High Plains Food Bank seeing drop in donations during summertime

AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – The High Plains Food Bank said summertime is generally a slower time for them, as they see a drop in donations.

“People tend to think about us in the fall with the holidays and everything coming up, but we see a dip in the summertime. So what we are seeing right now is less donations, less monetary donations as well as product donations or people in the community actually doing food or fund drives for us,” said High Plains Food Bank Director of Marketing and Communications Zivorad Filipovic

Filipovic said during the rest of the summer they are trying to raise $40,000 to make up for that dip these past few months and he said it would really help them gear up for the fall months.

“We are just seeing a lot more people in our community needing the support and help of food items because of inflation and all the prices have gone up, gas is going up, everything has impacted these. Families are needing our help, so we’re reaching out to the community to ask whatever they can do to help us as far as doing a food or fund drive to really make sure that our pantries and agencies that we partner with can help all of those in the 29 counties that we serve,” said Filipovic.

Filipovic said they do not stop operations, they are year-round.

“There are people in need throughout the entire year, so when we see that big support in the fall because student councils are doing food drives, people are thinking about us because it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, but we go all year and we really need the support all year long. So if you are thinking about, like doing a drive we could always use it in the summertime,” said Filipovic.

Filipovic said during the summer, HPFB does a lot more with the Kids Café program and they see an increase in the kids they are helping with that program.

Catholic Charities of the Texas Panhandle said they are also feeling that summertime dip.

“Donations are not keeping pace with the rising cost of food and the increasing number of people that we help…The people that we help are also feeling the cost of inflation and so our numbers are increasing by about 100 people every single month,” said Davina Brown, director of community services with Catholic Charities of the Texas Panhandle.

Brown added that they work closely with the High Plains Food Bank.

“We order a lot of our food from them, without them, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do and serve the amount of people that we serve. We are also having to buy our food from local services at their costs, which is much higher than what we would normally pay High Plains Food Bank because donations are down…donating to High Plains Food Bank allows us to purchase food at a lower cost and donating directly to us helps us help our people directly,” said Brown.

Brown said the need to help those in the community does not go away during the summer months.

“We always have a lot of canned food drives during the holiday months and people always think about people in need during the holidays, but people are always in need all throughout the year,” said Brown.

Brown added that Catholic Charities of the Texas Panhandle is actively doing fundraising and said they have their Monte Carlo Night coming up on Aug. 17 and they have a matching challenge grant from the Bivins Foundation for $30,000. If they meet the goal, the Bivins Foundation will donate $30,000 to them.

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