How This Nonprofit Saved 31 Million Pounds of Food

[0:00]  that Innovation that quick turn on on here's the issue come up with a creative solution and I look at my team in retrospect and say damn they were good they knew how to respond in a heartbeat whenever a uh a curveball was thrown at them they didn't let their knees Buckle they stood in and slapped it out to the right field that is an amazing reference because if you know anything about being caught off guard right you have to sit back wait for the opportunity and go with what you're given and that's the baseball reference of slapping it out to right field all right guys welcome back to a

[0:54]  brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now today is an incredibly important episode I have the CEO of an amazing organization Bob kamensky is here with me today now Bob is the leading an organization called feeding San Diego we're going to talk about why feeding San Diego is providing such a critical service for the community helping those in need but more importantly we're going to talk about his origin story his 35 years in the Navy what that meant to him in his career how he's using those Lessons Learned along the the way to be able to serve a bigger purpose and a bigger Mission now Bob welcome to the show man hey well thank you very much Kingdom what a kind introduction it's easy for me to give an introduction like that

[1:41]  when the man sitting across this digital table with me is a standup guy just like you man I want to uh I want to ask you an opening question here if you had to be described work out of bounds how would people describe Bob kamansky I would hope that they would describe him as a very engaged Hands-On leader and someone who exemplifies the virtues of a servant leader because those are tenants of my learning over the course of the years and Senior leadership positions whether in the Navy or in the corporate world and one of the Hallmarks has been my willingness to Ru sleeves up and dive into the work that

[2:30]  my people are doing so that I can contribute as well as better understand the challenges and the joys that they get to experience in the types of work that they're involved in while under my tutelage Bob you're an amazing guy in our previous conversation you had mentioned that you have a Heart for Service I want to take everybody back if we were to meet a young 16-year-old Bob what is he interested in what are the things that are on his Horizon what's he thinking about well other than young women because being a teenager that's first on your mind second thing was what are you GNA have to eat because you're hungry always as a teenager but um other than the light side of things uh at that

[3:18]  point in time in the mid teens I had finished my um my project for Eagle Scout and for uh order of the arrow which is part of the scouting scouting program and I had developed a penchant for service service to others and it just continued to um show itself in the types of things I would get involved in some of it would be just the regular things that most teenagers do you're in high school you're um in my case West Texas and uh football was King so if you weren't on the football team then you didn't you didn't socialize so you had to be out

[4:08]  there and I was what they put they put me on what they called the Green Beret Squad and we were the ones who were uh put in position to to uh pretend to be the next week's uh Team to play and I was small 142 pound soaking wet and I had uh nearsightedness so whenever it came to passes I usually caught them in the face as opposed to my hands and um there were a lot bigger boys out there than me so that taught me a lot about resilience but it also taught me that it's teamwork and there are some things that you you do in support of your team that provides that service aspect even

[4:59]  though you may not be first string or out there on the Varsity squad under the Friday Night Lights and then from there it helped me gain um appreciation for uh stick to itiveness don't give up and that translated itself into my academics where on graduation from a pretty sizable High School in West Texas um I graduated high in my class and was the recipient of a 4-year Navy RC scholarship which uh definitely needed because coming from a family of five kids and uh a dad who was a senior enlisted in the Air Force and uh the mom

[5:49]  who was a stay-at-home take care of family we weren't uh financially U well off so it was you have to provision for yourself you have to be be self reliant to some degree especially when it came to college education and uh getting getting awarded the four-year scholarship now was where do you go and after the visits to schools I selected Texas A&M and uh they had a nuclear engineering program I knew that I wanted to serve in submarine Force because it sounded neat people always would go oo submarines and I just felt that that had a a catch to it and uh it sure did uh the four years at

[6:37]  A&M uh I was in the core of cadets uh eventually fleeting up to be the core Commander which had um essentially responsibility for leading about 2200 Cadets uh in the core that lived on campus had her own dormatory complex and uh chow hall and again the Leadership Learning the uh the business of servant leadership all those little things it's like getting a little ping ping hammer and it just TAPS at you and it just makes you stronger and stronger as you um um malate that Ma that that metal and from there it was my my trip into the Navy we're on commission joined the submarine Force went through the

[7:26]  program and uh from there it's the opportunity to serve your country as well as the people that are on your crew now I had a hybrid career my first five years was active duty in the Navy and I completed my years on fast attack submarines going to see quite a bit uh Western Pacific uh out of San Diego and then I went reserves and joined Corporate America first working for General Dynamics engineering that was my background and um program management aspects of it and after several years at GD transitioned over to a small uh Boutique uh

[8:16]  electronics signals type company that did instrumentation for commercial nuclear power plants and I had the European sector as my area of focus in the develop M and deployment of sensors for um surrounding areas around the nuclear power plant and again program management skills working with uh clients uh in Europe from there it would um Sony electronics two miles from my house in Suburbia San Diego so I was able to grow up with my kids in their schools in their Sports programs because they had such a a short commute to and from work but there it was mass

[9:04]  Electronics how do you do instead of one of aind builds you're looking at 8 million televisions a year coming off of production lines as far south as Mexico and in Mador or up here in San Diego and again all this time staying the reserves and eventually I landed in a reserve assignment that was down at Commander space Naval Warfare systems where there is a large civilian cading and I was asked by the principal there would you consider leaving corporate America and come Implement lean s Sigma process Improvement which is a specialty of yours at Sony and teach us those principles here and get us better from efficiency and Effectiveness so I was

[9:54]  able to make that transition during that time as a civil servant and still being a reservist I was selected for flag which is the rank of Admiral that forced a decision point and it was to be recalled to active duty so for the next five years I put the uniform back on pretty much full-time working for Commander submarine forces for three of those years and then to be appointed as the startup Commander for Commander submarine forces NATO where I was stationed overseas that was what you would call The Pinnacle of your professional career from a uniform service side and it was

[10:42]  to work with 13 other countries and their submarine forces to develop a brand new command standing it up they call it a plank owner and to build it into its initial operating concept so that it could be functional in the world of submarine warfare and deployment of submarines and capabilities in support of NATO all the way from the Arctic around the Eastern Atlantic the Baltic the North Sea the Mediterranean and the far east western edge of the Indian Ocean off of Somalia so there was a tremendous amount of effort required to put this in play but again the concepts of servant

[11:31]  leadership came into play because you had 13 organ 13 countries that you're trying to coales and you're not going to do it by Brute Force following that I was able to and was I was uh uh retired from uniform and then reintegrated back into Civil Service however in that I said I need to prepare for real retirement because at some point I'm going to get there that I want to just kick back and work what I want to work part-time so I said prep for it thinking in advance how about doing some teaching at the University level so I became an Adjunct professor for nights

[12:20]  and weekends for point lman aarene in their master's program on organizational leadership I had a pretty good sense for what that meant and then in addition to that was asked to do a little bit of Consulting to not for profits in helping them know how to operationalize strategic plans that's what led me to feeding San Diego and I was asked to help develop a strategy to get them out of preco to covid environment and to rebuild their capability to answer the call to a much higher degree of demand as a result of what was happening with employment due

[13:10]  to the covid restrictions two months into that and it was a part-time the founder and then the CEO of the organization asked me would you consider retiring from civil service and come on board here full time and be our chief strategy officer and that was a no-brainer decision because I got to experience something I had never done in my professional career that was then spaning more than 35 and that was to serve my immediate community of San Diego so I took the offer and I have been there since everybody who's tuning

[13:59]  in watching and listening today give a moment of appreciation and gratitude for Bob and everything that you've done to not only serve your local community being an Aggie at Texas A&M taking the leap going into University serving your country across the world literally protecting our freedoms in so many ways that we can't even understand and then the work that you're now doing to serve your immediate community in San Diego man likee do you ever have an opportunity to pause with a sense of gratitude and think about all the lives that you've impacted either directly or indirectly in the work that you've done over this extensive career no the the short answer is I really don't make the time to do that

[14:48]  reflection but the reflection happens in spontaneous moments and I'll just take for example recently at a um at a restaurant with my wife and a young man and I'd say young man this is somebody that's now in their 30s approaches me at the table and ask to interrupt and he looks at me and he says coach and I responded Yes who am I speaking with and he gave me his name and he was on my little league team and that was more than 20 plus years years ago and his approach to me was so that he could thank me for some of the team

[15:38]  not the skills development but of the lessons in life that as a coach for a little league team I imparted on the kids that were playing for me and he had the wherewithal one to remember them number two to remember who helped in those in him and third there was an opportunity and he didn't know if it was me for sure or not because I have changed you can tell that uh some things have regressed and uh he took that chance to say thank you those moments those spontaneous moments are the ones that uh stick with me there are other moments that in my current

[16:27]  work where it may not be one of my co-workers or another agency that we work with but a recipient of the food distributions that we my team feeding San Diego provides into the community where someone after they've received their their ration of uh groceries and they're preparing to leave will pause turn around walk either to me or to one of the members of my team and just say thank you you know you've had an impact well I just want to say thank you for all the work that you're doing you know there's a huge issue that we see in nonprofit CEO burnout there's a

[17:17]  lot of things that we do to serve other people consistently and often it seems like we're fighting a battle where maybe we're not making as much progress as we could be and the one thing that I always try and say when I come across Ross the table from leaders like you is the work that you are doing is so appreciated and there are so many people who don't even have the opportunity to say Thank you so I want to make sure that you understand that there are so many people out here who are listening and watching and coming across this episode whenever they do who appreciate the work that you are doing for your community let's dive in a little bit Bob to uh the problem that we're facing here San Diego has the highest cost of living in the United States inflated with all of the economic pressure that we've been dealing dealing with since Co we still are dealing with a lot of Economic and access issues in

[18:04]  our community what is your two Sense on the food crisis that you guys are dealing with in San Diego you know I thought we had peaked at the second peak of covid when we were moving more than three and a half million pounds of food a month and I was wrong now I'm not moving that amount of food because I don't have the uh the full amount of financial resources that I did the peak of Co I am seeing the signal the demand signal is higher now than it was at the top peak during the covid and that is driven by economics and by migration you see it in the form of the cost of living here and people who at

[18:53]  one point in time were able to just barely make it but with the increase in the cost of rent utilities fuel food all of these factors coming into play you can't just pay part of your rent you can't just pay part of your utility bill it's all or you're out where they can economize if you want to call it that let me cut back on my food and I'm going to go to cheaper bulkier food Which is less nutritious right or I'm just going to cut out a meal a day and maybe I'm not going to sacrifice my children to two meals a day but I will as the parent because I want to make

[19:42]  sure my kids are are are fit and that decision is being made by over 350,000 people in this County every day it's a choice that some that these people are making and that's what really um motivates me as well as our team to how can we relieve that stress and give some comfort by means of the mission that we perform food rescue and getting that rescue food into the hands of people who have uh food insecurity facing them Bob I have an interesting question for you so we mentioned how when you went into the

[20:31]  reserves at one point in time you were able to live in San Diego so close to your school or to your children's school that you were able to be a participant in the community which is beautiful how much has the community of San Diego changed since back in the day well one the population certainly has grown and a lot of the people moving in in that population growth are uh economically disadvantage managed and a portion of that obviously is because we are on the border there is that migration coming across uh the southern border into San Diego and then the second demographic is that the um the very nice climate attributes here uh make it attractive

[21:20]  for people who are uh hard on their luck or maybe uh uh either uh mentally or physically um uh impacted in such a way that they are unsheltered homeless uh it's much easier to live it here than it is in Chicago yeah you know uh at least for the U that winter and and uh spring periods of time the so that population growth has been occurring and then that demographic of distribution of economic wealth has definitely shown itself to be different the the composition of people in this county is also unique in another

[22:08]  demographic form that now we're a population of a little over threeome million in the county of San Diego and that is consisting of 18 municipalities plus the county as a government 37 % of the people that live in the county in one fashion or another have a relationship with the US military in the form of either a family member or a veteran or a retiree or an active duty military member and their immediate family that is a sizable percentage and if you're a

[22:56]  retiree and you don't have have a second income and you're watching economics you're looking at a fixed income and watching prices Elevate and how are you going to catch up or if you're an active military member and you're a junior enlisted ranks E1 to E6 and you have a family and yes there are benefits to the military Community Health Care access to commissaries or to other uh facilities and services but the cost of living is still the highest in the nation and your disposable income continues to contract and decisions have to be made and we have found much

[23:45]  different than my time serving I got four meals a day on board submarines breakfast lunch dinner and mid rats at midnight when we're doing cruise ship change over and I I never even realized that there would be hunger in our ranks now seeing the people who come to some of our food distributions I see active duty military members and they're arriving in the one vehicle for their family and they have their two or three children and a spouse who is not able to find employment because they're only here for two three years and move on and employers aren't looking for that so now they're struggling to make it on one income and they're coming to

[24:34]  organizations like feeding San Diego or agencies that we provide food to and I am thinking this is wrong and we have to make an impact in in a a change to it making an impact in a change to this macro problem seems like we would have abundant government Public Funding for this issue but thing that I recognized from our previous conversation is that 96 or 97% of feeding San Diego's funding comes from private donations and sources why is that this is not to denigrate Federal programs Federal programs come with requirements and restrictions and that

[25:22]  is valid because you are using taxpayer funds to procure and and to deliver food there have to be some controls with it those controls can one be expensive because now you have compliance demonstration of compliance audit that you need to demonstrate that your stewardship of those federal funds is being properly managed but it also comes as part of it that you now need to do means testing with the people that you're giving food to because someone who is receiving a federal benefit such as emergency food assistance program they are not eligible

[26:10]  to receive that more than once a month and they are prohibited from receiving another Federal type of benefit at the same time so is that going to be sufficient to carry the person over or the family and then also what does that do with the Dignity of the individual I know I've heard people say if you're hungry hungry enough you're going to go do it and that is true however you are not just affecting that person's hunger and relieving them of hunger when you provide them food you're providing them a sense of hope and then there is beyond that sense of hope and relief that sense of I still have my dignity

[27:01]  that I can maintain as the earner for this com this family or the main provider to my children and to my spouse and you don't want to strip the person of that because that is not going to encourage them to be standing on their own feet in the future whenever that opportunity presents itself so having Federal programs is critical for those food banks that are geared toward that model and I applaud them for it because there are some pretty rich programs they can get involved in in our case it is philanthropic 96 to 97% either foundations or private

[27:50]  donors and all those operating funds are used to run the business and in part to purchase some of the food but our model is different we do a lot of food rescue and I'll be explaining that further in our conversation I mean let's let's Dive Right into that right now actually let's let's take a step back the the Dignity of a man or a woman who is the primary provider for their home is something that is sacred and we have to protect I want to harp on that for a second because when we put people in situations where they feel hopeless they do not have the agency to impact their lives or provide for their families we're taking away a fundamental element of being a human being and a sense of Pride and that's something that I think a lot of

[28:38]  people don't recognize is when you qualify for one program like you said there's limits on your access but you can't qualify for another and so that's a prime reason in why you guys leverage outside funding and private sources to be able to do the work that is necessary to meet the demand in the community which is super important to kind of re re I would say re-emphasize now to talk on your point that you had just mentioned you said in our last conversation that in the previous year you guys rescued and distributed 31 plus million pounds of food how did you guys do that very very carefully uh food rescue food rescue comes in uh in a couple major patterns or or

[29:27]  methods and I'll describe both the first one is food rescue Arrangement and that is uh where we feeding San Diego serve as a broker we have food rescue coordinators who are part of our staff and their job is to work between food providers grocery store Trader Joe's jimbos um Sprouts uh any of the large major Grocers and the some of the smaller uh local and the arrangement that's made is between one of the agencies that we we service with and their primary role in their port of the community includes having their own Pantry or food

[30:14]  distribution so we sit in the background we provision them with some of our foods from our distribution center but we primarily link them up with another food provider the Sprouts store now Sprouts is going to be pushing off of its shelf product that is nearing its best used by date most of the time this is refrigerated product and they have the new shipment scheduled for every Wednesday morning so that means that on Tuesday afternoon they want to clear the shelves push the new stuff forward as they get new product in that next day where's that product going go he either going to go into the dumpster or it's

[31:01]  going to go to Food rescue we work that food rescue aspect by getting a marriage between an agency that's in that community link it up with that Sprout store and every Tuesday that agency comes with a vehicle to collect that product move it to their pantry and on that very next morning they're in the process of delivering to the community Meanwhile we're doing the jobs of ensuring that Sprouts not only that store but all the other ones in San Diego the corporate side is going to receive a report from us on store 123 provided X number of pounds on these

[31:49]  dates of these type of General Commodities refrigerated Goods produce protein and our report serves as their evidence for IRS purposes to receive Their donation and to have it validated on the agency side we teach the food handling the food safety we do the inspections to make sure that Refrigeration logs food handling logs and the ways of distribution ensure that the safety of the food has not been compromised before it is delivered to the end recipient the neighbor who is in need so we do that and it is one the training as well as the periodic

[32:37]  monitoring to ensure safety is maintained last year that was 16 million pounds we never saw that food it went between the source and the agency and we did the brokering and the Arrangements on the other side of food rescue this is where you get into the bulk and you're looking at and I'll give you easy examples think of Amazon Fresh have you ever been to an Amazon facility my lord they're huge I'm talking million two million three million square feet of warehouse space docks that just out the door with the number of of receiving docks when they receive a shipment it

[33:27]  has to get into inventory and out the door well what happens they still have inventory remaining and they can't move it and a new shipment has arrived and it's fresh produce or it's refrigerated Goods they don't have an outlet for it they have no means of storing it because they're in and out as their Mantra we get a phone call Bob or feeding San Diego we have 20,000 lbs of can you come down and take take receipt of it we're donating it to you so that's one method another is and this is the more predominant is with packing houses and Farms up and down the coast of California or down at the border crossing where produce is brought

[34:15]  in to the packing houses for prep and delivery to the marketplace well what happens if the farmer who is attempting to Stage his stock of his product uh consistently planting offsetting so that he can Harvest on a continuous basis Mother Nature has a vote and she decides to heat up a little bit and now two Fields come in at the same time rather than one that's that now he the farmer has an overproduction of that particular uh type of product what are they going to do with it plow it under or can they donate it if they don't it they do it through a broker and we work with that broker California

[35:03]  Association of food banks we pay the farmer for the labor to pick it to pack it and then a Transport company to bring it down to us so you may get a tractor trailer load of 30 40,000 pounds of a particular fresh produce let's take for example potatoes and for 8,500 bucks you have paid for the labor and the transportation and you receive 30 40,000 pounds of potatoes and these are freshly farmed potatoes and now we get to break it down into smaller quantities to get it into distribution so between those packing houses where they aggregate a lot of

[35:51]  product and then Farms we're able to secure five seven tractor trailer loads of produce every week now that may be 240,000 lbs of produce but that's 8,500 bucks out of pocket that's cash for each truckload so now I'm spending $60,000 a week to get that 240 to 300,000 pounds of produce that's called operating cost for me to buy that food buy the donated food so this is where we really make a difference in the way our operating model works because for a very low cost per pound particularly on produce we are

[36:41]  able to leverage that low cost into high volume and get it out into distribution then meanwhile the retail food rescue complements a variety of product out there and now we're looking at just like you mentioned 31 million pounds last year out of 35 million pounds that we delivered into our distribution came by the way of food rescue this is a community coming together through you know sometimes fortunate bounces of like you said Mother Nature heating up and giving us extra food or you know overflows and opportunities to be donated to you guys but there's still cost that comes along with that which is really important to recognize in our previous conversation Bob you talked about

[37:28]  one of the things that we've seen across the nation in the last couple years is that California in itself has had some weather tragedies you guys have fires you guys have floods you mentioned that you guys had to be incredibly Nimble and adaptable when there were floods in January to be able to distribute food I want to give you the floor to talk about the changes that were made the adaptability that your team demonstrated to be able to meet people where they were with the support that they need yeah well thank you because this is a this is an example of innovation uh creative out of the box thinking on the Fly by members of uh of our team in January of 24 we experienced what would normally be an

[38:16]  annual rainfall in the period of one day over 8 inches fell in one set of communities in southeast San Diego and of course uh as you would expect all the flood channels and so forth they were clogged with debris and it rapidly built into a flash flood that hit several communities and I mean literally hit communities there was one home that we were invited to where we eventually were doing a food distribution from their uh driveway where the lady described a rumbling sound that was coming from the overhead freeway and she lived with her backyard facing the sound barrier that's put in place to

[39:04]  keep freeway noise from rumbling into the community well the rumbling she was hearing was water it hit that wall cascaded about 40 feet down from there hit her backyard cascaded into her back wall fortunately the single story home was able to take that brunt of explosive water blast but she was in a quandry because water was now coming through her back doors and windows faster than she could get out the house by the time she was on a phone with her husband describing that the house was flooding

[39:53]  and the husband was saying well stick some stick some towels under the door Warframe and she turned on her face uh was a FaceTime so the camera and he said my God get out of there because in six minutes it was up to her armpits oh my gosh and she could not get out because the water now was holding the front door shut because it opens Inward and fortunately police were in the area broke through a front window swam in to rescue her that's the type of flooding that happened now once the floods were receding we jumped into our action using our traditional method which was go to

[40:43]  our agencies build up reserves for them and get food into delivery use our mobile pantries get them out to their pre-appointment spaces get food into delivery and it wasn't working and then it was one of those aha moments where they lost their cars they have no way to transport to come get food let's go visit a particular Community block and see what the needs are so we sent people into the field and they came back and said hey Bob hey team we've got to take minivans and do food distribution at 40 houses at a whack set up in somebody's driveway deliver food and then move on to another

[41:32]  street so we became very mobile and because we are not a large bureaucratic organization we were able to turn on a dime to make that transition to meet the needs in the community Then There came the sustainment people who were displaced from their homes and now they were given vouchers to stay in hotels that the city was going to provision to them but no food and no cooking capability in the hotel and no food vouchers for them we were able to work with local veterans of foreign war posts most of them have kitchens industrialized

[42:20]  kitchens for their VFW membership they hopped into action gave us the volunteer base to do the cooking their kitchens for those Cooks to do the work and we provided them the food they in turn used additional volunteers to transport completed meals to the hotels where the people were staying under the voucher system that lasted for three months so that Innovation that quick turn on on here's the issue to come up with a creative solution and I look at my team in retrospect and say damn they were good they knew how to respond in a heartbeat whenever a uh a curveball was

[43:12]  thrown at them they didn't let their knees Buckle they stood in and slapped it out to the right field that is an amazing reference because if you know anything about being caught off guard right you have to sit back wait for the opportunity and go with what you're given and that's the baseball reference of slapping it out to right field there's um there's so many elements of terrific leadership here Bob when we're talking about creativity adaptability curiosity how do you think you can continue to pour into the team of feeding San Diego so when another incident comes we're going to be ready to react to the needs beyond all the work that you guys do to serve the community every single day you know if I were to look at what the potential

[43:59]  disaster scenarios would be here one of them would be earthquake the other would be fire both of which have happened in the past so doing some type of uh anticipatory uh preparation and whether that comes in tabletop games that we do in conjunction with the county of San Diego their emergency office of uh for you know disaster Rel or just internally how do we prepare ourselves in the case of a response whenever half of our Workforce gets cut off because the freeways have become uh impassible and now we have to do with fewer people well that's where you get

[44:46]  into when you're building your contingency one of those items is cross train become multi-disciplined and periodically swap the job with someone for a few days just to maintain proficiency whether he's a forklift operator or she's a pilot Jack worker or someone that is working in our Marketplace let the positions get a chance to cross cross fertilize and that way you always have at least a passing familiarity on how to do the job in the event that the primary person is not available so we do that with intention the other area is with regard to the flexibility of the foods that we

[45:34]  get and how we would package and get them out into the field don't rely on just the big tractor trailer rigs work with the 26 foot uh box trucks oh let's go and work with 18f Footers and let's see what happens whenever we try to do a maximum pack out because now it'll fit into a small more constrained environment than taking one of the big big trucks out there let's break it down further let's go with the Sprinter vans can you put two maybe we could stack as many as four pallets in a sprinter vanand and let's demonstrate the efficacy of it so all of these are things that are done as part of a an ongoing progression of self demonstration

[46:27]  in order to account for it when the real time hits we've done this before okay we can pack four into that one particular Sprinter van and that way we're better prepared to respond to emergency Bob I want to I want to give you an opportunity one of the things that I think is really important and I talk about this often on the podcast is great leaders have the ability to cast a vision so large that other people can find themselves being successful uccessful in that Vision so what is the vision that you are currently casting for feeding San Diego we do have uh a vision statement it's uh on everybody's badge which I'm just pulling mine up here our mission statement is also on it but our vision

[47:15]  is to have a hunger-free healthy San Diego now we know that's a very lofty lofty Vision but unless you make an effort to achieve that vision you know where you're going to be and that is right where you're at right now so our effort is really to infuse our mission statement which is to help reduce the hunger Gap through our means of food rescue now that got translated into our most recent strategic plan which was refreshed and delivered to our board of directors on November 3 30th of last year I distinctly recall the board meeting whenever it was approved for goahead and

[48:03]  we narrowed our Focus down to five critical strategic objective areas and said here is our going forward strategy for the next three to five years it focused on Revenue generating because you have to sustain your cash flow it focused on sourcing where are we getting our food and how do we maximize our Rel relationships with the donors of food and with the local agriculture community so that we can have a builtin buffer available from local uh food producers The Growers the third area was with our Network because that's the point of action where the delivery of food is made to the individuals who are the ones

[48:51]  in need of uh hunger relief so how do we maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the network that we Infuse the food into the fourth area is Community Education and this isn't just about food in security but about how we do our work what resources it takes what's the extent of our impact and some of that is to the general public but it really was it it paid out in Spades talking to elected officials because because we can break it down to here is your County Supervisor District we know the zip codes we know where the ZIP code food insecurities are

[49:42]  and now we know how much food is going into those zip codes whether it's from us CalFresh the snap which is a federal program or just from general relief from uh uh School meals that are being delivered uh through the California Department of Education so we know what the saturation is of how much food is being made available for those who fall into the federal poverty level that dictates or qualifies someone for being food insecure and to give the data on how much was going in there versus the demand signal versus the types of sources what stores are helping what agencies are facing outward how much is

[50:31]  coming in from Rescue and from feeding San Diego it was eye openening to they didn't realize that it was on the magnitude of 12 14 million pounds coming into district one she was just shocked and that education helps Drive policy and there is Need for policy reform for to generate what is now being referred to as food Justice ensuring that economically or demographically uh heavily impacted communities are able to get a response from both the Civil Community the not for-profits such as ourselves as well as

[51:21]  the attention from government organizations to help get them above that line where food insecurity is no longer facing them on a daily basis well Bob I know that you and the work that you've done over all of these years of serving your local and Global Community are things that we truly appreciate because I could not imagine a better suited leader to be able to take on this challenge you know you made a a little reference to organizational development and structure and strategy a little earlier and I don't think there's anybody who could be better prepared to take on this challenge because we need a leader like you at the helm and I just want to say thank you for everybody who's watching and listening for tuning into this

[52:08]  episode because Bob kamensky is doing some amazing work with feeding San Diego there's uh one of the Traditions that we have Bob on the podcast is we ask our guest a final question that came from our previous guest and their question was what are the last thoughts you have before going to bed at night my last thoughts are gratitude and the gratitude for my family for my Creator and the opportunities and the blessings he's given to me to be able to do what I do on a daily basis and um there is no better way to uh close your eyes and

[52:58]  um low yourself to sleep than thinking positive thoughts and uh praising and giving words of thanks for the day that you have uh just experienced it's a beautiful place for us to put a wrap on it once again Bob kamansky thank you so much again for your time and everything that you're doing feeding San Diego that's been a wrap catch you guys in the next one