Covenant UMC Food Pantry

We are the food pantry at Covenant Methodist Church. We partner with Central Texas Food Bank. Before Covid, we were serving about 80 families each week. We provided a snack supper and had a free store as well. When Covid hit, we started having an outside distribution, and are now serving about 170 families per week. Several weeks, we have had over 200 families come through the line.

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About half of our volunteers are church members. We enjoy having community support and we encourage them to join the church. Our funding comes from monetary donations, mostly from the congregation, but also from support from the community and from your previous grant. Local schools and our preschool have food drives to support us. We have a board that was meeting monthly that included our minister and representatives from the church council (specifically, trustees, finance committee, )

Our mission is to help care for the poor and needy of our community. We are doing this by providing them with food as they are trying to survive in this current economic situation.

We have a multicultural diverse population who come through our food pantry. We don’t keep a record of ethnicity, but I would say, we have black, white, many Hispanic, many Vietnamese, some Chinese, and even a family from El Salvador. Their income must meet the guidelines of the Central Texas Food Bank, which is based on 185% of federal poverty guidelines. If they get government assistance, they automatically qualify for our program.

Yes, we did receive a grant from you last year, and again, soon after the pandemic started. We celebrate every week, as we always have had enough to serve all who have come in need. We definitely feel God’s presence with us as we do his work! Our goal is simple. Feed God’s people, as he has called us to do! We are able to do this because of donations, grants, support from our church, and partnerships with groups in our community, specifically CTFB and The Austin Diaper Bank.

• CUMC-Pantry-Plans-02-2020.pdf
• Project-Summary.pdf

As we anticipate being able to move from outside distribution to having folks move back inside, we came up with a plan to change the flow of traffic inside to make things easier to get them through. That meant some construction, as outlined above. We are also in need of more refrigeration as we start to get food donated from stores. No matter what we do, this is indeed a growing ministry! God is definitely at work here! His spirit is palpable on Wednesday afternoons. We have very much appreciated your help with this ministry in the past, and truly hope that you can help again this year.