Partnership Allows Christian Nonprofit To Renew Its Mission

BRISTOL, Va. – The lights are back on in the former Lord’s Storehouse, and Kingsway Charity’s cavernous food distribution hub is once again filling with thousands of pounds of food and supplies.

The Christian nonprofit announced Thursday that it forged a partnership with Operation Blessing International, a Virginia Beach, Va.-based humanitarian organization, that will allow OBI to run a similar food distribution program out of Kingsway’s facility, which will no longer be known as the Lord’s Storehouse.

The partnership, which took months to negotiate, comes five months after Kingsway ended its food distribution operations. The charity’s endowment was badly eroded by the stock market plunge, and the cost of running the food operation – including a $10,000 monthly bill for refrigerating perishable items – became prohibitively expensive.

“We’re extremely excited to partner with Operation Blessing’s Hunger Strike Force,” Kingsway President John Gregory said in a written statement. “The need in Appalachia in this current economy is great and we are eager to unite with such an experienced ministry.”

Bill Horan, OBI’s president, said in the statement that the partnership “makes perfect sense,” and will allow both nonprofits “to prosper during these difficult economic times and fulfill our missions to reach out to the poor and less fortunate.”

Previously, Kingsway supplied food to 130 ministries in a 77-mile radius, drawing between 60 percent and 70 percent of its food donations from OBI, with which it had a 15-year relationship, said Albert Hester, Kingsway’s director of operations.

“They are basically picking up where we left off,” Hester said. “They’ve always had a footprint here, in the coalfields and Appalachia, where there are pockets of poverty.”

So the Bristol food storage facility, a 23,000-square-foot former meat-packing plant, will again serve as a staging point for food ministries to collect and distribute food locally, but now it will be staffed by a handful of OBI’s Hunger Strike Force members.

Hester said Kingsway formerly distributed an average of 10 million pounds of food a year; OBI aims to distribute 15 million pounds of food in the first 12 months, according to their joint statement.

The OBI-operated facility has not officially opened, but Hester said he expects a ribbon-cutting at least by the end of the summer.

By Thursday, 14 truckloads of food, drinks and hygienic supplies had arrived in the Kingsway facility, which two weeks ago was utterly dark and vacant, Hester said. He estimated the volume at 350,000 pounds.

Hundreds of boxes labeled “Meal 518” – ravioli, peanut butter, a fruit cup, cookie and saltines – stood stacked in the facility Thursday. In another room, cardboard boxes of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups occupied a 16-by-20-foot area. Adjacent to the candy was a sea of diapers, toilet paper, Kleenex and other hygienic supplies. In yet another area sat boxes of peach-pomegranate drinks, grape soda and diet Snapple.

None of the food that has arrived so far is perishable, and Hester did not know if OBI has future plans to stock the warehouse with such items. Kingsway, which pays the lighting and heating bills, has not fired up the refrigerators.

An OBI spokesman said Thursday that moving perishable items to the Bristol facility “is a possibility.”

“The capability is definitely there,” said spokesman Chris Roslan, citing OBI’s fleet of refrigerated trucks and Kingsway’s refrigerators. Hester said refrigerating food in-house is not part of the partnership and would require further discussion. Both Roslan and Hester suggested that limited amounts of perishable food could be transported by truck and picked up directly by food ministries.

The partnership will not affect the two other programs Kingsway discontinued earlier this year – an operation supporting widows in the area and a children’s ministry. The charity worked with local churches to “adopt” the widows, Hester said.

Kingsway continues to operate its international medical mission, supplying developing countries with donated medical supplies, for which there is more demand than ever, Hester said.

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