Harvest Texarkana kicks off "Give Us a Lift" campaign | Community Spirit

The Harvest Texarkana Regional Food Bank needs your help replenishing its savings account after it had to replace its forklift at the end of December. The charity is launching a two-month "Give Us a Lift" campaign to raise the money they need.

Harvest Texarkana distributes over 2.5 million pounds of food each year.  While a lot of that is done through manual labor, the majority of the weight must be handled with a forklift.  Harvest Texarkana had been using a donated used forklift for years.  Due to lots of use, it became necessary to replace the forklift at the end of December. 

Fortunately, the food bank had enough cash in the savings account to cover that cost, but efforts are now underway to replace that money to allow them to have cash on hand for food purchases.  “Our national organization, Feeding America, requires us to have a minimum level of cash savings to be able to act quickly if there is a natural disaster or other emergency.” said Jill Whittington, executive director.  “This is just the situation where reserves are needed – we had to replace the forklift and were able to do so without disrupting our food distribution during the holidays.  We received the forklift one day, and received a tractor trailer of food the next.  We could not have unloaded it without the forklift.  But now we need to replace that money in the bank.” 

Due to decreases in donations by national food producers, Harvest Texarkana is facing a situation where they will have to purchase more and more food to meet the increasing demand.  With their current reserves reduced due to the fork lift purchase, Harvest Texarkana is having to be more conservative about what foods they can purchase. 

Thanks to one early contribution toward the “Give Us a Lift” effort, Harvest Texarkana is currently looking to raise $12,000 to cover the cost of the equipment.  To make a special donation toward the forklift expense, call Harvest Texarkana at 870-774-1398 or visit the website at www.harvesttexarkana.org.  Donors of $1,000 or more toward the fund will be commemorated on a plaque in the Harvest Texarkana lobby.