Fifteen Years of FFEN: One Food Shelf, One Question at a Time
Fifteen years ago, a few board members at a Bloomington food shelf watched it run short on volunteers, food and money. Every decision was a reaction to the next emergency. They decided there had to be a better way.
In 2011, they launched Foundation for Essential Needs (FFEN). This month, FFEN turns 15. What began as help for one food shelf now strengthens more than 300 across Minnesota and western Wisconsin.
FFEN’s founding team includes Doug Kohrs, Ron Have, Robert Lange, Deb Krieg and Dennis Maetzold. Its early leaders include Marty Chorzempa, Dianne deJolsvay, Sue Gillman, Carolyn Kohrs, Shaye Mandle, Dave Sumnicht, Jessica Rausch, Susan Russell Freeman and Tim Ziaja.
From equipment to lasting change
At first, FFEN gave food shelves equipment: computers, refrigerators. But, the founders soon saw the real gaps ran deeper. Food shelves needed efficient operations, a dignified welcome, and the fresh foods shoppers say they need most. And those needs reached far beyond one food shelf.
“Every request we got was a crisis request, very few food shelves were thinking about long term solutions,” said founding member Doug Kohrs. “We used to just give stuff away, and now we think about the long-term sustainability when we do projects with food shelves.”
In 2013, FFEN opened its services statewide. A year later, it granted $20,000 to five food shelves. In 2017, it reorganized around a new idea: help food shelves plan ahead instead of patching problems one at a time.
“We soon realized we were trying to help people who often didn’t know what the problem was at their food shelf and didn’t have the time to figure it out,” Carolyn Kohrs said.
Today, FFEN helps leaders find those answers. It pairs each food shelf’s own service and sourcing numbers with statewide and regional benchmarks. Training, peer connections, on-site assessments and process improvement projects help food shelves expand hours, improve flow and operations, add fresh food and spend where it counts.
Graph paper and coffee
The early work was homegrown, but the ideas were the same. Dianne deJolsvay remembers a food shelf that stopped taking chicken because it disliked the food bank’s packaging. With FFEN’s guidance, the site’s leaders reached out to the food bank. That conversation was a turning point in opening up dialogue, she said.
She also remembers cutting out graph-paper shapes with Carolyn to plan food shelf layouts, work pro bono interior designers do now. Over coffee one day, Carolyn asked her to break down a food shelf’s invoices and see where its money went. That exercise became a service that informed spending at 230 food shelves. Every six months, it’s available to every food shelf in Minnesota and western Wisconsin for free so leaders can make informed spending decisions and track change over time.
From the start, Dennis Maetzold wanted FFEN to provide support and services to food shelves across the state. He’s always had an affinity for small-town Minnesota, he said, where food shelves often sit many miles and communities apart, and their leaders often work in isolation.
Those early relationships were built one phone call and one site visit at a time.
“So much of FFEN’s fifteen years comes down to one thing: people who trusted an idea before there was any proof it would work,” Carolyn Kohrs said.
Executive Director Kate Burggraff agrees. Support from founding and early members, donors and volunteers has been critical, she said.
“What FFEN does hasn’t really changed since the beginning: we help food shelves operate smarter, so their communities feel the impact,” Burggraff said. “That idea has just gotten bigger, and better resourced, and more trusted — by the sector, by the state, and with the help of all of FFEN’s donors, supporters, partner organizations and volunteers.”
Improvements, she said, still start the same way: one food shelf, one conversation, one question at a time.
