Driving Communities Forward with Mark Jackson

Welcome back to another edition of Driving Communities Forward, where I spotlight impact leaders who have dedicated their careers to making a difference. This month’s feature is Mark Jackson, chief development officer at the Central Texas Food Bank (CTFB). CTFB is the largest hunger-relief charities in central Texas. For more than 40 years, the food bank has led the fight against hunger across 21 Central Texas counties.?

During our conversation, Mark highlights the innovative ways CTFB is tackling food insecurity in its local communities. With nearly 14 years at the food bank, he reflects on the organization’s transformative journey and shares his hope and enthusiasm for its potential impact over the next decade.?

Read on to learn more about Mark’s vision for a future, where everyone has access to the nourishing foods necessary for them to thrive.?

What gets you up in the morning and what's a typical day in your role?

I get so pumped to know how much opportunity we have to do more for our community. I have had the honor of working at the Central Texas Food Bank (CTFB) for almost 14 years, and it’s truly remarkable how we tirelessly expand our role in serving our neighbors.?

If I look back on what the Food Bank was when I started here and where we are now, it’s almost unbelievable. The best part is that we are only getting started. Over the course of the next decade, we will develop new strategies to not only feed our struggling neighbors, but also create a more robust food system that fundamentally reduces the need for our services.?

Who inspires you?

I’m deeply inspired by our volunteer leaders. These are folks that have found a home with the Food Bank and dedicate a tremendous amount of their free time to support their neighbors facing hunger. Their impact on our work is immense, providing not only critical labor to make the massive operational effort function, but also serving as ambassadors for our mission.

What do you wish people knew about your field?

Just how complicated it can be. This year we hope to distribute over 66 million pounds of food throughout the 21 counties we serve. The logistics of moving around that much food is often lost on many, and when you consider the wildly diverse nature of the food we are sourcing it’s even more of a challenge than you might imagine to make it all come together. Each day, we receive perishable donations from grocery retailers, truckloads of fresh produce, frozen items, and more. This food needs to be inspected, sorted into categories, inventoried, and distributed to our network of over 300 partner organizations and distributions.?

What is your vision for the future of social impact?

We believe that the future is F.R.E.S.H. That stands for Food Access, Research, Economic Stability, Sustainability, and Health. Each one of these concepts guides us in our mission to lead the community in ending hunger. We’re reinvesting in our food industry relationships and refocusing our attention on sourcing fresh produce, which is more available in today's national food supply and helps us meet our goal to provide healthy food options for our neighbors.?

Food is medicine, and we believe everyone should have access to the nourishing foods that are necessary for them to thrive. We are becoming equipped to provide medically tailored meals and groceries to meet the specific dietary needs of neighbors at risk of chronic illness. We are also doing more to address the root causes of hunger by focusing on client services, benefits assistance and workforce training programs.?

Our work going forward will include a deliberate and strategic focus on providing immediate access to nutritious food, advocacy, and root cause work, using the food system to guide our framework. We will use robust new data calculations to more accurately address the specific needs of the communities we serve. Together, we will harness the food system to nourish, innovate, convene, and empower communities, ensuring increased food access for all.

How can we support your work?

Right now the simplest way to support the Food Bank is through monetary donations. The pandemic had a profound impact on CTFB, and in many ways it changed our organization permanently.?

The seismic disruptions to the supply chain created enormous operational challenges that forced us to begin spending unbelievable amounts of money on food when we historically had relied on donated items. Right now we are spending almost $1M a month of supplemental food to try to meet the need. As the focus on the pandemic has waned, the model that existed for food banking before the pandemic has been permanently broken.?

The food supply system continues to be a challenge as growers, wholesalers and retailers have less to donate. The sudden and sharp inflation of the last two years has made every part of operating our business more expensive, while simultaneously creating an environment where more people are seeking our services.?

A silver lining of the pandemic is that the sudden need created during the shut downs at the earliest part of the pandemic removed the stigma and brought awareness to hunger relief services for many new people. In fact, we are currently seeing numbers of our neighbors seeking assistance that are higher than the peak of the pandemic. Our distribution system of direct services and partner organizations grew to meet this “new normal” and now the public isn’t seeing images of long lines of cars in drive through distributions.?

Many in our region just don’t realize the scale of the problem and how pervasive food insecurity has become. Nevertheless, these new challenges have just forced us to adapt and evolve. With support of our partners, like Cruise and so many others, we have become an organization that will disrupt and dismantle the cycle of food insecurity we have been seeing for generations in Central Texas.