BOISE, Idaho — The Boise VA Food Pantry was nearly empty and at risk of closing last week — but in just five days, a flood of community donations restocked the shelves and kept the pantry serving local veterans.
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The pantry, which runs entirely on donations and receives no government funding, is now handing out around 140 bags of food to veterans each month. Staff said this summer's shortage felt different from past supply dips.
"Our goal has been to never turn a veteran away without something that helps them, so it was an unsettling feeling, and we didn't want to get there," Tammy Lanning, director of volunteer and donation services at the Boise VA, said.
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Lanning said the pantry launched during COVID after staff noticed more veterans were struggling to put food on the table.
"We started to see a need for people to actually have food to take home with them, and as that became available, our numbers just grew," Lanning said.
She noted the need among veterans is real and ongoing.
"We've had more conversations with our veterans saying you know, ‘sometimes I have to make choices about do I have fuel, do I have food,’" Lanning said.
When the VA put out a call for help, neighbors responded — including Chris Stewart, founder of The Good Network, a nonprofit that spotlights community needs and rallies people to take action.
"We did a $5 donation ask on it, and the hope was that something small could turn to something big," Stewart said.
It did. Over the holiday weekend, the nonprofit raised nearly $2,000, filling five shopping carts with food and helping restock the pantry.
"This is what we do in Boise. It's our superpower," Stewart said. “There's a lot of uncertainty about our community changing, and as long as we as a community continue to get up and do things like this, we don't have to worry about us changing too much."
Lanning said the outpouring left staff moved.
"It's very humbling. It's incredible. We live in an incredible community," Lanning expressed.
Now the challenge is keeping the shelves stocked. The VA said that rather than seeing a surge of donations only when supplies run critically low, they hope more people will give throughout the year.
“So we'd ask that give us a couple weeks, please come back, please reach out to us, or we'll communicate with you all, but don't stop donating, just give us a pause for a couple of weeks,” Lanning said.
However, Boise VA said it will always accept monetary donations.
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