The leaders of Compa Food Bank Ministry – a former Marine and an ex-executive – have a simple plan: Change the way food banks feed people.
Rick Rank spent 20 years at Food Bank of the Rockies before taking the top job at Compa, which distributes food to 170 programs, and has 70 more on a waiting list.
“We aren’t even serving a third of the need we have,” says Jackson Pope, who worked for Fortune 50 companies before running missions in Boston.
Through the agencies Compa supplies, 49,000 people eat every week. That translates to about 17 meals per client per month, but Rank and Pope would like to be able to offer one meal per day to clients. More than half of Compa’s clients are single parents and children, and requests are increasing.
“There are 200,000 people one paycheck away from becoming homeless,” Pope says. “Our objective is to take people to self-sufficiency, to keep people from going into homelessness.”
The amount of food available for donation is shrinking as donors (manufacturers and retailers) become more efficient, so the charity veterans realized they had to “innovate around” existing food banking systems.
One challenge was the produce left in the field after gleaning, so Compa bought flatbed trailers that double the amount of produce it can handle.
“The problem is what to do with it, where are you gonna go with the produce?” Pope says. “Our 170 agencies have all the cabbage they want right now.”
The agency has been producing “Compadre cans” – including aphili and 9Cares Chicken Noodle Soup – for five years, but using the gleaned produce is new. About a year ago, Compa contracted with Ready Foods to turn the veggies into soup.
“We want to be processors ourselves,” says Rank, the polished hunger worker whose résumé includes Marine Corps photographer. He recruited chef Stephen Kleinman, an instructor at the Art Institute of Colorado culinary program, to create recipes.
By becoming its own supplier, Compa can assure a steady food supply and offer donors a “bargain” – the money spent to donate one can of food will pay for three Compa cans.
“We work with Compa because it is the right thing to do,” says Marco Antonio Abarca of Ready Foods. “We have a specialized skill and the right machinery to turn food that (would otherwise) rot in the field into a soup. We are thankful we can help feed some of the most vulnerable people in our community.”
From its beginnings in 1981, when six urban pastors started a food bank, Compa now processes 7 million pounds of food every year, and has seven staffers and about 7,000 volunteers.
Compa has applied for funding from the Post/News Season to Share campaign for acquisition and distribution of food.
Compa calls itself a ministry, but the leaders emphasize that while their faith underlies their motivation, they minister to all.
Food editor Kristen Browning- Blas can be reached at 303-954-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com.
How to donate
Post-News Season to Share, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, gave more than $1.73 million to 56 agencies last year serving children, and people who are hungry, homeless or in need of medical care. Donations are matched 50 cents to the dollar, and 100 percent of the donations go to the charitable agencies. To contribute, please see the coupon on this page, call 888-683- 4483 or visit seasontoshare.com.
