STRATEGIC AREAS OF FOCUS

The Roadrunner Food Bank “Future Fund” was established in June 2021 to provide a firm financial foundation to ensure that the food bank and hunger-relief network will remain strong to serve our state for many years to come.

The focus of this restricted quasi-endowment is to invest and support the long-term needs of the food bank, its statewide hunger-relief network, and help to establish stability for future innovation.  As the invested funds grow, the organization anticipates being able to utilize a percentage of the investment income every year for furthering our hunger-relief work across the state while keeping the principal amount largely intact.

The funds from the Roadrunner Future Fund will provide support to four key areas of our work:

FOCUS AREA #1 – Long-Term Organizational Sustainability:

1. Hunger-Relief Network Support: Reduce or eliminate the shared costs partner agencies and fellow state food banks have as a result of being a member of Roadrunner’s hunger-relief network. This will allow these critical partners to have more cash resources for their own internal needs.
2. Expansion of our SeedCorps Program: Roadrunner’s AmeriCorps members are placed with many of our partner organizations in communities across the state. Our goal is to increase these placements. Our hunger-relief partners often need additional ‘boots on the ground’ to build capacity, provide nutrition education to clients, extend outreach into communities, provide long-term planning guidance, and support our partners with everyday activities inside their hunger-relief organizations – from volunteer recruitment to improving operational efficiencies and so much more.
3. Additional Food Distributions: Expand existing or establish new food distributions in targeted high-need areas where gaps of services may exist or where new services are needed to meet the need in a flexible and fluid way.
4. Staff Payroll Equity: Our staff is our greatest asset. Retain the best talent by ensuring the food bank can remain competitive with equitable pay and benefits to reduce turnover and remain efficient and effective in our work.

FOCUS AREA #2 – Invest in our Statewide Hunger-Relief Network:

Support for the overall hunger-relief network of partners is essential so Roadrunner plans to provide annual competitive capacity improvement grants to help our partners across New Mexico. Grants could be used to fund equipment needs like refrigerators, freezers, pallet jacks or to help implement new hunger-relief programs or expansion of current hunger-relief services. We anticipate the first round of grants to begin in 2022.

FOCUS AREA #3 – Address Capital Replacement Needs:

The food bank requires a significant investment in equipment to accomplish its mission.  From large scale tractor trailers (semis) to pallet racking, forklifts, pallet jacks, etc. – equipment can be extremely expensive to repair, maintain and replace.  A dedicated fund will allow us to retire and rotate out of service old equipment that is no longer viable to repair or too costly to repair.  In the past, if equipment like a semi was no longer operational it impacted our ability to plan routes to bring food to communities and partners.  Plus, old equipment limited our ability to expand routes to communities to provide additional food or include new partners in our network. Old equipment also caused delays in partners receiving food from our distribution center.  Newer equipment is less expensive to maintain and insure and increases the dependability of bringing food to communities and partners we serve.

FOCUS AREA #4 – Eliminate Burden of Debt:

Debt for non-profits ties-up funds needed to operate every day to accomplish our mission. In the non-profit world, there are no benefits in carrying debt for any extended period.  A portion of the funds were therefore used to pay off our building’s $8.5 million mortgage. Our distribution facility (the warehouse) is the conduit in how we safely receive, store and prep food to provide to communities, partners and people receiving emergency hunger-relief services across the state.  Paying off the building debt helped the organization long-term by:

1. Reducing the demand on our existing annual operating budget by $700,000 a year – this freed up those annual funds for use for other important mission-based activities.
2. Limiting the organizational debt risk in unknown financially turbulent times, and
3. Expanding leasing opportunities to raise private revenue in leasing available warehouse space to for-profit entities.

QUESTIONS?