Special Delivery

FS: What do you see as the key to keeping donors loyal to your organization for years?
MS: We steward them very carefully, and I think many of our strongest donors are also our volunteers. We have a 24-to-1 ratio of volunteers to staff and many of our volunteers — who work in our kitchen, cutting and chopping vegetables, or going on deliveries with our van drivers — see how the money that’s raised is used and they see the good that it’s doing. They see the pure, direct service, and I think that’s one of the reasons that there’s an enormous loyalty among our volunteers, and those volunteers translate into donors.