Store To Door is moving after 20 years!

After 20 years in the Griggs Midway building in St. Paul, we are moving our main office. As of September 22^nd, we’ll be in a quiet office building in Roseville (the exact address is 1935 West County Road B2) We'll be away from the ongoing--and very loud--construction and traffic on University Ave. The building has ample parking and more importantly, more space for staff and volunteers in the office. We'll also have a small conference room to host meetings.

We're not skipping a beat though--our operations will continue as usual during the move. We’re looking forward to continuing to host our office and coupon volunteers in a new and larger space. 

Click the link below to find directions to our new office:http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1935+West+County+Road+B2,+Roseville,+MN&hl=en&t=h&z=16&vpsrc=0

"Essential service" in the State of Minnesota

While the welcome news of continued support from the State of Minnesota resulted in many notes of congratulation, it also presents an opportunity to clarify the role of Store To Door in the minds of those who have questioned why any State money should be used to support such a service.

            Our goal is to enhance independent living among homebound elderly.  What does independent living look like for one of our typical clients, an 82-year-old woman who has outlived her social connections, is unable to leave her home because she can’t walk or breathe or see and who is living on $900 a month or less?  Her world has become smaller than she prefers but she is still able to choose what she wants to eat, she is able to answer her phone and she is able to open her door to a bi-weekly grocery delivery. 

            Store To Door service provides a personal phone contact every other week, checking in on her as well as taking her grocery order; the opportunity to maximize her purchasing ability by allowing her to shop at a competitively-priced grocery store and a personal visit every other week by a delivery person she’s come to know and trust.  And, if she is eligible for SNAP, or food stamp benefits, which is increasingly true among Store To Door clients, she can actually use the benefit even though she can’t get to the store.

            Why is independent living important for old people in Minnesota?  Every State of Minnesota resident should understand it’s much less costly to shop for and deliver groceries into an elderly person’s home (about $650 per year) than it is to house them, at the State’s expense in a facility which offers board along with a bed (at least $25,000 a year). 

            In 2011, State of Minnesota funding (a total of $156,000) comprises 14.7% of our total budget.  We receive no Federal funding and have no reserve.  We operate on a balanced budget so if budgeted funds are not received, we must cut services.   

            We’ve been asked why aren’t families or church communities taking care of these people?  Their families have dispersed or they have died; the church is engaged to the extent possible but cannot meet their needs week-in, week-out. 

            What about other for-profit grocery delivery services?  Elderly clients don’t have computers to order on-line, they’ve been warned to not give any financial information over the phone, particularly checking account routing numbers and, most often, the groceries delivered are more costly.  No full-line for-profit grocery delivery service accepts SNAP. 

            How about Meals on Wheels or food shelves—why can’t the elderly get by on these community supports (both of which are very heavily Federally-funded).  About 15% of Store To Door’s clients also get five meals a week from Meals on Wheels; far less than the 21 meals most of us expect to eat each week.  And, a woman who can’t walk out of her apartment can’t get to a food shelf or carry food home. 

            We are very grateful to have been deemed an essential service by the State of Minnesota—our clients consider the groceries they receive along with the personal attention that enriches their lives, as essential. 

Short-term vs long-term

Yesterday, Hunger-Free Minnesota launched a three-year campaign today to close Minnesota's gap of 100 million missing meals. Almost twenty-seven years ago, Store To Door began delivering groceries to people like Betty, who sent this note recently:  "Originally we lived in an upper level of a duplex with many stairs--and my arthritis making it more difficult to carry the groceries all the way up the steep stairs. I heard about Store to Door and it was very helpful. Now I am 2 1/2 years away from 80, living in a senior building and finding it is more difficult to go out on my own to do any grocery shopping and no relations close to help.   I  am very grateful for Store To Door".

Hunger-Free Minnesota reports hungry Minnesotans, including kids, families and elderly, are missing 100 million meals every year.  Shopping for and delivering 18,000 grocery orders into the homes of homebound eldelry adults each year takes a small nip out of that overwhelming need.  And, providing personal contact every other week, checking up on people we can't reach and working with the caregivers that are available to our clients is what we do every day. 
While Hunger Free Minnesota hopes to achieve its goal by 2014, I hope we're still serving homebound elderly in 2040, when I might (if I live long enough) need the service. 

Volunteers speak up!

43% of Store To Door volunteer order takers have been helping elderly clients order groceries for over six years and 26% of current shoppers have been showing up at 6AM to shop for people they don't know for over six years!  These are just two highlights of a yearly survey recently completed by volunteer order takers, shoppers and office volunteers for Store To Door.  Overall, volunteer rated the experience as excellent, were volunteering to support Store To Door's mission and felt prepared after their training to tackle the volunteer task they'd chosen.  
Specific suggestions from shoppers for areas of improvement are:
Reduce downtime between shopping and checkout;
Gauge numbers of volunteers to number of order;
Start shopping at 7AM rather than 6AM.
Specific suggestions from order takers for areas of improvement: 
More hands-on training on the online ordering system
Improve the online ordering system; add more products;
Referesher or back-up training on specific topics would be helpful;
Ability to maintain a list of special order items from order to order.
This tiny summary reflects the tip of a whole iceberg of comments and suggestions for improving the volunteer experience at Store To Door.  There's many items we can impact and several we cannot, at least not in the near term.  But, we (Kristen Hoplin, Volunteer Coordinator, Sarah Skjolsvik, Program Manager and Mary Jo Schifsky, Executive Director) appreciate the time taken for everyone to get back to us and will do our best to show our volunteers how much we do appreciate them.  

Middle of the night radio

In its 26-year history, Store To Door has worked pretty close to the bone, staffing lean and relying on word of mouth to attract clients.  While this approach has worked to keep us as busy as our capacity can handle, it's not allowed us to understand what the need is in the community for our service that we're not even aware of.  Two events over this past six months have provided a window on the un-met need--a summary of a study of adults over 65 who report needing help with grocery shopping and having no one to help them and a grant from the F.R. Bigelow Foundation allowing a modest test of a sixty-second radio spot on WCCO-AM radio..

There are over 7,000 adults over 65 reporting needing help to get groceries and they have no one.  WCCO-AM's listener demographic encompasses this group.  Our hypothesis was that isolated and homebound adults listen to the radio for company, often around the clock.  WCCO allowed us to purchase daytime slots for our ad and donated middle-of-the-night slots, to see if our potential clients might catch us then.

Our hunch was right.  The combination of advertising with the worst winter weather in several years had our phones ringing non-stop. And, the majority of the potential client callers heard the ad in the middle of the night. The ads began running on Oct 18--we truncated the campaign prior to its planned end in late February on January 16.  In 2011, we planned to add 500 new clients; 112 were added in December and so far, the total added for the year is 211. We've been overwhelmed, in the best way possible. 

Now, if we want to continue to achieve our mission, we can work on the weak links in our system so we can serve more people AND we can begin the effort to include radio in our ongoing budget plans. It's exciting and hopeful to be introduced to so many people who are so glad to learn of Store To Door! 

A downward spiral . . . .

Store To Door does not have an FNS# to process EBT card Food Support benefits.  Without an FNS #, we must use a manual voucher process to accept EBT card payments.  The manual voucher process does not allow us to accept the cash benefit on the EBT card.  Hennepin Couny, for a reason no one seems to know, loads the majority of the Food Support benefit as cash on the card of Hennepin County residents (of any age) eligible for Food Support. (This course of action does increase the opportunity for the recipient to fraudulently use the benefit for ineligible items but no one seems to care about this at the State or County level). Hennepin County homebound elderly residents wanting to use their EBT card to pay for groceries shopped and delivered by Store To Door cannot do so (and often, the benefit goes unused).  
In this time of declining resources and conflicting demands, we're working to alert the Hennepin County financial eligibility workers of this problem and will encourage them to clarify it with elderly applicants.  Current recipients can change the benefit from cash to food with a call to their social worker, we are told.