NourishKC

Formerly Episcopal Community Services

Organizational History and
Program Overview
EIN: 43-1525298

Since its inception in 1989, Episcopal Community Services (ECS) has worked to improve its community through a variety
of programs. In 2005, ECS began its involvement with hunger relief efforts in the Kansas City urban core and surrounding
area. Historically, ECS has worked to engage the broader community in feeding the hungry and empowering the poor to
move beyond the barriers of poverty with dignity through education and job training. With the launch of a new name—
NourishKC—in late 2017, ECS has better defined our role in the community to promote evolving opportunities for
anyone to enhance dignity and cultivate a food secure Kansas City.

Through innovative programs and an extensive food distribution system, NourishKC fulfills its mission by providing
immediate relief from hunger with nutritious meals through food pantries and hot meal programs; maximizing resources
in the community by food sourcing and rescue from local growers, supermarkets and restaurants; and addressing the
root causes of food insecurity. NourishKC provides a service continuum of programming moving clients from food
insecure (hungry, not knowing where their next meal may come from) to food secure. NourishKC has deep connections
in the community that make the organization very successful in fostering partnerships with other organizations to
extend our reach and build a stronger network of support for the people we serve.

NourishKC has flourished under the leadership of President and CEO Beau G. Heyen since he joined NourishKC in August
2015. The organizational budget has nearly tripled and many of its programs have been revamped, refreshed, and
refocused to provide more compelling and effective solutions to a unique blend of food-related issues that affect our
community. His extensive experience in emergency food services and support services, as well as nearly twenty years of
experience working in food service, has allowed him to position NourishKC as a premier emergency food provider
committed to changing the way we look at hunger relief and food security both locally and beyond. By developing key
partnerships with other area agencies, NourishKC and a collaborative of other organizations are making critical changes
to the landscape of the food system in Kansas City.

Through innovative programs and an extensive food distribution system, NourishKC not only provides immediate relief
from hunger with nutritious meals, but also maximizes resources in the community with food sourcing/rescue while
addressing the root causes of food insecurity. NourishKC provides a service continuum of programming, moving clients
from food insecure (hungry, not knowing where their next meal may come from) to food secure. We have deep
connections in the community that make the organization very successful in fostering partnerships with other
organizations to extend our reach and build a stronger network of support for the people we serve.

Current NourishKC programming includes:

KC SERVED (Kansas City - Sustainable Employment in Restaurants, Value-driven Employer/Employee Direction):
Foundational program in NourishKC’s commitment to supporting self-sufficiency in food service work
Culinary • Evidence-based, immersive 30-week, 800-hour culinary training program.
Cornerstones • Includes supportive services that address individualized barriers to employment
Training Program including mental health issues that may hinder employment.
(CCTP) • Works to permanently break the cycle of joblessness, poverty, and hunger by giving
participants meaningful vocational and life skills needed for employment in the
restaurant and food service industry.
Employment • Community collaborative, facilitated by NourishKC President/CEO Beau G. Heyen
Transportation • Dedicated to ADVOCATE and INFORM the Greater Kansas City community about the
Roundtable issues surrounding transportation barriers to employment.
• This group of passionate community members, including representatives from KCATA,
 City of Kansas City Missouri, Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), FedEx, and
community organizations dedicated to job training and human services, are gathering
to help address this great need in the Greater Kansas City community.
Self-Sustainability • Community collaborative, co-facilitated by NourishKC President/CEO Beau G. Heyen
Through and Goodwill of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas
Employment • Individual’s want to break away from relying the system to make ends meet; however,
the crushing fear of the benefit cliff can prevent them from taking the next step.
Programs (STEP)
• The goals are to remove income inequality, increase social capital and enhance family
structure for everyone in Greater Kansas City.
KC Works Together • Community collaborative, co-facilitated by NourishKC President/CEO Beau G. Heyen
and industry-specific training programs including The Grooming Project, Rightfully
Sewn, The Sewing Labs, and Cultivate, Inc.
• The goal of KC Works Together is to support a stronger workforce through
collaboration, shared learning, and empowering an underserved workforce to become
stable workers in good jobs through:
o Building Stronger Networks by collaborating with training agencies, referring
agencies and employers;
o Supporting Stronger Workers through mentoring, life skills and technical skills; and
o Living Stronger Lives through greater self-efficacy and stable good jobs

BRAND KC (Balanced, Readily Accessible Nutrition Distribution)

Kansas City • Daily breakfast and lunch meal service, also provides meals to partner agencies similarly
Community Kitchen serving those in need.
(KCCK) • In 2016, began serving meals restaurant style in a “dining with dignity” format, which
has received local, regional, national, and international attention.
• Community Kitchen Network will expand our service model to an additional 5 locations.
Food Security • Cooperative network of nearly 20 food security (hunger relief) programs.
Network • Provide services such as food pantries, hot meals, nutrition education, and “BackSnack”
programs to more than 25,000 households annually.
Food Rescue/Food • Every day (7 days/week), NourishKC drivers pick up a wide range of food items from
Waste four main local partners.
• Food not used at the Kansas City Community Kitchen is distributed to its network
pantries or composted in an environmentally-focused manor.
• As a result, only 10% of kitchen food must be purchased, allowing NourishKC to achieve
a low cost-per-meal expense.
Hunger Summits • Creating systemic changes to ensure access to genuinely nutritious food for all
members of our local community through a focus on system transformation through
grassroots advocacy, community mobilization, and authentic collaboration among
emergency food services providers, their clients, and other stakeholders; currently
more than 80 participating organizations are active in in five summits across the metro.
Kansas City, Kansas • Starting in early 2018, the KCK Mobile Market will bring healthy food access to the food
Mobile Market dessert in Wyandotte County, Kansas.
• 4 stops/day, 5 days/week with an estimated 15,600 purchases/year.
• Will accept traditional payment methods and also SNAP/EBT or WIC vouchers.
Food Systems • New, multi-year partnership between our organization and 12 local agencies
Warehouse committed to meeting the needs of area low-income, food insecure individuals through
Collaborative a comprehensive food distribution warehouse.
• The FSWC allows partners to pool resources and reduce service duplication, resulting in
additional means for programming addressing root causes of poverty.
• By the end of its five-year pilot phase, the anticipated value of rescued food product
funneling through the warehouse is nearly 450% more than the cash cost necessary to
run the operation ($360,241 cash vs $1,980,000 in-kind food rescue).
 Problem or Need
Painful irony underscores the fact that the region considered “America’s Breadbasket” is rife with food
insecurity, hungry children, and families unsure where to find their next meal. In Kansas and Missouri combined, more
than 1.3 million people were food insecure in 2015 (Feeding America). According to the USDA, from 2013–2015,
Missouri and Kansas were among states with statistically significant higher household food insecurity than national
average of 13.7%. In fact, Missouri had the 12th highest level of food insecurity at 15.2%; Kansas was 20th overall at
14.6%. Further, Feeding America shows the six-county greater Kansas City metropolitan area reported more than
260,000 food-insecure people in 2015—14% of those counties’ total population (KS: Johnson, Wyandotte; MO: Jackson,
Clay, Platte, Cass). Harvesters Community Food Network states 1 in 7 people in our region is at risk for hunger and, of
those, 39% do not qualify for federal assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program.
While systems are in place to combat hunger, these emergency and supplemental food resources fail to
nutritionally combat food insecurity’s negative health consequences, nor do they address the root causes of hunger–-
unemployment and poverty. Provider-driven meals (food banks/hot meal sites) lack nutritional balance for a variety of
reasons including poor supply of healthy foods and limited shelf life when they happen to be available. Participant-
driven programs (SNAP, WIC) demonstrate the need for more education on how to make healthy eating choices on tight
budgets—and the critical and potentially lifelong importance of today’s healthy choices. Such deficiencies must be
addressed to ensure equitable access to nutritious food and health knowledge for low-income and underserved
households to live healthy lives.
A Fractured and Inefficient System. The Kansas City area food system consists of more than 200 emergency
food service sites operating mostly independently. Distribution sites span the metro’s bi-state urban, suburban, rural six-
county landscape. The system supports the food needs of tens of thousands of Kansas Citians. The local food system
responding to food insecurity possesses many assets—diverse access points; geographic breadth; and invested agencies
representing all parts of the emergency food life cycle, from farm to distribution to recovery to composting. However,
the system and independent agencies fail to catalyze truly impactful systemic solutions. The various organizations
compete intensely for funding, food donations, volunteers, and quality staff—leading to a “scarcity mindset.”
Scarcity mindset is well documented in psychology; it leads to hyper focus on limited resources. For individuals,
the mindset leads to decisions focused in the moment: “Scarcity makes one focused on the immediate, urgent need, and
unable to make small investments even when future benefits can be substantial” (Psychology Today, 2015). Such
thought patterns exacerbate cycles of poverty and hunger.
Scarcity mindset can also exist organizationally, and is particularly endemic in nonprofit systems. Since early
2016, a series of local Hunger Summits led by NourishKC has been meeting to assess and begin troubleshooting
challenges of the local emergency food ecosystem. Serving as the vehicle for systemic assessment and collaboration, the
ongoing Hunger Summit conversations, currently involving 80 agencies in 5 regions, have uncovered that Kansas City’s
emergency food providers compete for critical but limited resources resulting in a system-wide scarcity mindset. There
are good reasons for this behavior: Feeding America estimates the financial food budget shortfall needed to address the
meal gap in Kansas City’s six-county area exceeds $137 million, (Feeding America: Map the Gap), far more than the
funding available for local food efforts.
However, if agencies continue to function as they have in this reality, scarcity is the perpetual result, leading to a
myopic view of existing resources. Organizations end up placing tremendous emphasis on protecting what they have,
leaving few resources to engage in long-term planning, building true partnerships, and addressing changing consumer
needs. Symptoms of the fragmentation and inefficiencies take many forms, such as food offerings that are low in
nutritional value (e.g., pantries will take any food to fill shelves), hours and availability of food that may not meet the
community’s needs (e.g., some pantries maintain minimal schedules for fear they will run out of food), and providers fail
to offer education about healthy selection and preparation (e.g., staff/volunteers so focused on securing food/funds, no
time is left for education).
Through research and discussions generated by NourishKC’s Hunger Summit initiative, we now know the food
system in Kansas City today is characterized by poor communication between providers; little activity between them to
increase efficiency (e.g., transferring unused food to providers in need, transferring food with cultural appeal to
appropriate sites); little consumer input; inefficiencies forcing patrons to visit several providers for food; territorial
actions; scarcity mindset (“If I have honest conversations with peers, they will poach funding, staff, clients”); and
duplication of services resulting in inefficient use of funds, volunteers, staff, etc. Until now, no one has been willing to
talk about the challenges of Kansas City’s local food system—or had resources to devote to implementing change.
 NourishKC,
formerly Episcopal Community Services
7 Core Values

1. Food is a basic human right.

• We believe that food is the most basic building block of individuals, families and communities.
• We know people need proper nutrition so that their bodies and brains are nourished to develop properly
and function well.
• We cannot expect people to do the other things that are required for a good and stable life (work, school,
seeing a doctor, healthy lifestyles, taking care of children and family, etc.) without food.

2. Dining with Dignity

• We know there is power in being able to make a decision for yourself, no matter how small.
• We have seen that lines are not necessary and often dehumanizing.
• We value feedback and ask our guests what they think and listen to what they have to say.

3. Intentional Community
• We welcome EVERYONE into our space. No questions asked. No expectation of payment in any form.
• We have witnessed amazing and unexpected things when people come together over a meal.
• We encourage volunteers to eat while they are serving to show our guests that we all eat the same food.

4. Immersive Learning Lab

• We all have something to teach and all have things to learn.
• We create learning opportunities throughout all aspects of our program.
• We, as staff, participate in regular professional development to keep up with industry best practices & learn
about new research and trends.

5. From Scarcity to Consistency

• We know that crisis breeds crisis.
• We have the responsibility to offer stability to our guests/participants.
• We can provide a steady foundation that allows our guests/participants to build upon.

6. Adaptive Change
• We are not afraid to experiment and try new things.
• We learn from failure through constant evaluation and feedback.
• We engage others and invite unusual voices to the table.

7. Leader for Justice

• We seek to transform unjust structures of society (including the emergency food system and other barriers
faced by those who are hungry), to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.
(Taken from Marks of Mission, The Episcopal Church).
• We set an example by providing fair wages and benefits for ALL our employees.
• We strive to care for our environment by recycling, purchasing local and “green” products, and composting
food waste.