Emergency Fund Raiser for Livermore's Open Heart Kitchen

There's a big fundraiser on Thursday, November 20 for Open Heart Kitchen in Livermore. The slumping economy has hit everyone hard. But Open Heart Kitchen, which provides food for the poor, seniors, and school students in Livermore, Pleasanton, and Dublin, has struggled more than most. The only supplier of free hot meals to the needy in the Tri-Valley has seen demand for its services increase while their donations have sharply declined. Diablo talked with Open Heart’s executive director, Linda McKeever, about the organization’s struggles and how people can help.

Diablo:   Describe Open Heart Kitchen’s mission.
Linda McKeever: We feed anyone in need in the Tri-valley area, in Dublin, Pleasanton, and Livermore. We have three different programs: we serve a hot meals program that provides hot meals to anyone in need. We also have a box lunch program that specifically serves children on the Title 1 program, providing them lunches during the weekend when they aren’t provided for by the government. And then we have a senior program that serves low-income seniors. We’ve been around since 1995. Last year we served over 160,000 meals, and there’re thousands of people we reach every week.

Diablo:   What happened to cause your financial difficulties?
Linda McKeever:The economy, the economy is what happened to us. We’ve never been put in this kind of position before where the numbers starting increasing so dramatically in such a short period of time, and then the funding just dried up. Unlike any other non-profit, we don’t have any for-fee services and every year we have to raise all of our money. We have had wonderful community support in the past from the homebuilders, from the realtors, from the banking community, but since this economy has turned down, they’re just not in that same kind of position [to help]—along with the retail stores who are also hurting. And then the individual donations pretty much dried up because people are so nervous about the economy.

Diablo:   How bad has it been?
Linda McKeever: We were down to six weeks of funding left. We had a reserve and we were using it, hoping that things would pick up for our fourth quarter, which is normally our largest time for donations, and it just was not happening. I think that everyone got very very nervous and cut way back on the donations and it just happened to hit us really hard.
In the last two months, [the demand for our services] has been increasing by 20 percent. Also, our food costs have increased—now there’s a fuel cost that’s been added on to all deliveries. At the same time, our donations are down by about 40 percent, so we’re really hurting.

Diablo:    How have people reacted to the recent media attention of Open Heart’s struggles?
Linda McKeever: The community has really reached out because they realize we’re the only ones in the area who do this service, there’s no one else for people in this area to turn to—people want this program to survive. They have responded wonderfully and we’re very happy about that. We just need people to continue to reach in and help us out.
We’d love to have anybody to just come to see the program and experience it and volunteer. All of our meals and all of our services, that’s all done by volunteers: they’re the ones who cook the meals, serve the meals, who help us feed people.

Diablo:   What would you say to potential volunteers and donors who maybe are struggling themselves right now?
Linda McKeever: Every single small donation helps. Just $30 provides food for 20 people, it provides 20 hot meals. A lot of people in the area have lost their jobs. It’s especially hard on single parent households where they’re the only income, so we’re that gap, we’re the safety net for hunger in the Tri-valley—this is where they come. I’d ask people to please, just reach into your heart and donate.

To donate money or volunteer for Open Heart Kitchen fundraisers, call Linda McKeever at (925) 580-1616. To volunteer, sign up online at www.openheartkitchen.org, or call (925) 580-1619.

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