Strategic Innovation to Strengthen Our Network
Food insecurity and the circumstances that contribute to it are always evolving. To ensure we are meeting the needs of our community, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank needs to evolve as well. Recognizing this need, we are working to create unique opportunities throughout our operations that will allow us to better support our network through our Strategic Innovation Fund.
Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF)
The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) is a professionally managed, board-designated fund established at the Food Bank by a group of generous donors. The SIF supports innovative projects, initiatives, and pilot projects that align with and advance the Food Bank’s strategic plan with the following goals:
- Provide funding that encourages and requires the Food Bank to grow strategic programming and pilot new ideas that fall outside of the operating budget constraints.
- Support the Food Bank’s ability to be flexible and responsive to community needs as they arise by having funds immediately available.
- Investments will support innovation and help the organization advance our mission in alignment with the strategic goals.
- Give the Food Bank the flexibility to pilot programming without the advance time needed to secure funding.
We are proud to highlight one of our newest pilots below!
How we Work
The Food Bank is only effective if we have a healthy network of partners and supporters in the communities we serve.
We source nutritious food through our partnerships with Feeding America, government agencies, local retailers and restaurants, food manufacturers, farms and from community donations. This food is then delivered to our Duquesne warehouse facility where we store, pack and distribute food and grocery items to our partners throughout our 11-county service area.
Food pantries, meal programs and other social service partners order food at reduced costs, pick up food from our warehouse and distribute directly to neighbors in need. Some orders and deliveries to rural communities ship directly from our facility to our partners for distribution.
While the Food Bank does operate an on-site food pantry and hold Food Bank run distributions throughout our service area it is overwhelmingly our partner network who is responsible for providing food and grocery items directly to people in need. Partners include community organizations, churches, childcare centers and healthcare providers.
Partner Capacity Building Project
We know that lack of resources, such as funds for facilities, utilities, staff, etc., is a barrier for our partners and at times, that barrier equates to less hours of service, fewer choices of food variety and the inability for partners to meet the needs in their service territory.
Over the years, the Food Bank has offered varying levels of support to partners in the fundraising space, but the efforts have never been an explicit responsibility of any one Food Bank role – so support has been delivered one-on-one in response to a partner inquiry, via agency conferences or through more formal opt-in efforts.
To address this barrier, our philanthropy team was granted funds from the SIF to launch a two-year pilot project where we have a dedicated staff person who can consult with partners on participating in giving days, grant writing, obtaining a 501c3, annual fundraising campaigns, writing a successful fundraising letter, raising funds via community events such as the Highmark Walk and Pittsburgh Foundations Critical Need Alert, fundraising program basics (data management, best practices, etc.) and more allowing this support to have more intention and purpose.
The benefits of this project include a stronger relationship with our partner network members, increased trust, the ability to connect partners to additional non-profit and social service support programs and establishing rapports with local funders that are focused on building the capacity of life stabilizing organizations.
The hope is this project will strengthen our agency partners to ensure their sustainability for the long term.
Building Momentum
For the last few months, the partner fundraising capacity specialist has worked with a number of partners to begin to think strategically on how to create this growth. This work is ongoing, and still evolving, but results are already visible.
As part of our communications with partners, we send out a monthly newsletter. A new section has been added, entitled “Growing Together,” which aims to give our partners quick resources and calls to action which can help them focus on fundraising over the next month.
Additionally, a small cohort of partners have been identified and have begun a process of capacity growth. This starts with a review of previous practices to identify growth opportunities. Afterwards, we will create individual plans and follow up over a three-to-six-month process.
For our wider network, we are also offering one-off opportunities to discuss strategy. These include local and national days where partners can take advantage of momentum and marketing of a larger organization. The first three we have focused on are the Highmark Walk for a Healthy Community, The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Critical Needs Alert, and Giving Tuesday.
Highmark Walk
The Highmark Walk for a Healthy Community was this year on June 14, 2025. This annual event allows participating nonprofits the opportunity to use Highmark’s platform to host fundraisers. For the last number of years, the Food Bank has hosted a team which has included some of our network partners. All the funds which are raised by our partners go directly into their account at the Food Bank, which they can use to pay for food or other associated services we can provide for them.
This year, our participating partners were offered marketing and strategy help. Nine partners leveraged these services and the results showed. There was a 22% increase in donations from last year to our partners, totaling over $53,000.
Critical Needs Alert
On August 5, 2025, The Pittsburgh Foundation hosted its annual Critical Needs Alert #ONEDAY fundraiser. A day dedicated to bringing the community together to support the most urgent needs of our neighbors: food and nutrition, child care, employment, housing and health. Many of our partner organizations participated and the day was a great success. #ONEDAY raised over $1.8 million for 182 organizations in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties!
Ongoing Work
Over the next two years, this project plans to grow. We look forward to creating assets for our partners, as well as connecting them with local resources and consultants. As this project evolves, we hope to strengthen support of our agency partners and help build their capacity to ensure their sustainability for the long term. We believe strongly that by strengthening the fundraising capacity of our partner network, the Food Bank will be able to have a greater impact in the community. There is power in community, and when our network is strong, the Food Bank is strong.