Columbia Promise grant to help expand and evolve Fill the Freezer efforts
NELSONVILLE, Ohio – The NiSource Charitable Foundation and Columbia Gas have awarded the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio (FAO) a Columbia Promise Fund grant, committing a total of $100,000 over the next two years to support several campaigns aimed at fighting hunger across the region.
“This funding is just one of the ways we are living out our commitment to building stronger, more sustainable communities where our customers and employees live and work,” said Stephanie Merkle, Columbia Gas community engagement manager. “We’re proud to support local leaders and organizations that are developing new ways to expand access to nutritious food while creating opportunities for people of all ages to make a meaningful difference in their communities.”
The Columbia Promise awards transformational grants to organizations committed to becoming agents for change and supports new or expanded programs. The grant awarded to FAO is helping to grow and evolve hunger-relief campaigns led by its affiliate foundation partners that leverage an existing resource – livestock sales at county fairs – into a powerful tool for addressing food insecurity.
The effort began in 2021 when the Community Foundation for Perry County, one of FAO’s 15 affiliate foundation partners, piloted Fill the Freezer. The campaign invited buyers at the Perry County Fair’s livestock sale to donate their hog purchases and others to donate money to cover meat processing costs to fill the freezers of the county’s food pantries.
Since then, similar campaigns have expanded to Gallia, Harrison, Hocking, Lawrence, Morgan and Vinton counties, delivering a cumulative 92,000-plus pounds of meat to families across Appalachian Ohio and helping to meet one of the most critical and costly needs in hunger relief: access to fresh protein.
Support from the Columbia Promise Fund will help expand Fill the Freezer into additional counties, including Jackson, Meigs, Monroe and Noble, while also enabling previously established campaigns to explore innovative strategies to grow their impact and the program’s sustainability. Some of those strategies include:
- Investing in the capacity of local food pantry partners to serve their clients and to access fresh produce
- Piloting a partnership with the Stock the Trailer program, which engages junior fair boards in collecting nonperishable food items for local food pantries
- Establishing an endowed matching campaign to build sustainable financial support for these hunger-relief programs
“It has been inspiring to watch our affiliate foundation partners bring people together to address an issue that affects so many across our region,” said Cara Dingus Brook, FAO president and CEO. “We are deeply grateful to the NiSource Charitable Foundation and Columbia Gas for their extraordinary support. This grant is a big step forward for a program that started as a local idea and has become a regional movement that is improving lives across Appalachian Ohio and creating a model that communities across the state and nation can follow.”