Our 3-year Strategic Plan (2024-2026)
2024-2026 Strategic Plan Goals
Secure Stable Table
- Amesbury, Newburyport, Salisbury and Merrimac achieve a Stable Table.
- Leaders, frontline food providers, individuals and businesses are adequately educated and mobilized to address food insecurity.
- Lower Merrimack Valley will have a collective strategy and infrastructure to support more equitable access to food.
- ONT is equipped to lead a collective approach to food security.
The Strategic Planning Process
The planning process took place between May 2022 and April 2023. A strategic planning committee met regularly throughout the process. Committee members included board, staff and volunteers: Rita Comtois, Lyndsey Haight, Danielle Holmes, Miriam Inacio, Marie van Luling, Robert Murciack, Terry Rooney, and Lori Townsend. Our planning consultant was Gayle L. Gifford of Cause & Effect Inc.
The strategic planning committee in collaboration with the Board of Directors, Our Neighbors' Table staff, donors, volunteers
and the Seacoast Food Providers undertook a variety of activities to help assess the current state of our community, Our Neighbors' Table as well as its future direction. Over 300 people were engaged through the following activities:
The strategic planning committee in collaboration with the Board of Directors, Our Neighbors' Table staff, donors, volunteers
and the Seacoast Food Providers undertook a variety of activities to help assess the current state of our community, Our Neighbors' Table as well as its future direction. Over 300 people were engaged through the following activities:
- Surveys and facilitated meetings with Board members, staff, and volunteers.
- Surveys, focus groups and community meetings of guests, donors, community partners, community residents. Surveys were also collected in Daria, Portuguese and Spanish.
- Interviews with selected stakeholders
- Review of data gathered by Our Neighbors Table, Greater Boston Food Bank, and Feeding America
The Stable Table: The Foundation of our Work
Strategic Insights from Stakeholder Feedback
Community
- The rising cost of living is producing more need, driven by housing costs and inflation.
- Absence of public transportation across the entire region affects access to services.
- The growth in need driven by April 2023 SNAP cliff is unknown.
- What hidden capacity and opportunities are there among all partners to meet regional food needs?
- People want to help their neighbors but may not know how or understand the extent of the need.
- What is our minimum food promise to our guests? What do we need to have in place to ensure that promise?
- Guests told us they were able to meet their food needs with reliance on ONT, SNAP and regional food pantries or meal sites.
- Overwhelmingly, guests praised ONT for being nonjudgmental, kind and caring.
- How do we withstand disruptions in our supply system?
- Twenty-seven percent of our guests need better food options.
- How can the system better meet the special needs of different people?
- There was a small desire for longer hours for ordering and pickup – more evening and weekend hours.
- The use of our services has historically outpaced industry calculations. We are the best predictors of future need/use.
- We made the shift to creating food security as regional partnership; now we need to fully live into that partnership.
- Sufficient preparation is needed to meet our new scale with both the food hub and collective impact backbone work.
- People needs with optimum ratio of staff to volunteers
- Skills, Funding, Technology
- There is a desire to improve information systems across our network, especially among partners and at the larger organization we will be.
- Volunteers called for more training and staff support.
- We need to efficiently recruit, train and retain more volunteers, with new interests, to supplement aging volunteer force.