Feeding Hope
Be a part of the story.
Who We Are
The Pantry at Hamilton Mill seeks to offer the Bread of Life to our community by providing quality food and building quality relationships rooted in the love of Jesus. The Pantry is one of the largest food banks in Northeast Georgia, distributing more than one million pounds of quality food to our community each year.
The Pantry is open every Saturday from 7:30am to 10:30 am and gives out over 35,000 pounds of food and feeding an average of 700 families each week. There are no eligibility requirements for patrons to receive food, all are welcome. The Pantry relies 100% on the generosity of volunteers and donors to support ongoing operations.
What We Do
The Pantry seeks to support a significantly increasing population of food-insecure individuals by providing nutritionally balanced boxes of food that are handed out to patrons each Saturday morning.
The Pantry is operated by hundreds of volunteers throughout the week and during Saturday morning distributions. Since 2009, The Pantry has rapidly grown from feeding 25 families a month to feeding well over 2,500 a month.
In 2022, The Pantry distributed 28,000 boxes of food to more than 75,000 individuals, including 22,000 children.
How We Grow
Throughout the thirteen years that The Pantry has been in operation, all food storage, sorting, and distribution have been conducted within the HMUMC facilities. As service has increased, refrigerators and shelving have been added in the church basement, and a 2,000 square foot modular classroom, now storage room for food, is being utilized. Despite the significant increase in operations since 2020, The Pantry has no work or distribution space of its own. This new building will allow us to increase our community outreach, update and reimagine the services provided to our patrons, and better support our volunteers.
Reimagining Community Impact
Through the offering of quality food, relationships and trust have been built with The Pantry’s patrons over the last decade. With this trust as our foundation, a new building will allow us to streamline volunteer service and food distribution in a meaningful way with significant time savings. The building will help us create a more sustainable enterprise and will allow us to expand the services offered to our patrons.
Our story is growing.
Client Choice and Expanded Hours
The new facilities will allow The Pantry to expand individualized service and distribution hours allowing better services offered to our patrons as we seek to break the cycle of poverty in our community.
Flexibility
The entire warehouse is designed to allow for flexibility and easy access. The staging area will be easily converted into meeting space to teach classes, offer workshops, and connect with the needs of our community better than ever before.
Warehouse Space
Construction of a 5,000 square foot warehouse with a covered drive-up entry will allow for food intake and storage to occur throughout the week. Freezers, shelves, conveyor belts and food boxing areas will allow volunteers to prepare for Saturday distribution with ease and efficiency.
Drive Thru Distribution
The new building will include a covered, drive-up entry with a double line driveway, separate from the church entry area, allowing The Pantry to continue and expand services, while keeping all weekday and weekend operations separate from the daily needs of the church facilities.
Expansion Budget
Building and Buildout: $1,450,000
Office Furniture and Equipment Warehouse: $10,000
Conveying System/Shelving: $40,000
Landscaping: $10,000
Architectural/Engineering Services: $50,000
Contingency: $200,000
General Contractor and markups: $125,000
TOTAL: $1,885,000
The time is now.
We anticipate that the need for our services will only continue to grow in 2024, and your support will be crucial in meeting that demand. Sadly, children are a segment of the population most vulnerable to hunger and poverty. At The Pantry, we minister to the whole family, making sure that everyone from our youngest to our oldest client receives nourishment.
To expand the relationships, trust, and services we have built these ten-plus years, we must expand our building footprint and operations capacity. This will allow us to feed more people, more efficiently, and give volunteers additional ways to be involved. We look forward to creating a more sustainable enterprise that builds on the progress we have made and offering referrals to other services and ministries to help people in a holistic way.
We believe that everyone deserves access to healthy and nutritious food, and we are passionate about helping our local community. Your gift to support the construction of our new building will go a long way in helping us reach our goal of increasing the number of people served in 2024 and beyond. Together, we can ensure that no one in our community goes hungry.
Will you join us?
