Missouri church’s GoFundMe seeks to sustain food pantry as more people go hungry

The useful part

Stephen's & The Vine Episcopal Church in Ferguson, Missouri, has operated a food pantry to help feed its community. As living expenses and the city's poverty rate increase, more people in north St. Louis County are turning to the ministry, which runs Tuesday and Saturday mornings, for food assistance.

How it works

• Stephen's & the Vine's food pantry began serving more low-income people than usual last year after the federal government made cuts to its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
• The church was already struggling to keep up with the food pantry's growing demand when this summer it suffered a "financial crisis" after both of its HVAC systems simultaneously broke down and needed to be...
• Teresa Danieley, set up a GoFundMe page in late July to keep its shelves stocked with fresh and nonperishable food and personal care items.
• "Before the SNAP cuts, we were probably serving around 50 people on a Tuesday morning and more people on a Saturday morning.
• Now we're serving at least 75 people each day we're open," Danieley told Episcopal News Service.

What to take from it

Based on current food costs and not counting additional emergencies, the money raised so far can at best keep the food pantry open for 38 weeks, or 9.5 months, according to the ministry's operational expense average of $500 weekly. Our food pantry is their stopgap." Danieley noted that the food pantry is the church's most expensive outreach ministry to operate. As of 2024, 24.2% of Ferguson residents live below the federal poverty level, higher than the nat...

Details worth keeping

[Episcopal News Service] For more than 50 years, St. Like many other Episcopal-run food pantries nationwide, St. Stephen's & the Vine's part-time transitional priest, the Rev.