In the beginning June and a few friends collected only breads, fresh produce and limited amounts of canned goods and made them available for people to come by to pick up.

The Whitefish Food Bank, as it was then called, began receiving increased donations. They started working with Flathead County Surplus Food Bank in Kalispell to address the situation June and her friends believed was a real problem: being unable to provide hunger assistance to Flathead Valley residents in need. Whitefish Food Bank continued to accumulate donations, pooled with Kalispell’s resources, and divided up for distributions to individuals across the valley.

It eventually became necessary to move beyond June’s garage. Through efforts of several generous individuals, a 22’ x 32’ residence (which had to be moved but had no destination), was donated to the Food Bank in the summer of 1985. That autumn it was placed along Lupfer Avenue and 1st Street (a portion of  parcels of property owned by the Soroptimist Club of Whitefish). The Soroptimists were generous enough to let us occupy the east end of their property for nominal rent. Almost immediately, the 700 sq. ft. building was found to be too small. An addition was made to accommodate a walk-in cooler, walk-in freezer and office. Later, another addition was created for canned good storage.

A few years later, the rear of the building was extended to accommodate additional chest freezers and sinks for cleaning produce. We found ourselves again running out of space and in 2000, acquired a full city lot behind the Soroptimist’s property for the express purpose of expanding the building. With the cooperation of the Soroptimists, we reconfigured the property boundary lines, acquiring ownership of the land our building occupied together with a portion of the lot we had purchased for expansion. Nearly doubling the size of the existing structure, two more walk-in freezers and an expansive storage area for canned goods, dry staples were added.

In 2006, a walk-in cooler for produce and a meat processing room with a walk-in cooler was added to grow the space to 3,000 square feet.

The physical structure was not the only thing that grew over the years with the Food Bank.  Initially, June and one friend had done all the collecting and distributing of the food. By the time the house was acquired in 1985, there were eight to ten volunteers helping with chores which included at least two and sometimes three food distributions a week. It soon became apparent that a specific day for the distribution of the boxes and bags of groceries would need to be designated in order to keep the collections and distributions organized (and to keep from exhausting our volunteers). Thursday became that day in 1988 and has remained so through the years. Currently, an average of 80 unpaid volunteers donate their time throughout the week to ensure that each Thursday, every individual in need receives food.

Changes to the organizational structure of the Food Bank also became necessary.  Although June had handled the many business details of the food bank for several years, the increasing details of tracking of food and monetary contributions required her to get additional assistance.  During the 1980’s, a core group of four people became a de facto Board of Directors (an executive director, secretary, treasurer and overseer of developmental opportunities) for operating the business of the Food Bank. In 1987, local businesses and individuals began questioning why they weren’t seeing their donations of particular types of food being distributed and what was happening with their donations of money.  Explanations were made concerning the arrangement with Flathead County Surplus Food Bank in Kalispell and that all of the contributions to the Whitefish Food Bank were pooled with those taken in by the Kalispell organization.

These explanations were not well received by many of our local benefactors and pointed comments were received that made it clear the locals were not interested in supporting the type of arrangement we had found ourselves in with the Kalispell establishment. It was therefore decided the Whitefish Food Bank should become an independent entity. The organization was incorporated as the North Valley Food Bank, Inc. (NVFB) in July 1988.

Four individuals were installed to the initial Board of Directors at the organizational meeting.  In August 1990, the corporation became a recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Currently, there are nine individuals serving on the Board of Directors of NVFB.  All of the members of our Board of Directors and Executive Director are local residents who volunteer their time.