Nourishing our local communities

  Good Neighbors helps connect food with individuals in need to help eliminate food insecurity.

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Our Story

Founded in early 2020, Good Neighbors started when Heather and her husband Tim noticed that local businesses were throwing away perfectly usable food at the end of the day. During the pandemic, Heather 

connected with over 125 businesses and organizations to collect their surplus food and get it into the hands of those that need it most. 

 

Persevering through lockdown, Heather has grown the Good Neighbors FL branch into an organization with over 100 amazing and active volunteers that consistently provide food for over 1,000 people weekly. In 2021 the Good Neighbors NY branch was launched and grew very quickly with their effort to reach the underserved. Both locations have volunteer programs that collect and provide food that serves seniors, children, disabled, food pantries, soup kitchens, those in transitional housing and the unsheltered. We plan on growing our organization to reach even more hungry people in the future!


Mission

Build relationships with organizations and individuals to connect food and other necessities to those in need.

 

Vision

We envision a strong community of relationships where everyone has access to food and the other necessities of daily living.

Our Programs

Good Neighbors has several programs to bring food and other necessities to vulnerable members of our community.

Our Programs

  • Nourishing our Neighborhoods Program

    Our Nourishing Our Neighborhoods program is the core program of Good Neighbors. Through partnerships with local businesses, we bring senior neighborhoods, mobile home communities, apartment buildings, and other communities of vulnerable residents, safe, edible, nutritious food and other essentials to help ensure these residents access to food and other necessities. We pickup surplus, edible food from local businesses, portion that food for each community, and conduct food giveaways in partnership with each community.

  • Food with Dignity Program

    Good Neighbors provides food specifically for unhoused individuals through our Food with Dignity program. This helps provide surplus food to residential facilities that have temporary housing for unhoused individuals such as extended stay hotels, respite, foster agencies, group homes, tent cities, rehabilitation facilities, halfway houses and veterans as well as organizations/groups that serve the homeless. Given their unique circumstances, this food is also packaged with any necessities to cook, use, or eat the food that unhoused individuals may not have access to.

  • Community Feeding the Community Program

    Our largest volume program is our Community Feeding the Community program, where we help partner organizations across our service areas provide food and other basic necessities to the populations they serve. We build relationships with local organizations and businesses, coordinate pickup opportunities between the businesses and organizations, and sometimes lend our warehouse as a dropoff point until the organization can come and pick up the food. This program drives over 1 million pounds of food per year to vulnerable individuals across our service areas.

  • Blessing Box Program

    Our newest program is the blessing box program. This program involves building, installing and maintaining Blessing Boxes (also commonly known as Little Free Pantries) in areas of need. Good Neighbors volunteers identify areas of need, install boxes, monitor boxes, seek community support for boxes and restock boxes with food as needed. Good Neighbors also supports other local Blessing Boxes by filling them with food regularly and also providing those Blessing Box Projects or organizations with perishable and frozen food items for local distribution.

  • Volunteer Program

    Everyone has a role in reducing hunger. In as little as one hour per week, from home or out in the community - you can make a huge impact to reduce food insecurity. From community collection and outreach, to administrative tasks and pantry organization - there is something for everyone! Please fill out the volunteer application today.

  • Senior Neighbor Program

    Good Neighbors brings food and necessities to our neighbors in senior communities and apartments many times a week! Click the button below to request food for a senior neighborhood near you.

 Our Impact

Good Neighbors has been able to improve the feeding programs for many local

organizations, but several really stand out. We have been able to help greatly increase 2 different homeless feeding ministries that we have formed partnerships with since Good Neighbors formation. One ministry was initially feeding only about 500 meals a month when we met them and were spending around $80K per year on the food supplies for those meals. Three years later we coordinate nearly all of the food used for these mealsand they now serve over 4,500 meals each month!!

Another ministry was serving about 30 homeless a day and buying ALL the ingredients as well. We continue to connect them with a large portion of the food for their meals and they currently serve around 1,000 meals a week. They mainly only need to purchase bottled water. Another cooking ministry was being run by who is now our Driver Coordinator - their funds were running out and they thought they would need to stop serving homebound elderly during covid shutdowns. Due to our partnership and supplying them with what

they needed they were able to serve many more months twice a week with full meals.

This strongly influenced the volunteer and he has continued to serve with Good Neighbors since that time and shares this testimony regularly. Good Neighbors has also been able to help many seniors through the Neighborhood Program service, especially through COVID and after. We are serving roughly 50 entire communities monthly ranging from 100 residents to 1,500 residents at each giveaway. Residents are able to shop a choice model giveaway to receive food they can use and want for FREE.



 

200+

local business partnerships

 

1,200+

monthly food pick ups

 

100+

engaged volunteers

 Our Team and Staff

Heather Brooke

Founder

Tim Brooke

Food Recovery

Joe Demos

Director

Krista Callis

Krista Callis

Good Neighbors NY Branch Coordinator

Mara Bonnewell

Director

Ryan Mitchell

Director