How will it impact your Employees, Volunteers, and Donors?
Trinity Cafe:
Employees All of our staff will join the blended family and become employees of Feeding Tampa Bay on January 1, 2019. None of our staff will lose a job. Feeding Tampa Bay is honoring our original dates of hire for seniority as well as our current pay rate. Feeding Tampa Bay has a commitment to a living wage, and many of our kitchen staff are receiving salary increases to $13/hour. All of our staff will benefit from a more affordable health care package and generous benefits including paid time off, holidays and more. This was such good news to deliver and share with our team! We are also gaining amazing, talented colleagues who are committed to fighting hunger! Our family table is getting much bigger!
Volunteers The merger will provide our volunteers and supporters with many more opportunities to be involved in alleviating hunger and providing a hand up to the guests we serve. Our two organizations are excited to cross-promote our many volunteer opportunities: serving at our cafe, sorting food at the warehouse, assisting at a mobile pantry and more.
Donors We need your support now more than ever as we strive to do more together! All gifts prior to December 31, 2018, should continue to be made payable to Trinity Cafe, PO Box 8067, Tampa FL 33674, or ONLINE Beginning January 1, 2019, Trinity Cafe will be a program of Feeding Tampa Bay. Donations can be designated to support the cafe either ONLINE or by mail to Feeding Tampa Bay/Trinity Cafe, 4702 Transport Drive Bldg. 6, Tampa FL 33605. You may direct your donation to a particular program if you wish.
Feeding Tampa Bay:
Employees Our colleagues are really energized by the collaboration and look forward to working more closely with our new Trinity Cafe teammates. We know many of them already and this is really a deepening, not a new relationship. Moreover, we are all thrilled about the model of service Trinity Cafe brings to our work as it will inform our other programs. Finally, serving a person a meal is a deeply meaningful moment, and we are pleased we will be able to have that in our new partnership.
Volunteers Our volunteers are and will be thrilled. We can offer a richer, deeper and wider variety of service options for those who want to be a part of our work. Whether it’s filling a car with groceries, repacking produce or serving a meal, we have it all! What a great way to participate – have a menu (pun intended) of options.
Donors, I think our donors will all be pleased that we are being bold and brave – and thinking differently about how to serve the community. Our ability to be of service is directly affected by our donors, and I know that maximization of resources is music to the ears. Greater leverage equals greater capability – and anyone who’s ever donated wants maximum impact. Our partnership takes that to another level.
How will it impact your efficiency, quality of operations and financial stability?
Trinity Cafe: We have capacity in our kitchen to prepare and serve more meals, and the merger with Feeding Tampa Bay offers a great opportunity to do so across a 10-county area. We have partnered for years on donated food and low-cost purchases from Feeding Tampa Bay. As a merged entity we will see efficiencies, cost savings as well as greater opportunity for our most purchased products. The operations and management of both our cafe locations will be improved by the skilled team at Feeding Tampa Bay who provide oversight and auditing of facilities. Ultimately, we anticipate cost savings, improved efficiencies and greater value to our donors and guests we serve.
Feeding Tampa Bay: Feeding Tampa Bay is already recognized in our field for being one of the most efficient organizations. For every $1 raised we can deliver 10 meals to the community when the average across our network is around 4-5 meals for every $1. The merger allows Trinity Cafe to expand, a key vision of their board, and it offers Feeding Tampa Bay the ability to offer meals for other services and programs. Both organizations benefit from developed capacity brought about by the merger.
The biggest challenge so far in bringing your two nonprofits together?
Trinity Cafe: Leading change and building trust as we merge our two organizations into one blended family.
Feeding Tampa Bay: I would agree with Mandy, change is a challenge for all of us and it demands you re-examine what you believe and how you live that out. There’s nothing like a new relationship to help you take a look at who you are, what you do and how you go about that. In all of our conversations about working together, culture came up most often – and it was here that we found mutual ground to stand on and the platform the merger was built upon.
Tell us about the social impact of your respective nonprofits?
Trinity Cafe: Trinity Cafe has served more than 1.4 million meals to guests with dignity since our founding in 2001. Last year we served 127,780 meals, approximately 28.8% percent more than the previous year. We had 16,751 dining room volunteers at two locations serve 41,878 hours, which saved us more than $966,000 in labor costs. Of these volunteers, 3,687 were first-time volunteers to our organization. We raised $1 million dollars which purchased, renovated and opened our beautiful Nebraska Ave. commercial kitchen and dining room in April of 2013. In 2014 we increased service from 5 to 7 days a week at this location. We opened our second location on Busch Blvd in the North Tampa hunger gap in April of 2016. We added breakfast at the Busch Blvd. location in March of this year. In April this year, we implemented a kid’s take-home meal program.
Beyond nourishment, the other important aspect of our mission is nurturing the spirits of our guests. They hunger for a sense of community, conversation, and acknowledgment.
Each is greeted by a volunteer maître ‘d, seated at tables set with tablecloths and flowers, then served their meal in courses on china. The goal is to offer a break from the street, where guests can sit, relax and enjoy conversation and a meal. Community volunteers host tables to offer friendship, support, a listening ear and that important connection to the community. People come for the social interaction as much as they do for the meal. Respect and compassion restore dignity and validates every person’s importance and value. Thousands and thousands of people benefit from our service and assurance that when they need a meal, Trinity Cafe will provide one, every day of the year.
Feeding Tampa Bay: Feeding Tampa Bay distributes more than 4 million meals every month to a 10-county region. We view ourselves as the centerpiece of this community. We connect more than 600 business and corporations who provide resources for the mission to operate and 20,000+ volunteers who give nearly $1.5 million worth of hours. We partner with 500+ agency and community partners to provide food and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands of individuals who seek food assistance.
We believe that we can connect people to their best selves, whether you are giving or receiving a nutritious meal. Our goal is to return value to our partners who generously give of their funds and/or food, give volunteers the best three hours of their week, and restore health in the lives of those we serve through the food we provide.
On an annual basis, Feeding Tampa Bay provides 50 million meals a year, connects thousands to benefits and services that enable them to escape the bonds of poverty and lifts the capacity of 500 other organizations who provide food to their respective communities. This is social impact at its core: lifting and enabling those who are caught in the difficult middle-ground between capability and responsibility. When we close that gap, we create social justice and equality. We level the playing field, so to speak. In our view, social impact is delivered by being an effective service provider, advocate and change agent. We feel our work exemplifies this.
What does the future hold for your merged organization?
Trinity Cafe & Feeding Tampa Bay: We believe that food fuels human potential. The Feeding Tampa Bay and Trinity Cafe merger will provide our hungry neighbors with a greater ability to focus on their long-term well-being by alleviating the constraints of finding healthy food. Our vision is to replicate the Trinity Cafe model in more areas where the need exists and ultimately extend our service with quality of life benefits. As the backbone of hunger relief in Tampa Bay, Feeding Tampa Bay can leverage its food distribution network alongside the Trinity Cafe model to deliver current services and provide a broader response to hunger relief.
Trinity Cafe’s model and kitchen will be the centerpiece of expansion across Feeding Tampa Bay’s 10-county area of service. We envision community empowerment centers that will include short-term meals and long-term solutions, such as take-home meals, children’s meals, enrollment in benefits (i.e. SNAP) and in the future, a culinary training program. The collaboration in the social service sector and forward-thinking of this merge can also serve as a blueprint to be shared across the country via the Feeding America network.
How can our readers learn more/support your organizations?
Trinity Cafe: Consider making a gift or volunteering around the dining room table and becoming a part of our family at Trinity Cafe.
Feeding Tampa Bay: Be a voice, donate and volunteer at Feeding Tampa Bay.
