A Trip Down Memory Lane1985 — Founding
“Not only was it responsible to the community;
right from the beginning, it was the community.”
— Father John Rawlinson, one of ACCFB’s founders
Alameda County Community Food Bank was born of a grassroots collaboration of 40 food distribution agencies that banded together to share resources, and develop the infrastructure and support needed to get food onto community members’ tables.
In 1985, Ken Schmidt, then Director of the Telegraph Community Center in Oakland, led the effort for a group of independent community organizations—many of which remain members of our partner network today—to form The Food Bank Network of Alameda County, Inc.
Ken signed the articles of incorporation on February 5, 1985.
Late 80’s to Early 90’s
Our first decade in business saw our organization truly take the shape of what it has become today.
In 1986 we became a member of the Second Harvest National Food Bank Network – known today as Feeding America.
In 1989, we changed our name to the current “Alameda County Community Food Bank,” making “community” our middle name to showcase our roots and focus. (You may not notice it at first glance, but our current logo, which we adopted in 2017, has “Community” bolded to stand out from the rest!) That same year we played a pivotal role in supporting a community impacted by the Loma Prieta earthquake.
In 1991 we launched our Nutrition Education program, which has a legacy that continues to this day. Nutrition education was a driving force in the success of our move to distribute more produce, helping to create one of the first Food Bank nutrition policies. To this day, it is instrumental in providing our community resources to eat healthier and make the most of the food they receive.
Our “Hunger Hotline” began operating in 1994, helping to directly connect people to resources, making food even more accessible. At its launch, the Hotline referred 200 families to an emergency food source (e.g., food pantries or “soup kitchens” as they were then called). Today, what is now called the Emergency Food Helpline averages up to 1,500 referrals every month, while households can also find resources at our web-based referral sites foodnow.net and comidaahora.net.
In 1995, our longest tenured employee, Erick Lovdahl, started at the Food Bank. After volunteering for a few weeks, he was hired as a driver. Thirty years later, Erick now serves as Vice President of Operations, overseeing our warehouse, food procurement, and transportation teams
A Legacy of Forceful and Impactful Advocacy
Alameda County Community Food Bank firmly believes that bold policy and government accountability are required to ever truly end hunger. That is why, since 1998, ACCFB’s advocacy department—one of the farthestreaching in the nation—has been pushing bounds to advocate for local, state, and national policies, building towards a hunger-free future.
Much of this work happens behind the scenes, and impactful legislative change can often take years to come to fruition. But through strong coalitions and forceful grassroots advocacy efforts, we’re proud to have played a significant role in many major changes over the decades. Just a few highlights include:
- In 2014, we helped lift the ban on CalFresh access for people with prior drug felony convictions.
- In 2018, after a decade of advocacy (one of our longest fights ever!), we were able to expand CalFresh eligibility to older adults and people living with disabilities who rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. This policy win translated to a potential 30 million meals for Alameda County’s 50,000 SSI recipients.
- In 2021, ACCFB successfully fought for California to become the first state in the nation to provide permanent universally-free school meals in public schools.
- Continuing efforts to expand CalFresh benefits, in 2023, ACCFB secured an increase in the minimum CalFresh benefit from $23 to $50 per month. That same year we helped secure the expansion of hunger relief benefits to Californians ages 55 and older, regardless of immigration status, which will begin in 2027.
Today, the advocacy continues, and the Food Bank remains committed and strategic as ever in the face of federal cuts and uncertainty.
2003 – CalFresh Outreach
In 2003, Liz Gomez, then the Food Bank’s emergency food helpline coordinator, noticed a troubling trend: many callers seeking same-day food assistance likely qualified for, but were not enrolled in CalFresh. CalFresh (formerly food stamps) is a program which many consider to be the nation’s first line of defense against hunger. Recognizing the need for change, Liz launched ACCFB’s CalFresh Outreach Program, now the longest-running program of its kind in California, and one of the largest in the nation.
2017 Freshy Awards winner Liz Gomez, center, with ACCFB’s CalFresh Outreach Team
Starting as a two-person team—Liz and an Americorps volunteer—they began by hand-completing 25-30 applications every day, each 16 pages in length. “At the end of each day, I stuffed the completed applications into envelopes and drove them over to the Social Services office,” says Liz.
The program expanded with a USDA grant in 2005 to offer Chinese language support. And in 2006, Alameda County Social Services began funding the program, recognizing its high approval rates. This collaboration established ACCFB as the county’s lead contractor for CalFresh assistance.
Over the next decade, Liz refined the program, which now includes pre-screening, application assistance, and training for community partners. Our food bank also became a model for similar programs state- and nationwide.
Today, Liz is the Food Bank’s chief impact officer, and the CalFresh Outreach team consists of 16 multi-lingual staff, and has helped more than 100,000 households in 22 years. Since 2020 alone, the program has secured over $206,000 million in benefits to our local economy, providing over 38 million meals.
2005 (Part 1) – A Permanent Home
“Our helpline call volume skyrocketed in the middle of 2005,” remembers Suzan Bateson, ACCFB’s executive director at the time. “We thought it was because of a grant we’d received to do some advertising, but it turned out to be much bigger. It was a canary in the coal mine. We were on the cusp of a recession.”
When Suzan took the helm of Alameda County Community Food Bank in 2001 she was tasked with was finding a new facility. Having been headquartered on the Oakland Army Base since 1999, ACCFB’s Board of Directors knew it was a matter of time before we were ordered off. With the help of a buyout—and some important lessons learned from other local Food Banks who’d built permanent homes—Suzan and the Board went to work.
Community need was on a steep upward trajectory, and food—particularly farm-fresh produce—had become more readily available. One thing was certain: we needed more capacity, and we needed more space.
That building is where you stand now: our fourth—and permanent—home at 7900 Edgewater Drive, which will celebrate its own 20-year anniversary this summer.
Securing this space wasn’t easy and even Suzan had doubts. “I didn’t know how we could afford this,” she recalls. But with the help of a few intrepid Board members—Beth Sawi, Dan Scarola, and Chip Conradi—ACCFB figured out the math and launched a successful capital campaign to ensure we could own the building outright.
ACCFB distributed less than 15 million pounds of food our first year in this facility. Today, that amount has quadrupled to 60 million pounds. And that’s only part of the story of the next 20 years…
Original architectural rendering
What a difference 20 years makes: ACCFB’s permanent home in 2005 (top) and today (bottom).
2005 (Part 2) – A Healthy Turn
“The last straw was Pepsi Blue,” recalls Suzan Bateson of the soda which was ubiquitous in stores in the early 2000s—and also happened to take up a lot of space in our warehouse.
It may seem strange today, but 20 years ago soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages played a big role in food banking. At the time food banks like ours were judged almost entirely by the pounds of food we distributed—and even needed to meet quotas set by Feeding America. Soda, among other things, was heavy and helped (so to speak).
The negative health impacts of soda on our community were as clear in 2005 as they are today. It just took one of the boldest moves in food banking history to do something about it.
After consulting with ACCFB’s Board (“Have you lost your mind,” they asked.) and offering an ambitious plan, Suzan changed the future of food banking by banning soda from our distribution and replacing the pounds with farm-fresh fruits and vegetables.
Farms were growing produce in excess, which was an untapped opportunity. Food banks were just getting into the business of produce at the time (in very limited quantities), but with the right resolve and teamwork, the potential was practically limitless.
We first partnered with other local food banks to split truck loads. Our operations team quickly learned how to turn around highly perishable food, while our programs and nutrition teams worked with agency partners and clients to navigate the shift. Soon enough the agencies and, importantly, clients, began to like the change.
In just one year we replaced a 1-million-pound gap left by soda entirely with fresh produce. Today, farm-fresh fruits and vegetables make up more than half of what we provide, to the tune of 25 million pounds per year.
2006 – 2011
Children make up the largest group that food banks like ours serve. And for the past 20 years, we’ve doubled down on efforts to serve this population, devoting specific resources to ensuring that all children in Alameda County are nourished.
In 2006 we launched our Children’s BackPack Program. Acknowledging that school meals were often the only source of nutrition for many children, this program provided bags of produce and other healthy grocery items for schoolchildren to pick up at school and take home to their families. In the pilot year we partnered with three schools in Oakland. Within 5 years that number grew to 24 schools county-wide.
Building on the success and convenience of the BackPack program we launched our Mobile Pantry (MoPa) program pilot in 2011. The MoPa brought a full truckload of food to schools and provided a farmers market-style distribution for schoolchildren and their families. Mobile Pantries soon became the cornerstone of our childhood hunger programs, and would remain so for nearly a decade. Today, the essence of the MoPa—convenience and lowered stigma—lives on through our partnership with Stephen & Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, and the ELP Bus.
The same year we piloted the Mobile Pantry Program, we began partnering with local libraries to expand the free summer lunch program for children, by offering volunteer support, helpline referrals, and marketing. Not only did this effort expand access to healthy nutrition while school was out, it also helped drive library use during summer months!
2011 was a busy year at ACCFB. Our Community Engagement Center (where you are standing in right now!) opened that year. This full acre of space has enabled us to welcome thousands more volunteers every year which has been critical to the expansion of our essential food distribution programs.
2006 – 2011
Over the last decade, Alameda County Community Food Bank’s nutrition education and outreach efforts have been converging at the intersection of hunger relief and healthcare. ACCFB is among the nation’s food banking leaders in burgeoning “Food as Medicine” initiatives.
In 2015, ACCFB was one of three food banks nationwide to participate the FAITH-DM clinical intervention trial in partnership with UC San Francisco. Through the study, ACCFB provided 120 participants with enough groceries to make 56,000 diabetic specific meals and conducted 30 nutrition and self-management classes. FAITH-DM examined the role that access to nutritious food has in improving the health outcomes of patients with type 2 diabetes, furthering evidence that food security and stable sources of fruits and vegetables improve nutrition.
In 2017, ACCFB furthered Food As Medicine initiatives and studies, with the Diabetes Prevention Pilot Project (DPP). Building upon the learnings from FAITH-DM, DPP partnered with agency partners and mobile pantry sites throughout the county, offering diabetes screenings, nutrition education, and medically tailored food packages to community members with pre-diabetes.
Starting in January 2024, Alameda County Community Food Bank became the first food bank in California to provide medically supportive food and nutrition services within California’s Medi-Cal CalAIM Initiative. In partnership with Alameda Alliance for Health, the primary Medi-Cal plan in the county, the Food Bank is providing 12 weeks of home delivered healthy groceries to Medi-Cal patients with chronic conditions. ACCFB’s Food As Medicine program is now fully staffed and is working towards a goal of referring 50 new patients each month while advising other food banks on how they can implement similar programs.
ACCFB’s Food as Medicine initiatives are a core part of our Food Justice efforts, working at the intersections of food access, nutrition, health, and healthcare.
FAITH-DM participant with a box of groceries
Food as Medicine Program Manager, Rebecca Murillo, preparing boxes of fresh produce for the program’s recipients.
2016 Feeding America Food Bank of the Year
By the time Alameda County Community Food Bank reached its 30th anniversary, our reputation as an innovative and boundary-pushing organization had permeated throughout the Feeding America network.
That reputation was solidified on April 20, 2016 when—in front of hundreds of leaders representing the nation’s network of 200 food banks—we were named as Feeding America’s Food Bank of the Year.
Awarded annually at Feeding America’s network conference, this recognition was given to the “most outstanding food bank in the Feeding America network for going above and beyond its core mission of providing for the hungry.” In honoring Alameda County Community Food Bank, Feeding America recognized our grassroots advocacy efforts; CalFresh outreach; innovative partnerships with schools and local government; and progressive nutrition policies. All these efforts were instrumental in setting the foundation for the bold work which continues today.
“The Alameda County Community Food Bank is a highly collaborative organization that shares best practices, tactics and ideas with the Feeding America nationwide network of food banks. They actively participate in committees at the national office, present at our conferences throughout the year, and generously mentor other food banks,” said Diana Aviv, CEO of Feeding America at the time.
While being named the national Food Bank of the Year was, perhaps, the pinnacle of recognitions, it was just one of many high-profile awards that ACCFB and our staff has been honored with. Other recognitions have included:
- San Francisco Business Times CFO of the Year – Amy Donovan (2013)
- Association of Fundraising Professionals Fundraiser of the Year – Barbara Darrow-Blake (2016)
- Feeding America’s Jon van Hengel Award recognizing the most outstand Food Bank leader – Suzan Bateson (2020)
- Bay Area Jefferson Award – Liz Gomez, in recognition of her lasting contributions to CalFresh/SNAP outreach efforts (2023)
- Food Bank News Executive Director of the Year – Regi Young (2025)
- Feeding America’s Advocacy Hall of Fame; East Bay Express – Best Nonprofit; J. Weekly – Best Nonprofit; Oakland Magazine – Best Nonprofit … too many times to count!
2020 COVID-19 Pandemic Response
Food Banks, by nature, are emergency response organizations. Day in and out we are called upon to support neighbors experiencing food insecurity due to any number of emergencies. Some of the most well-known crises to face the Bay Area have happened during Alameda County Community Food Bank’s 40 years—from natural disasters like the Loma Prieta earthquake (1989) and the Oakland Hills Fire (1991) to a prolonged government shutdown in 2018-2019 that left thousands of local government employees without pay for more than a month.
No disaster, however, tested the limits and resolve of our community and organization quite like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initial stay at home order on March 19, 2020 we experienced a 1,000% increase in calls to our Emergency Food Helpline. Within weeks, we’d opened a second facility in an Oakland Unified School District building and opened our first drive-through food distribution, in partnership with the County of Alameda. The first drive-through distribution served 28 cars, but soon grew to more than 1,000 cars, three days a week. Shortly thereafter similar drive-throughs in Hayward and Pleasanton were set up. In the first three months, those drive-through distributions provided 1.2 million meals to more than 62,000 families.
The changes we experienced in the early months of the pandemic shaped much of what would become the ACCFB we know today, notably:
- A dramatic, nearly overnight increase in partnerships with local school districts, thanks in large part to the Oakland A’s and Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation.
- The launch of our first home delivery pilot in May 2020—a program that became permanent and still exists today.
- Our first 1 million pound week of food and 4 million pound month. (Levels which we’ve maintained, and often exceed, to this day.)
- Significantly higher case loads for CalFresh (SNAP) enrollment, largely thanks to pandemic EBT benefits.
- A 40%+ increase in distribution partners within our agency network.
2024 – Dig Deep Farms
In 2024, the Alameda County Community Food Bank took a major step towards creating a more equitable, local food system by partnering with Dig Deep Farms—a nonprofit, BIPOC-run, organic and regenerative farm located at Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont. As the farm’s fiscal sponsor, ACCFB is helping provide the necessary logistics, resources, and financial support to ensure the farm’s stability and long-term success.
Food grown at Dig Deep Farms comes directly back to the Food Bank warehouse and is provided to partner agencies or distributed through medically tailored CalAim boxes, providing fresh produce to residents with chronic illnesses.
This partnership is a key step towards Alameda County Community Food Bank’s evolution toward Food Justice. As the pilot initiative for our new Food Justice Incubator, our partnership with Dig Deep Farms aims to have an impact that reaches far beyond the core work of providing food to the community. This partnership will help increase land equity for BIPOC farmers while supporting a regenerative, local food source for Alameda County. Dig Deep Farms employs 18 farmers of various ages and cultural backgrounds, paying them living wages and reinvesting profits into the farm.
With the Food Bank’s support, the farm can focus on growing its core business while strengthening the local economy. These steps are essential for fostering a more just and equitable local food system and the Food Bank will continue to support Dig Deep Farms for the next two to three years to help it grow and operate independently—while also applying the learnings from this partnership to further Food Justice investments.
Today…and Beyond
Since 1985 Alameda County Community Food Bank has built a reputation of innovation and boundary-pushing which has placed us at the forefront of hunger relief efforts locally, regionally, and nationwide.
Since our inception we have experienced, and often led, a dramatic shift in the role that Food Banks are compelled to play in the anti-hunger space—from purely serving as a source of emergency food to proactively advancing solutions to the systemic issues that cause hunger in the first place. As we take the lessons of the last 40 years and look towards the future, we recognize the importance of returning to the activism roots and community-centric work of hunger relief which the East Bay—dating back to the Black Panthers—is known for.
At our core, Alameda County Community Food Bank’s primary role remains ensuring access to healthy food. And at the same time, we are adopting a Food Justice mindset.
Our new strategic plan, launching on July 1, 2025, builds upon our history and core business to further strengthen food systems, foster innovation, and promote long-term food security and equity by addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty.
This is a journey we believe can truly end hunger in Alameda County. We’re grateful you’re joining us.
