Table of Contents
This Month’s Top Updates
- A grant opportunity through Get Grounded Foundation to support childhood food insecurity, child abuse and neglect prevention, and youth mental health.
- A newly developed flyer that clearly outlines the correct ordering window timeline to place both pickup and delivery orders.
- An update on how Food Bank of the Rockies is sourcing items for the upcoming winter holidays, including information about Turkeys.
Important Dates
Closures:
- Wednesday, September 30 – Food Bank of the Rockies is open until 11:15 a.m. for order pick-up and Fresh Food Center due to month-end closure
- Friday, October 30 – Food Bank of the Rockies will be closed for a quarterly all-staff meeting and development. No order pick-ups, deliveries, or Fresh Food Center.
Hunger Relief Partner Orientations:
- Thursday, September 17, 1:00 p.m. – Hunger Relief Partner Orientation (virtual)
- Tuesday, October 6, 10:00 a.m. – Hunger Relief Partner Orientation (virtual)
- Wednesday, October 14, 1:00 p.m. – Hunger Relief Partner Orientation (in-person tour + orientation)
- Thursday, October 22, 1:00 p.m. – Hunger Relief Partner Orientation (virtual)
To sign up for orientation or for questions about any of the dates above, contact partnersolutions@foodbankrockies.org. For our full, detailed calendars, please click here.
Hunger Relief Partner Highlight
We are very excited to highlight Growing Home, an incredible organization in Westminster focusing on food and resource assistance, early childhood development, and stability support services. They’re open three days a week and serve over 425 households each month.
Among the many great things Growing Home does every day, we are excited to highlight three best practices they uphold.
- All signage is in both English and Spanish, allowing all neighbors to access the space with ease. Please see the image below of the Diaper/ Pañales signs as an example.
- All required documents are organized and labeled in a filing cabinet, and a binder with all required materials was ready to go for their biannual Site Review. This ensures all food safety and civil rights compliance is in place and organized, and that all records are easy to locate. Please see the image below of the filing cabinet.
- Growing Home offers wrap-around services beyond food assistance. For example, they run a Parents as Teachers program, where trained parent educators provide in-home visits that focus on early learning, positive parenting practices, and child development milestones. This program, among others, recognizes that the root causes of hunger run so much deeper than simply needing food, and begins to tackle some of those root causes.
Feeding Colorado Advocacy/Policy Update
Feeding Colorado is the state association of the five Feeding America food banks serving all of Colorado and Wyoming.
Colorado Farm Bureau
Feeding Colorado welcomed the Colorado Farm Bureau to Food Bank of the Rockies for a tour of the facility and a productive conversation about opportunities to both strengthen nutrition programs and support farmers and agricultural producers. Our five Colorado food banks partner with more than 150 farms across Colorado, allowing us to source fresh, locally grown foods for our neighbors. We look forward to future collaboration with the Colorado Farm Bureau to grow Colorado’s local and regional food economies, improve food distribution systems, develop new markets for producers, and increase access to fresh, healthy, and affordable foods for all Coloradans.
Farm Bill Update & Action Alert
We need your help today to urge our Senators to reject Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman’s Farm Bill proposal, which could force Colorado to pay tens of millions more for SNAP benefits. Our statewide network of food banks is already stretched thin and struggling to feed an increasing number of neighbors who have lost access to important federal programs like SNAP and Medicaid. If you haven’t already, please complete the Senate Farm Bill advocacy alert. The package failed in the Agriculture Committee last month on a 10-11 vote, but Senator Boozman plans to bring the Committee to a vote again.
August Recess
Food Bank of the Rockies has had several visits from members of Congress and staff during the August recess, including Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen, Congressman Gabe Evans, and staff from Senator Michael Bennet and Senator John Hickenlooper’s offices. We spoke about ongoing increases in need on the ground, Farm Bill priorities, and other opportunities to improve food security!
Grant Opportunities
The Get Grounded Foundation’s 2026 application cycle is open now through October 16.
The foundation offers micro-grants ranging from $2,500 to $5,000 to organizations making a meaningful difference in the lives of young people in the Denver metro or Boulder areas. We continue to focus our funding on three critical areas: child abuse and neglect prevention, youth mental health, and childhood food insecurity.
Program Updates
Partner Solutions
Updated Ordering Timeline Guides
Based on partner feedback, we recently updated our ordering timelines to make them clearer, so you know the correct window to place orders on Agency Express. In these new flyers, requirements are outlined to ensure orders can be successfully processed, and you receive the food you need to best serve your neighbors. No matter how long you’ve been part of our network, please review these flyers and share with your shoppers. If you have any questions about these timelines and requirements, please contact partnersolutions@foodbankrockies.org or 303-375-5867. Thank you.
TimelineDeliveryOrder_FINAL.pdf
Community Connections – Best Practice of the Month
Food Bank of the Rockies Logo
We ask that Hunger Relief Partners display the Food Bank of the Rockies logo on their website to help elevate our shared missions. This is outlined in the Partner Agreement and is something we cover during Site Reviews.
To access our Hunger Relief Partner Logo Usage and Language Guide, please click here. This resource outlines information on how we ask partners to display our logo and refer to our partnership. This can also be found on our website, in the Partner Portal, in the Partner Resources section.
To access the Food Bank of the Rockies Partner Logos, click here.
Regional Quarterly Town Halls
Thank you to all Hunger Relief Partners who joined a regional town hall in August. We discussed the recently released Map the Meal Gap and SNAP Trend Data, Food Rescue delivery opportunities, future in-person town halls, sourcing non-food items, and a new flyer outlining the ordering window timeline.
If you weren’t able to join, town hall recordings can be found on our website, in the Partner Portal under Partner Resources. Just click Meeting Recordings under the Partner Town Halls header!
As always, if you have any thoughts on what would make future town halls most meaningful for you, please email partnersolutions@foodbankrockies.org.
Food Sourcing Update
Holiday Items Available
Even though they may feel far away now, winter holidays are right around the corner! Many of you do special holiday distributions around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays, and our Sourcing team makes sure to stock items that make the holidays feel special for our neighbors.
Thanksgiving items we will have this year include: corn muffin mix, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, instant mashed potatoes, canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, canned sweet potatoes. Many of these items are already available on Agency Express and can be found by searching “Holiday.” Plan early to make the holidays special for your neighbors!
Turkeys
Due to several large poultry processors no longer processing whole turkeys this year, whole turkey supplies are tight nationwide, and prices are elevated. Due to these constraints, we will have only a limited supply of whole turkeys available this year. In order to best serve our partners and neighbors, we will be stocking turkey breasts to supplement the whole turkeys. Breasts are fully cooked and are 5-7 pounds each, making this a great option for smaller households. Please reach out to partnersolutions@foodbankrockies.org with any questions regarding turkeys or holiday items!
Nutrition Update
Did you know? You can find nutrition information for items on Agency Express in the Nutritional Information column in the shopping list. This section helps partners understand the nutritional content of items and guides which items best support health. Items can be sorted by nutritional information if a certain label is desired. The labels include: Choose Often, Choose Sometimes, Choose Rarely, or Unranked. The goal of these labels is to empower neighbors to make informed dietary choices to support their health and foster nutrition security. Using this stoplight system is part of the Supporting Wellness at Pantries (SWAP) program and takes the guesswork out of reading nutrition labels. This column applies to food items only. To learn more about this program and to further bring nutrition education into your pantry, please contact Jennie Kim, Nutrition Manager, at jkim@foodbankrockies.org or (303) 879-0236.
