Sioux Lookout Food Bank closing in on fundraising goal to purchase lots for a new building

Tim Brody - Editor

The Sioux Lookout Food Bank is now more than halfway to its fundraising goal needed to purchase two adjoining lots for a new building.
Amanda Landgraff, Sioux Lookout Food Bank Manager, shared, “As of April 1st, the food bank has just over $100,000 towards our goal of $169,000 needed to purchase the properties we have an offer on! Early on in our building fund campaign, SkyCare offered to match up to $20,000 in donations, and an anonymous donor offered to match up to $15,000. This was such a great incentive, as people knew their gift would be doubled by these matching donors. Since hearing of the food bank’s need, many individuals from town, as well as churches, organizations, and businesses both in town and in Dryden have given generous donations - we are so grateful for their support! We still have a ways to go, and people can watch the Sioux Lookout Food Bank’s Facebook page for weekly updates on our fundraising thermometer. It’s really exciting to see it keep going up and up!”
Commenting on the need for a larger facility, Landgraff explained, “The Sioux Lookout Food Bank Board have been looking over the last year, year and a half, for a larger facility. They’ve looked at pretty much everything that was for sale during that time and just nothing was suitable both financially and structurally, even with renovations if you looked at the cost then it just wasn’t suitable. We really want to be all on the ground level for accessibility… we need more space, so the Board has come to the decision that perhaps the best thing to look at now is building new and first we have to buy property.”
She further explained, “The current space we’re in is just a little over 600 square feet and we would really like to have around 2400 to 2600 square feet, so about four times the size that we have. The things we want to add in that space would be essentially a space where our clients can come to us. Right now, there’s no space that really works to have clients come and pick up their food hampers. Traditionally food banks would always have a space where their clients come, they often have a bit of selection of the foods as well, we’d like to include that a bit, we want our clients to be able to come to us and receive their food, but we also need more space for storing food. We need more shelving basically, and we’d also like to have more freezer space.”
Landgraff said there have been instances in the past where the food bank was unable to accept frozen food donations due to a lack of freezer space.
“We also would love to increase our services a bit once we’re settled in a new building… then I can see us offering cooking classes to teach cooking skills and maybe even budgeting classes, just things to really help the client beyond giving them food to put on their table,” she said.
Currently, the Sioux Lookout Food Bank employs a delivery model whereby volunteers deliver food hampers to clients.
Commenting on how that model may change in a new building, Landgraff said, “I think right now what we’re considering would likely be, in our new facility, we would still prepare maybe a slightly smaller hamper with the staple items, but we do want to offer the client to have the choice for foods that they prefer for things like condiments, coffee and tea, specialty items – maybe some of the ethnic foods that we have.”
The blended model would allow clients a selection of items to browse, giving them more choice.
“The past few months we have, in a one month period, we delivered between 86 – 99 hampers per month. That served between 227 people and 320 people in those months,” Landgraff said. “She added, “In February we had one Saturday where we delivered 19 hampers in one day.”
Landgraff commented, “When I started as the manager in September, previous to that, the numbers that I could see looked like they continued through September and October to be about 50, 55 hampers a month. So, it has roughly doubled if we’re looking at 86 to 99 being our highest month. Now it’s sort of stayed at that.”
The Sioux Lookout Food Bank currently anticipates a need of approximately 100 food hampers a month.
 Landgraff said, “We are really excited about the possibility of purchasing two adjoining lots in the subdivision off 7th Avenue… So, we have an accepted offer which means that we need to raise the funds and we’re looking at our primary source of funds being donations being given from the community and the total cost to purchase both properties is $169,000 and that includes taxes.”
The signed offer to purchase the 5 and 7 Carlbom Drive lots is conditional on financing and rezoning.
Landgraff shared, “The conditions that we have are to be met by May 31.”
Purchasing the lots is phase one in making a new food bank building a reality. Phase two is excavating. Phase three is construction.
“We’re looking at grants that may be able to provide some funding, nothing would cover the whole building project, but you always have to own the land first,” Landgraff said. “There would be some costs that would need to fundraised for,” Landgraff noted of the excavation and building phases.
This will be a multi-year project Landgraff noted, “If we met our conditions May 31, the closing date would be near the end of June of this year. So, then this year we would have the lots, the empty land. I would guess that next year we would want to do the excavating at least, but if we were able to get grant money then break ground next year, it would be closed in before next winter and finished over the winter, best guess.”
People can make a donation to the new building by EMT to siouxfoodbank@gmail.com (no password is required) or by cheque, which can be mailed to: Sioux Lookout Food Bank, Box 674, Sioux Lookout, ON P8T 1B1.
Landgraff asks that people note “Building Fund” on their donation and provide their mailing address. 
The Sioux Lookout Food Bank is a registered charity and advised that receipts will be mailed at the end of the year for all donations.
“We do need continuing donations, so any time anyone wants to donate we have a bin set up to receive donations at both Giant Tiger and Fresh Market Foods, sort of after the tills as you’re leaving the store.,” Landgraff said. People can also make a monetary donation by cheque or EFT as noted above.