By the numbers

There are many ways to describe the Survival Center. Most describe us by our programs, as a place that provides "food, clothing and community" to folks in need. For those of us at the center on a daily basis, our images of ASC may have more to do with the people who work at and use the center: Debbie in the pantry, who at 70 still travels for an hour on two buses every morning to open things up as she has for the past thirty years; Marla and Linda, busy by 7:30 chopping and stirring in preparation for lunch; Vern, Andrew, Anita, and Chuck making sure that everything is presentable before we open our doors; Collette, Susan, Peggy, Greg, Curtis, Bart, Adam, Cathy, Mary...The center is rich with stories of the people who come through daily.

A third way of describing ASC is "by the numbers." This perspective took a front seat this week as we finalized the budget for Fiscal Year 2008, which begins in July. Numbers can be very revealing, and, through this process, I gained a much clearer sense of our impact. For example, last year we prepared 10,000 hot nutritious lunches, provided boxes of food staples to 3,000 households, distributed at least 50,000 pounds of fresh produce and bread, and made roughly 12,000 pounds of donated clothing and housewares available to consumers. That’s a lot for a little place like ours, situated in a few rooms in the basement of an old school.

I also learned how cost effective our operation is. Our cook and her crew put together a sumptuous lunch for approximately $3 per person. That means that we’re catering daily for 50 people at a cost of just $150. Food boxes in the pantry cost us about $10 each. A box, which contains canned food, pasta, peanut butter, and often frozen meat, juice and oil, supplies nine meals for a family of four. $100, then, provides emergency supplies for forty people for three days.

It’s also striking to see how many people we serve. Our statistics show that we make about 18,000 client contacts a year, approximately 87 each day from twenty area towns spanning from Amherst to Ware, from Hadley to Greenfield. Volunteer statistics are remarkable as well. We average 115 volunteers each month, many of whom are also clients. Together, they put in about 15,000 hours of labor annually cleaning, cooking, answering phones, picking up and sorting donations, and performing dozens of other critical tasks. That works out to a whopping 72 volunteer hours contributed each day, equal to the work of 9 full time employees!

So, while it’s true that numbers can never tell the whole story, these numbers do tell a revealing one of an agency working hard to fulfill its mission. Amherst Survival Center clearly plays a vital and unique role in meeting people’s needs for “food, clothing and community” in the broader Amherst area, a role we plan to keep filling for at least thirty years more!