One Million Meals
Healthy food for whole person health.
Coordinated Care is committed to transforming the health of the community one person at a time, through affordable healthcare coverage and whole person health, and has been since we opened our doors in 2012. We make access to healthy food a priority for our work in the community, knowing access to nutritious food is foundational to health and wellbeing.
We started very local and where our headquarters are in Pierce County, with Emergency Food Network (EFN), a food distribution center which supplies 15.5 million pounds of food every year to organizations throughout the region. We then broadened our volunteer and community giving efforts to other partners like Second Harvest and Northwest Harvest.
When the COVID-19 pandemic magnified the need for healthy food in communities and homes across the country, we launched a campaign to provide 1 million meals across Washington. Through volunteer efforts, employee fundraising to leverage matching dollars from the company and by funding partner organizations.
Fresh Outcomes
We continue to surpass our annual goal of providing one million meals across Washington communities. In 2022 alone, Coordinated Care helped supply more than 4 million meals, totaling over 9 million meals since 2020.
In 2022, we invested in expert parnters across Washington to:
- Support 2 new free grocery stores in Yakima and Tacoma and expand a farmers’ market for BIPOC farmers and vendors in South King County.
- Provide 6,000 bags of food to children and families over extended school breaks in Pierce County and 750 holiday food boxes.
- Support Emergency Food Network’s Home Delivery, with 12,476 food boxes delivered in 2022 alone.
- Distribute 129,660 lbs of food to those in need with more than 132 volunteers at food agencies across the state.
- Supporting free cooking classes to over 1,000 individuals.
- Supply 750 medically-tailored meals in partnership with Lifelong and FISH to meet dietary needs for those with health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and HIV.
- Provide 719,574 meals for residents in permanent supportive housing units in King County.
- Offer free lunches to all children through Metro Parks Tacoma’s Summer Meals Program
- Support Mill Creek’s Door Dash program, which provides home delivery of fresh produce and shelf-stable food to over 200 families each week that have transportation challenges or are homebound.
Coordinated Care believes in whole person care and consistent access to healthy foods is a critical component that we focus on to complement provider visits. The 2023 One Million Meals campaign is on track to exceed the goal yet again.
For information on our other focus areas for community impact, visit our Community Giving page.
Annual Campaign Highlights
In 2021 we partnered with more than 10 organizations across Washington to:
- Fund 3 free grocery stores,
- Provide 120,000 lbs. of food to 6,000 kids and families over school breaks,
- 900 food boxes to home-bound individuals,
- 750 Thanksgiving food boxes to families,
- 550 medically-tailored meals to individuals living with chronic illness,
- and supported mobile markets and home delivery services for those with limited mobility and for people living in rural areas.
Below is an overview of the programs that contributed to the more than 1,600,000 meals in 2020:
- Employee Giving Campaign: Coordinated Care employees launched an online fundraising campaign in May 2020 with more than 100 employees contributing. Coordinated Care then matched the donations dollar-for-dollar to double the support, which provided 151,000 meals through the Emergency Food Network’s COVID-19 response program.
- Emergency Food Network (EFN): Coordinated Care has been a long-time partner of EFN, and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it increased support for the organization. Through our donations, Coordinated Care helped provide more than 340,000 meals for residents in Pierce County, the South Sound region, and other communities across Washington through direct deliveries, donations to food banks, and more. Coordinated Care also provided supplies such as the reusable grocery bags that EFN used to deliver supplies and Coordinated Care employees also volunteered more than 230 hours with EFN in 2020.
- Northwest Harvest: Coordinated Care donated funds to support several programs, which helped Northwest Harvest distribute more than 500,000 emergency food boxes to food pantries and meal sites. Coordinated Care also helped create efficient programs for grocery pickups to help support children, families, and seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, Coordinated Care teamed up with the Seattle Mariners and Northwest Harvest to hold a virtual peanut butter drive, which provided 540,000 meals to children across the state.
- Second Harvest: Coordinated Care supported Second Harvest to help them expand access to its Mobile Market, a traveling food pantry that serves rural parts of Central and Eastern Washington. The Mobile Market helped more than 84,000 children, families, and seniors access fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, and other food by bringing supplies directly to their communities.