Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado has a distinctive role in serving the community.

“Our story as a nonprofit is unique in that we get to work with 278 other nonprofits in our 29-county service area with three distribution sites: Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Alamosa,” said Nathan Springer, Care and Share president and chief executive officer.  “Each nonprofit has its own board, own volunteers. They’re their own entities. Our main mission is to get as much food out as possible.”

The food bank’s distribution area is from Monument south.

“It’s a service area that covers 47,000 square miles,” Springer said. “As a point of comparison, the state of Pennsylvania is 46,000 square miles.”

For fiscal years 2023 and 2024, Springer said Care and Share distributed 25 million pounds of food each of those periods.

“We hit historically high numbers, but the important point to remember is that we work with 278 nonprofits.”

Being part of the Empty Stocking Fund provides the organization with the equivalent of three or four semitrailers worth of food.

“We’re proud to be part of the Empty Stocking Fund and are proud to be one of the original five recipients,” Springer said. “That number is now up to 20 agencies, and it’s neat to see so many partners working together in our community. It’s more important than ever that we work together. We manage by the pound and do the best we can.”

Facilitating the mission of so many other nonprofits is only part of Care and Share. It’s a designated Feeding America Food Bank, which means it has access to additional distribution resources. There are mobile food pantries, mobile markets and the Sunny Side Market, all of which provide no-cost food.

Food insecurity is faced across the country and there are fewer resources at the national level.

“There’s food for less money available, but there’s also less food,” Springer said.  “Still, Care and Share is in a good position. We do a monthly meeting, and we typically add additional money to the procurement budget. We’re lucky to have a robust budget. There’s a lot we can’t control, but we work with what we can control.”

Care and Share has long had a Children’s Nutrition Initiative. A major component is to provide backpacks with enough food to feed a family of four for 72 hours when children are not in school.

“We’re taking this to the next level,” Springer said. “This year, we’ve added something a little different: a student-led food pantry program at an urban high school and a rural high school.” 

The Nourishing School Pantry program is modeled on Cougar Cares, which is run by students in the Coronado High School leadership class.

Cougar Cares is one of Care and Share’s partners. The students coordinate everything from the ordering to the distribution of food.

The Nourishing School Pantry will also be student led, Springer said. “It’s a big ask to have teachers, on top of everything else they do, run a food pantry. Those depend on the teacher’s passion.”

Volunteers are the backbone, and Springer said he’d be remiss in not recognizing their contributions.

“The only way we can do what we do is thanks to our volunteers. We have an unduplicated number of volunteers: 4,200,” he said. “On any given day, there can be a low of 50 or as many as 80. No way could we do what we do without them.”