Gather

April is Volunteer Appreciation Month! Gather's 700+ annual volunteers contributed 29,640 hours to our cause in 2024, which is the equivalent of 14 full-time employees. It only makes sense to kick off this month by recognizing and uplifting Gather's Board President, Rob Gibbons. Rob contributes countless hours championing Gather's fight against food insecurity through his governance role and through hands-on volunteering at our programs. A Senior Loan Officer for CMG Home Loans, Rob first joined the board in 2018. He is an enthusiastic, positive, and supportive leader with an inspiring commitment to our community. Rob recently shared with us how and why he is involved with Gather. Q: How did you hear about and become involved with Gather? Rob: Thanks to a friend's invitation to volunteer, my first experience with Gather was ten years ago at the Fill the Hall Fundraiser to collect food donations for their Meals 4 Kids summer programming. I was immediately drawn to Gather's mission and truly impressed by the incredible volunteers, staff, and community that are the backbone of the organization. Q: Why did you decide to join the Gather board? I really enjoy hands-on volunteering, but joining the board has given me the opportunity to provide strategic support to Gather that contributes to the organization's long-term sustainability and success. Q: What do you enjoy most about being on the board? Rob: Gather was founded over 200 years ago with the purpose of ‘gathering’ the community to support those in need. ?This mission has remained at its core, but the organization has evolved over the years to meet the changing times and increasing needs of its members. This dynamic has become much more acute as of late, driven by the pandemic and the financial hardships caused by inflation, which have put a great deal of demand on Gather and its resources. ?I’m continuously amazed to see Gather’s staff, volunteers, donors, and board rise to the occasion to ensure our members’ needs are met during these challenging times. #volunteers #boardofdirectors #volunteerappreciation #NH #NHnonprofits

Team members from the The Andover Companies and Kane Insurance, LLC recently took over the Gather warehouse in support of our inventory efforts. They spent the afternoon organizing food donations by date and type, which helps our staff to more efficiently move and distribute items through our different food access initiatives. Thank you to both companies for contributing to this essential step in our operations! #fooddistribution #foodinsecurity #fooddonations #nonprofitlife #volunteers

??? Gather pic of the week ??? Community and corporate volunteers are busy at Gather helping our staff complete a mock inventory in our warehouse annex, including a team from WIN Waste Innovations! This process is in preparation for our comprehensive annual inventory each June. Community volunteers are instrumental to Gather's ability to fulfill our mission. We cannot thank and recognize them enough. #NewHampshirevolunteers #volunteering #NHnonprofit #NHlife

Gather's Seacoast Waste Not (SWN) team recently recovered over 1,200 pounds of proteins from our food service industry partner, DiLuigi Foods. A family-owned business located in Danvers, Massachusetts, DiLuigi Foods provides premium meat products to the retail and food service markets. Since its founding in 1950, DiLuigi has been committed to supporting the community, continuing this legacy by donating excess, edible food to Gather's food recovery efforts. Proteins recovered through this partnership are used in Gather's Cooking 4 Community initiative, which provides nutritious and flavorful prepared meals to those we serve. A portion of the products are also made available at our pantry market and Mobile Markets. Pictured below is an Italian wedding soup made with DiLuigi meatballs and Mexican lasagna made with their turkey burgers! To date, our partnership with DiLuigi has resulted in 10,282 pounds of food recovered valued at $20,564! Gather's continuum of food recovery efforts is critical to the success of our food distribution services. Gather anticipates relying more on our SWN Coalition of food service industry partnerships to fill the gap that will be created due to recent funding cuts to federal food distribution programs. We are excited to scale this initiative as we increase our facility space in our new Community Food Center location. We are grateful to the 42 SWN partners including DiLuigi that support food security through their donations while also reducing environmentally harmful food waste. Visit www.seacoastwastenot.org to learn more about the Seacoast Waste Not Coalition. #community #foodrecovery #NHnonprofits #NewHampshire #Nhfoodinsecurity

Gather is celebrating Women's History Month. Women have been contributing to communities far and wide for centuries. We are proud of our long organizational history of women leaders. #womenshistory #womeninnonprofits #NH #NHlife #womenshistorymonth

Gather is the proud beneficiary of Seacoast Athletics' inaugural Ergathon! Teams of six competed to tackle the most distance within sixty minutes across three different machines - a C2 rower, bike erg, or ski erg. A portion of the registration proceeds will generously support Gather's Meals for Kids (MFK) initiative. MFK ensures that school-aged children have access to wholesome, kid-friendly snacks and meals when school is not in session. Distribution occurs at specific Gather Mobile Market locations. This makes it easier for families to pick up fresh ingredients for ten weekly meals per child along with accompanying recipes. Generous fundraisers such as the Seacoast Ergathon help to cover the costs associated with carrying out MFK. Having reliable access to nutritious, balanced meals is fundamental to a child's holistic development. Children who depend upon free and reduced-price lunch face barriers to regularly accessing healthy food options when school is not in session. This can have harm their physical, emotional, and cognitive development long-term. If our kids don't thrive, our communities won't thrive. In 2024, MFK served over 4,700 children - up 5% vs. 202 – with over 47,000 pounds of food across five towns and seven distribution sites. Thank you Seacoast Athletics for your dedicated community support! Visit https://lnkd.in/eRw4nQ5k to learn more. #communitypartnerships #communitypartners #NH #NewHampshire #nonprofit

??? Gather pic of the week ??? Gather's team recently took a tour of our new Community Food Center building in Portsmouth. Renovations to the space, which begin this week, include: ? the build-out of larger pantry market and warehouse spaces ? installation of a production kitchen ? installation of a teaching kitchen ? a community gathering and dining room ? an outdoor demonstration garden #NewHampshirenonprofit #NH #NHlife #foodaccess #foodrecovery

Gather Cafe employee Holly Hussey enjoys many things about her job, and the opportunity to manage Great Bay Community College's work study participants is one of them. Work study participants learn practical culinary skills while they prepare Gather Cafe meals in the kitchen. Work study student Devin recently wrapped egg rolls and is perfecting his soup-making skills. Holly says, "Devin has been such a wonderful addition in our GBCC kitchen. He is a tremendous help with our cafe operations and has picked up a wealth of skills and blossomed socially." Another participant, Kelli, made a gumbo from start to finish. "Today Kelli learned how not only make a roux, but a whole gumbo", said Holly. "I am so incredibly proud of her for learning not just how to make a whole dish; but also, her ability to provide 67 nourishing complete meals to go back to our pantry and after-hours fridge on campus today." #culinaryskills #workstudy #Newhampshire

As temperatures rise, Gather is preparing for its 2025 growing season! Staff member Alexandra Lynch, who joined Gather in 2023, will be leading these efforts as our Gardening and Gleaning Manager. In her role, she manages the maintenance of gardens at four different sites across the Seacoast, forms and fosters gleaning partnerships with local farms, and contributes her agricultural expertise to advancing our growing initiatives in support of our food recovery and access services. We caught up with Ally to find out more about what she has in store for this year. Q: Why you are interested in growing food and what may have influenced you to pursue this type of career? Ally: I started working on a vegetable farm several years back and I grew to love and understand the importance of locally grown food. Not only is locally grown food more often fresher, tastier and more nutrient dense, but it also strengthens local economies and benefits the environment. Due to factors like cost, location and availability, healthy local food can feel like a privilege and not a right. Our hope is to be able to give our members access to produce grown nearby - through growing and gleaning! Q: What are you most excited about for this year's growing season? Ally: I am most excited to see Gather-grown produce in our pantry and in our prepared meals. I would love to let our members know that some of what we are offering is grown just for them. Q: What's on the growing horizon over the next few months? Ally: We can expect some roots like radish, turnips and beets early in the summer. You'll hopefully see kale and Swiss chard in our pantry throughout the summer as well. When the heat really hits, we'll have the staples, like tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, summer squash, peas, beans, all sorts of herbs and more! The Gather team is privileged to have Ally as a part of our team leading these initiatives! #growing #gardening #localfood #foodaccess #NewHampshirenonprofit #nonprofit

Seacoast seniors gathered for this year's first "Rock the Crock" event. Gather's culinary team led an interactive demonstration of how to make a nutritious sweet potato and lentil soup recipe using a mini-Crock Pot. After the demo, attendees sat down to enjoy the meal together, each leaving with a mini-Crock Pot of their own along with ingredients to make the meal at home, a binder in which to place recipes, an apron, and a supermarket gift card. "Rock the Crock" is an example how strong partnerships and collaborations can provide rich benefits to our community. We are grateful for our ongoing work with the Portsmouth Housing Authority and the Portsmouth Senior Activity Center to make "Rock the Crock" events happen throughout the year. A sincere thank you to the Foundation for Seacoast Health for investing in our programmatic vision! With their generous support, this year we're able to increase from 4 to 6 classes and accommodate more attendees at each one due to the program's popularity - from 20 to 30. #communitpartnerships #NHcommunity #NHseniors #NewHampshireSeacoast #nonprofit