Community organizations will receive money from Feinstein Challenge

$1 million will be distributed nationwide to hunger-relief organizations participating in the 10th annual Feinstein Challenge this spring.\nThe Feinstein Foundation promotes the food and funds drive to increase hunger awareness during March and April, according to the foundation’s Web site.\nSome Bloomington participants include Community Kitchen of Monroe County, Hoosier Hills Food Bank, Monroe County United Ministries, the Salvation Army and the Shalom Community Center.\nVicki Pierce, executive director of Community Kitchen, said organizations that raise more money will receive a proportionally larger amount of money from the foundation.\n“In earlier years, it was a dollar-for-dollar match, and now it’s much different, because so many organizations nationwide are involved,” Pierce said. “It’s grown so much over the years, so what that means is that we get less and less money each year, but also that we’re addressing hunger more widely nationwide.”\nDespite the national trend, Bloomington organizations agree hunger and poverty in Monroe County have increased in recent years.\n“In the past three years, we’ve seen a 100 percent increase in demand for food assistance,” said Rebecca Stanze, development coordinator of Monroe County United Ministries.\nThe poverty rate in Monroe County is 11 percent overall, Pierce said, and almost 19 percent of children experience hunger.\n“There’s an increase in donations both food and financial, but at the same time, we’re seeing increases in the clients that we get,” said Jennie Rasmussen, administrative assistant at Hoosier Hills Food Bank. “All of the response from the community has been great, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”\nThe foundation is able to fund the challenge well into the future because of founder Alan Feinstein’s efforts.\n“The money comes from the money I made while I was writing a national newsletter,” Feinstein said. “Now there’s $40 million in the foundation that earns interest at about $2 million a year.”\nAll proceeds from the challenge will go directly to the specific organizations participating, but for Community Kitchen, the challenge is more about promoting hunger awareness than raising money.\n“The cool thing about it is that it’s usually the largest grass-roots food donation organization in the country,” Pierce said. “It’s really just to get everybody together to raise awareness about hunger and poverty.”\nMonroe County United Ministries has participated in the challenge since 1997. Stanze said this year it has set a goal to raise 20,000 pounds of food.\nInner Chef in Bloomington has volunteered to accept donations for Monroe County United Ministries.\n“This new opportunity with Inner Chef downtown will make it a little bit easier for people that don’t know where we’re located to get involved,” Stanze said.\nHoosier Hills Food Bank is working to encourage students to get involved in the challenge.\n“I think students are living on a tight budget,” Rasmussen said. “But they could organize a food drive, or choose a neighborhood and go door to door, or they could encourage people to use leftover meal points to help donate.”