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Michael Dunne: One of the truly amazing things about nonprofits is their flexibility. No disrespect to private business, but how many for-profit companies can suddenly decide to begin offering an entirely new product and, more amazingly, actually do it at lightning speed? Yet that's often the case with these nonprofit entities. All this week, we're featuring nonprofits in our community that may not be household names but are nevertheless doing amazing work, sometimes with very limited resources. Today on the show, we'll bring you the story of Cottage Grove's Community Sharing Program, which began as a food pantry but has grown into a robust service delivery organization that fulfills needs far beyond food. That's next on Oregon on the Record. Mike Fleck is the executive director of Community Sharing Program. Mike, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
Mike Fleck: Well, thank you.
Dunne: Yeah, well, let's start with the basics. Tell our audience: What is Community Sharing Program, and what do you do?
Fleck: Community Sharing started in 1982 and became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1984. Everybody knows us as a food pantry, and that is our primary focus, but we're also what's called a community service center. We're one of four organizations that contract with Lane County: We're the South Lane County Service Center, Siuslaw Outreach Services is the West Lane, and Eugene and Springfield are both operated by Catholic Community Services. A service center provides basic needs services, which include the food pantry. We operate a shower trailer and a warming shelter, and we purchase hygiene items to go along with our food boxes, pet food, and just about anything else people need to survive, along with water and utility assistance. We've had some pretty severe cuts in the last couple of years, so we've lost gasoline vouchers, laundry vouchers and some other programs. Another aspect is housing assistance. We contract with Lane County and administer county, state and federal programs. The biggest one, an eviction prevention program we started last year, helps people going through the eviction process by getting current on their bills. The last area we serve is energy assistance, primarily through a large federal program called LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. We also have small pockets of money from other programs, but that's the big one. It helps people with their power and gas utilities, and if they use bulk fuels like propane, that can be covered as well. So that's the nuts and bolts. There are lots of little nuances too, like our backpack program, where we give the South Lane School District 300 or so, we actually hit 330 last year, bags full of food each week for kids to take home on the weekends.
Dunne: Okay.
Fleck: Lots and lots of different things we do.
Dunne: Yeah, just listening to you, it's like you're a catch-all for so many things, and I'm curious: As you said, a lot of people know you as a food pantry. Has it been sort of, “We're in this line of business, and then we saw a need and we added it on”? Has it been a step-by-step process over the years, building on existing services because there's just more need?
Fleck: Absolutely. It's interesting: COVID was probably one of the best and worst times for our agency. It really forced us out of our comfort zone. Programs we'd provided for years were heavily affected. Food boxes, for example, had to become prepackaged boxes. We're normally a shopping-style food pantry, and I should mention we're also a Food For Lane County pantry.
Dunne: Okay.
Fleck: And oh gosh, our housing programs. Our agency hired seven additional housing assistants, and we were able to distribute over $11 million in rent payments over three years. We really stepped up, which meant managing cash flow, and oh my gosh, it was just a very stressful time for us. But it also turned out that during COVID, the agency that used to run the warming shelter couldn't operate because it was in a congregate setting in churches, so we ended up operating out of the pallet shelters most folks have seen for two years. We had never operated shelters before that, so there was a learning curve involved, and of course this was all while the stress of those rent payments was going on, along with everything else. So it was a really good time for us to learn how to be much more nimble, but it was also a very stressful time. We added, gosh, I'm trying to remember, maybe seven or eight employees for the warming shelter. We went from seven employees to 22. And our budget, oh my gosh, went as high as over $7 million, where we're normally around $2 million, and that triggered single audits, which meant much more work at the end of the year with our auditors. But currently, like I said, if there's a need that's not being met, we try to do what we can to adapt and adjust. The shower trailer operation also started during COVID. We now offer showers twice a week for people to come in and get bathed. We offer clean underwear and socks, and we have donated clothing so people can get clean and put on clean clothes. It's been a huge success, but as I mentioned, it grew out of the growing needs of the unhoused population. The other agency I mentioned that ran the warming shelter ultimately closed, so we've now taken that on as a regular program as well, without any funding, which is a bit of a challenge. It's primarily run by volunteers and myself, so it's quite a huge undertaking. But once again, the need is there, and we're stepping up to fill it as we can.
Dunne: Yeah, if you're just joining us, we're talking with Mike Fleck. He's the executive director of Community Sharing Program, based in Cottage Grove. Mike, it's interesting: The private sector often talks about innovation, and just listening to you, a key word you used earlier was being nimble. Talk about that. Talk about the need to be innovative in service delivery. You mentioned how COVID was, in some ways, an accelerant to that. Talk about the importance, especially in the nonprofit community, of being both nimble and innovative.
Fleck: Right, right. It's interesting: I think of last year's government shutdown, when SNAP benefits, which used to be called food stamps, stopped flowing. We saw as many as 25 additional people a day coming to our food pantry last November, so we stepped up, took some money out of reserves and bought food. That's the sort of nimble response: We faced a need, and we tried to do what we could. We hit a new record of 1,383 food boxes in a month, I believe. We serve around 5,500 unduplicated individuals a year, so we're kind of the one-stop shop for South Lane County. That means there aren't necessarily other nonprofits down here doing the same work that's happening in the metro area. So as we see a need arise, we either work toward it ourselves or try to facilitate it with other groups, whether it's the school district or a couple of other groups. Be Your Best is more of a health-related group, not a nonprofit, but we try to partner with them quite a bit. Being nimble means seizing every opportunity, I guess. One of the other things right now is that funding is just really dire for nonprofits. We went from the feast of COVID, when there was a huge amount of money, to where we've ended up going back to the same funding we received 10 years ago. As most people know, minimum wage and inflation costs have gone up, so we're having to be nimble in maintaining those programs. We've always written grants, but now we're in high gear writing grants all the time, trying to backfill services we've had to eliminate.
Dunne: We're going to take a break. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. When we come back, more of our conversation with Mike Fleck, executive director of Community Sharing Program.
And we're back. I'm Michael Dunne, and you're listening to Oregon on the Record. Let's get back to our conversation with Mike Fleck, executive director of Community Sharing Program. We broadcast here from Eugene and are very familiar with the challenges of the population in, I guess, the more metro part of Lane County. Are there unique challenges that your clientele faces in South Lane County?
Fleck: Yeah, absolutely. Transportation, of course, is the huge challenge. If somebody is working up in the Eugene-Springfield area, they now have additional costs for transportation, whether it's LTD, which has reduced its routes. My understanding is that ridership dropped when the economy was better, but my guess is that will probably go back up as people struggle with maintaining auto insurance, the price of fuel and all of that. So a lot of our working lower-income folks will certainly feel the bite there, and that goes for everything, including medical appointments. Most people have to go to the metro area for those services, so it adds quite a bit to the cost. Housing costs down here have gone through the roof. It used to be that people could rent an apartment, a duplex or a home cheaper than in the metro area, and that's no longer true. So not only do you have housing costs as high as the metro area, you have the additional expense of transportation. That puts people in some challenging times, especially during higher inflation or other economic uncertainties. It's just very different living in rural Oregon, and there are a lot of different impacts. For our unhoused population, we are the primary agency dealing with the social service side. South Lane Mental Health helps folks with their mental health care, and PeaceHealth has a hospital down here, so we do have emergency medical services. But for a lot of the more specific services, that means a trip to Eugene. Like I said, I love living in rural Oregon, but it comes with some challenges you don't have in the metro area.
Dunne: Sure. There's been a lot of news and information about cuts at the federal level, especially in the last couple of years. I'm wondering how you see that percolating down to where you provide service.
Fleck: Absolutely. We were really worried last year with the government shutdown. There were fears that programs we've operated for decades would be eliminated. The good news is that most of them remained, though they either didn't have an increase in funding or it was a very meager increase. As I mentioned, the challenge is that our cost of living, particularly wages, is really driving our budget, so we have to shift those programs. The state is doing something similar under Gov. Tina Kotek's efforts to address the homeless population. There was some additional funding in the first year, last year, but this year a lot of the prevention money was cut, and that's primarily what our agency does: prevention. It's really unfortunate, because prevention is cheaper and more effective in the long run. Studies show that being unhoused can create mental health challenges on its own. Getting somebody who has lost their housing back into housing, the longer that period of being unhoused, the harder that transition back into housing becomes. That's where the benefit of prevention comes in. For example, somebody living paycheck to paycheck has a car breakdown. They have to repair it to keep working, but now they can't make their rent payment. If we can make a one-time rent payment for that person, we've kept them housed and stable, avoiding a situation where they might have ended up further down that rabbit hole of trying to become stable again. That's what we really focus on: helping people either in that kind of transitional situation, or seniors on a fixed income who aren't able to keep up as their cost of living outpaces their Social Security benefits. Prevention is really what I'm passionate about, and I'm hoping to advocate at the state and national level that this is where we really need to be focusing, as much as shelter work, for sure.
Dunne: This may be an unfair question, because I imagine you're proud of all the programs you offer, but are there a couple that you're especially fascinated by or proud of? Getting back to that word innovation, or being nimble: Are there programs you look at and say, “This one really hits the mark for our constituency”?
Fleck: I'd have to say food is really the primary benefit we offer that has the most impact. Out of the $2 million budget we typically have, about half of that is the value of food that goes through our agency, and that's just huge. Helping people address the rising cost of food really provides the stability that I believe makes the biggest difference in all that we do. I'd say a close second is the water utility assistance we provide, which of course includes water, wastewater and storm water, but most people just call it water assistance. That's a huge one, because for any household, but especially with children, having the water disconnected is such a huge challenge for managing your well-being. Our energy program is wonderful, and I really value it, but it's also usually able to cover everybody who applies, as opposed to water utility, where we have a much smaller pot. I know this sounds like a lot of money, we have around $18,000 that we're putting toward it this year, but we've done as much as $40,000 helping people with a disconnect notice keep their water on.
Dunne: Yeah, yeah.
Fleck: So that's one of the not-quite-met needs. We serve everybody who comes in, which is wonderful, and with energy, typically we're able to get somebody help at least once a year. So, like I said, I'd put food first, but water utility assistance is a close second.
Dunne: Okay, how can people get involved, whether it's providing funding, volunteer work or any kind of support? How can they engage?
Fleck: I'd say volunteering for our agency is one of the most rewarding experiences, for both the volunteers and for us. We run our food pantry with one staff member, and typically as many as 70 people volunteer over 10,000 hours a year in the food pantry. We could not operate it without that volunteer support. Whether somebody wants to come in for an hour here or there, or we have people who come in every day for a few hours, whatever level people are able and willing to offer is just so valuable. Not only does it help with operations, but we can count those volunteer hours, at minimum wage, as matching funds toward our other state and federal programs, most of which have about a 15% match requirement. So volunteerism is huge for us. We also do a holiday food box at Christmastime, and we have a large number of people who help with that. Running the shower trailer, running the warming shelter, all of these programs, we couldn't run them without that volunteerism. And as every nonprofit will tell you, financial assistance is also huge. We can restrict those dollars to only food purchases, or to rent, or any number of areas, but unrestricted dollars are what every nonprofit will say are the best, because then we can direct them where the need is greatest.
Dunne: Absolutely, absolutely. He's Mike Fleck, executive director of Community Sharing Program. Mike, it's great to talk with you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Fleck: Thank you.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll bring you the story of another nonprofit that works to help stray animals and their people in Central Oregon. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
