Volunteers are the heart of the Food Bank. Without their passion and dedication, we would not be able to serve 46,000 individuals each week. Last year, volunteers donated 91, 173 hours of their time ensuring only the best food leaves our warehouse, putting food in the hands of families in need and helping staff in our office.
April is Volunteer Appreciation Month, and we can’t thank our amazing volunteers enough for helping us run the Food Bank smoothly.
Susan Crews is one of the many regular administrative volunteers at the Food Bank, who is a great help in the office.
Though she’s now an administrative volunteer, she first began volunteering in 2008 in product recovery during her employer’s scheduled volunteer opportunities.
“We think that it’s the land of opportunity and that everybody has jobs and everybody has housing and that all the children are taken care of, and yet you can step outside your door and go just a few blocks away and see that that’s probably not the case,” Susan said. “You need food; you can’t do anything else without food. It’s vital.”
After retiring, she wanted to use her more than 35 years of experience in marketing to help staff at the Food Bank.
“I wanted to do something that was going to keep me a little bit more attuned, keep me familiar with some of my computer skills and also utilize a little bit what I may have to give back,” she said.
Her days in product recovery are behind her. Now, she’s a familiar face around the office and to volunteers. Susan helps check in volunteers and uses her skills to work with different departments in the Food Bank like volunteer resources, development, marketing, and distribution programs.
“It’s really nice to be able to connect and interface and socialize with people who are doing good things, interesting things and seem to enjoy doing it as well,” Susan said.
With so many years of volunteer experience, she still remembers when volunteers had to sign-in on a sheet of paper. As one of the volunteers who helped input volunteer hours into the Food Bank’s system, she wanted to make it easier for everyone. In 2015 she helped the Food Bank buy two Dell desktops to facilitate the volunteer sign-in process.
Just last year, she made a donation to the volunteer department to help improve the volunteer scheduling and tracking system.
“The reputation of the Food bank has always been phenomenal. I’ve always known that for all the time and all the money that is donated to it, it’s exponentially returned in terms of community service,” Susan said. “I’m proud to be affiliated with [the Food Bank] and I’m proud to tell people that I give my time.”
