From good-hearted parishioners making meals for a few dozen seniors in a small kitchen at St. John’s Church of Christ in Woodland, to an institutional meal production facility now nourishing 1,200+ older adults throughout Yolo County and hundreds more regionally, Meals on Wheels Yolo County (MOW Yolo) always has been rooted in community support and service.  Thousands of county residents have neighbors or loved ones who’ve benefitted from MOW Yolo’s home-delivered meals and Café Yolo dining locations over the decades.  

“My budget doesn’t extend far and I eat only one meal a day, the one delivered by MOW Yolo,” shared Eclare Hannifen, a MOW Yolo meal recipient in Woodland.  “It’s literally a lifesaver.”

Celebrating its 50th year this fall of ensuring a safety net for tens of thousands of seniors such as Eclare over the years, MOW Yolo is focused upon sustaining this vital work amidst an increasingly challenging fiscal environment.

“The silver lining of the pandemic was the one-time funding that built up the food security network, allowing MOW Yolo to scale by 300% to meet increasing need amongst the growing senior population,” explained Joy Cohan, MOW Yolo Executive Director.  “Now backfilling those depleted revenue sources on an annual basis is our highest priority, so we can preserve service to the more than 1,200 seniors depending upon us and hold out hope to reach more older adults who need us as the baby boom generation ages and the senior population explodes.  Federal and state government provides only 15% of our annual budget, and there are no ongoing county funds.”

To avoid joining senior nutrition organizations nationwide cutting seniors’ access to meals to stay afloat financially, as well as to address a growing wait list locally for meals, MOW Yolo is celebrating its 50^th anniversary with both a themed “50-For-50 Challenge” campaign and the launch of “Club EAT – Eat, Age, Thrive,” recognizing community investments in MOW Yolo’s mission to nourish and engage seniors in Yolo County.

“It costs $4,000 per senior annually to freshly prepare and transport 240 home-delivered meals, offer 100+ wellness checks at the front door, perform quarterly in-person and phone reassessments by trained staff, and connect seniors with other critical community resources as needed to age in place healthily and safely,” Cohan detailed.  “The safety net provided is so much more than just a meal, and it's laborious and logistics-intensive to provide.  Thus, the urgent need for donor engagement, and increased volunteerism, as well.”

The ”50-For-50 Challenge” invites at least 50 donors to sponsor a senior for a year, or for any part of a year that represents a meaningful gift for the donor.

“While an investment of $4,000 to ‘adopt’ a local senior for a year is amazing, $83 provides for a senior for a week, and any amount in between advances what MOW Yolo can continue to accomplish in a time of mounting uncertainty,” Cohan added.  “Volunteer time also can both offset some staff expenses and increase MOW Yolo’s reach to locations where seniors are awaiting the nutrition and engagement at the heart of our mission.”

Nearly 200 seniors currently are on the wait list for MOW Yolo’s home-delivered meals services.  As recently as a year ago, MOW Yolo was fiscally positioned to onboard seniors to nutrition programs immediately, and no wait list existed.  Despite assessments to ensure that the very most vulnerable seniors are placed at the top of the list, staff and Board members worry that too many seniors are at risk of unhealthy, unsafe living conditions as a result of MOW Yolo’s current inability to serve them all.

“It’s with great pride and a feeling of tremendous responsibility that our staff and our Board serve as a lifeline for so many hungry and isolated aging adults,” stated Bridget Levich, chair of the MOW Yolo Board of Directors.  “We are challenged by a constrained budget to stay fully staffed, compensate competitively, and provide for employees’ own wellbeing amidst these circumstances.”  

Long a source of community pride over the organization’s 50-year history has been MOW Yolo’s institutional meal production facility, known as the Meals on Wheels-Sutter Health Senior Nutrition Center.  Originally in a far smaller, outdated location in Woodland, and now in a more modern, recently re-equipped setting in Winters (formerly the Buckhorn Restaurant’s catering facility prior to the pandemic), the site offers MOW Yolo’s Food Services team the capacity to produce, package, and transport meals on a scale more appropriate to the county’s full need, which points to more than 8,000 seniors living in poverty per the 2020 Census.

The meal production facility also makes MOW Yolo an outlier amongst senior nutrition programs in the region.  Most such programs – including those in neighboring Sacramento and Solano Counties – don’t operate their own kitchens.  Rather, they source meals from mass meal manufacturers or restaurants, often at a higher price and with less opportunity for a fresh and local approach.

“Again, thanks to one-time, pandemic-era investments that positioned MOW Yolo in a facility capable of transforming the quality of life for seniors in our communities, there is an historic opportunity to care for older adults in Yolo County, if MOW Yolo can inspire and sustain the consistent revenue required to maximize the potential of the location and of the organization,” Cohan said.

In addition to outreach about the “50-For-50 Challenge” to private donors this fall, MOW Yolo is leveraging the meal production facility to provide supplementary reimbursement revenue, by contracting with other senior nutrition programs and nonprofits serving seniors to provide their meals.  These include organizations for seniors in Colusa, Butte, Yuba, and Sutter Counties, as well as Dignity Health’s Yolo Adult Day Health Center and Yolo Cares’ Galileo Place Adult Day Center and Joshua’s House Hospice for unhoused individuals.

“While compassionate, generous Yolo County residents continue to be called upon to provide more than 75% of MOW Yolo’s annual budget to perform our mission, embracing and supplementing with social enterprise may further avoid the heartbreak of denying assistance to seniors whom we’re currently nourishing, as well as an expanded wait list,” Cohan acknowledged.  “It’s necessary, even though it compounds the complex, logistics-intense nature of our daily work.” 

Social enterprise is an entrepreneurial approach to a nonprofit’s business operations, providing goods or services to propel the mission of other social benefit organizations, and enabling the nonprofit provider to reinvest the earnings back into its own charitable mission.

“MOW Yolo’s drive and innovation over the past few years to chase every opportunity to nourish and engage more seniors, and in previously unserved and underserved areas of the county, has been dynamic,” observed Yolo County Supervisor Lucas Frerichs, serving District 2 covering Winters and portions of Davis.  “While MOW Yolo is steeped in tradition as a reliable community resource for the elderly, it’s going to require an increasingly clever approach to remain so, as the organization’s next 50 years unfolds.”

Recalling his return home from a recent hospital stay, MOW Yolo meal recipient William Thurston of West Sacramento spoke about recovering alone, reliant upon processed foods, before connecting with MOW Yolo for healthy, hearty meals and friendly doorstep visits by the kindhearted volunteers delivering them.

“I was in dire straits when I got out of the hospital,” Thurston said.  I couldn’t stand up for very long.  I couldn’t even cook a pot of soup, that’s how bad it was.  I was in a wheelchair, and it looked like life was over.  But then I found the Meals on Wheels program.”

To learn more about MOW Yolo’s mission to nourish and engage seniors in Yolo County, or to donate to the “50-For-50 Challenge,” volunteer, or connect with nutrition services, visit https://mowyolo.org, email info@mowyolo.org, or call 530-662-7035.