.

In Idaho, nearly 90,000 people used emergency food assistance last year, according to a recent Second Harvest report.

The suspended shipments of food affect “self-help groups” – not food pantries, soup kitchens or emergency shelters.

In some cases, groups were charging a handling fee of $15 to hand out a box of food to a family or individual each week. Organizers said they were using the money to reimburse the food bank for a handling fee of 15 cents a pound to cover costs of transportation, packaging and storage.

Self-help groups are not supposed to pass the handling charge on to the people who receive the food. Last year, self-help groups in southern Idaho paid the Idaho Foodbank $190,000 in handling fees, according to an internal report given to the Idaho Statesman.

Some of the groups whose food supply was cut off said they had been following guidelines the food bank told them to use.

“This is what they’ve always told us,” said Marvin Roach, a volunteer with the Northwest Community Assisted Food Program, which distributes food to more than 1,200 people in the Treasure Valley outside Ada County. “Now they tell us we’ve been operating wrong. I’m trying to figure it out.”

In Eastern Washington and North Idaho, groups paid about $340,000 in “shared maintenance” costs to Second Harvest, Price said.

In this region, those costs are spread among about 300 groups that pay an average of 2 cents per pound in handling fees, she added. In addition, some agencies wind up paying even less because of available “credit pools” funded through state and federal sources, she said.

In southern Idaho, officials with Idaho Community Action Network, one of the larger self-help groups that receive food from the Idaho Foodbank, said they would start looking for other food donors.

“My concern is the families we serve,” said Michelle Brown, ICAN’s state food coordinator and administration director. “We’ve always done what the food bank told us to do. The whole thing has been set up by the food bank.”