Hunger Task Force
Milwaukee
Industry: Nonprofit
When news footage surfaced this year showing dairy farmers dumping their milk due to a drop in demand, it didn’t sit well with supporters of the Hunger Task Force.
“We were getting calls saying, ‘How can you allow that to happen?’” said Sherrie Tussler, executive director of the Milwaukee-based hunger relief organization.
With restaurants and schools closed across the country, Wisconsin’s $45.6 billion dairy industry was hit hard by COVID-19.
At the same time, HTF was preparing to meet the spike in demand for its services as stay-at-home orders left many people in the region jobless or underemployed.
To provide relief to farmers and increase the food supply for local pantries, HTF committed $1 million to purchase, process and distribute local milk and dairy products from Wisconsin farmers that would otherwise have been spilled. That investment has since scaled up to about $2.3 million.
In April, the organization partnered with Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and Dairy Farmers Association of Wisconsin to create a statewide network of distribution hubs that connected dairy products from seven farms and cheesemakers to members of the Hunger Relief Federation of Wisconsin, a federation of local and independent food pantries and emergency feeding organizations representing all 72 counties.
HTF’s efforts earned the organization a spotlight recognition in the “Established New Links in the Chain” category of the MMAC’s Focus on the Future Awards.
Logistics and transportation were already in HTF’s wheelhouse — the organization supplies food to 250 local charities every month — but the dairy recovery program expanded its network to new areas of the state. To date, the Wisconsin Dairy Recovery Program has distributed about 2.8 million pounds of milk, 753,000 pounds of cheese and 187,000 pounds of yogurt statewide.
The community was quick to rally around the program, with donations coming in almost immediately after its launch, Tussler said. One WISN-Channel 12 telethon alone brought in $600,000 for the effort.
“Everyone was watching the news,” she said. “Every time we were on the evening news, there was a huge spike in contributions.”
While making a $1 million commitment at the outset of the pandemic was risky, Tussler said acting fast in the midst of a crisis paid off.
“You have to take a leap of faith,” she said. “We couldn’t do things the way we did before. We had to be willing to risk our business strategy.”
