The FCCAS is celebrating an important anniversary! Five years ago this month, in response to the Covid pandemic lockdown, we started our Pet Food Pantry. When the world shut down on March 13, we realized immediately that some dog and cat owners might be unable to afford food for their beloved pets. During the next two weeks our board recruited the help of concerned community members, who funded our purchase of dog and cat food, and a team of dedicated volunteers, who worked tirelessly to take requests from struggling clients and deliver food to them weekly.
As the lockdown continued, we saw that people still needed the pantry, so we began a still-ongoing process of refining how we operate it, with the goal of maintaining it if it is needed. We held three drive-through events late in 2020, and by December 2021 adopted the system we still use today, in which clients request food in advance either by phone or online and come to the shelter to pick it up once a month.
Our Impact at a Glance!
Through December 2024, thanks to the generosity of our donors and the selflessness of CCAS staff and volunteers, the FCCAS Pet Food Pantry has:
- Distributed 77+ tons of dry dog & cat food
- Distributed 85,000+ cans of wet food
- Helped 6,200+ residents in Cuyahoga County feed their pets, including 8,500 dogs and 13,000+ cats
How do we do it? The process takes almost 80 hours of work every month and is more complicated than you might think. Here’s a snapshot of the four-week cycle:
Week 1: Volunteers and CCAS staff communicate with clients to ensure they understand the procedure, record changes in client households (contact info and number of pets, for example), compile orders, take an inventory of the food on hand and order more if necessary.
Week 2: Volunteers and CCAS staff assign food quantities to clients based on their orders, write clients’ names and food amounts on slips of paper, create an alphabetized list of clients and assign a number to each one, set all the orders out in the shelter garage in numerical order and label each one with a slip. Board members, volunteers and staff hand out the food on the second Sunday of every month.
Week 3: CCAS staff analyze how the pickup went and update the records.
Week 4: Volunteers and CCAS staff take a well-deserved break!
We have many people to thank for the success of the pantry to date. CCAS staff members Haile, Cristyn, Jessie, Jen and Mindy do an amazing job for the pantry on top of all the other work they do at the shelter. Volunteers Carol S., Julie C. and Heather W. were indispensable in the early days. Volunteers Leslie and Cathy delivered food for four years. And volunteers Mary, Josie, Cathy and Denise are currently doing an awesome job making the pantry run smoothly.
And of course, we could not maintain the pantry without our generous donors! From the beginning members of this community answered the call, donating almost $27,000 in the first six weeks alone. Through the years we have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations large and small. We are very grateful for this support, especially since the need for help is still growing.
Rising Demand & Costs
2020: We served 963 clients
2024: More than 1,500 families asked for help feeding their pets!
Pet food costs are soaring!
Since 2020, prices have jumped 45%
Your support is more important than ever!
In order to keep the pantry at a sustainable size, we stress to clients that it is intended as a temporary supplement, not permanent support. We have also set limits on the amount of food given to each household and discontinued the purchase of wet food. We take advantage of every opportunity to purchase food at a discount and obtain food via donations. CC’s Cupboard and Pet Supplies Plus continue to be valuable partners in this effort.
Everyone who helps hand out food on Pantry Sunday is touched by the human – and sometimes canine! – interactions they experience there. Our clients remind us every month in their expressions of gratitude what a valuable service FCCAS is providing for their families. We thank everyone who has helped us reach this milestone anniversary! If you would like to support our Pet Pantry, please visit Chewy Wishlist FCCAS
