As a 10 year employee of United Way of King County, I’ve been lucky to visit many of the agencies that do incredible work in our community. I’ve had the chance to meet and visit with the people who work very hard every day to help as many people as they can. When I think about the food banks I’ve visited, I recall lines of grateful people, thoughtful volunteers bustling about and stacks and stacks of food.

It takes a lot of work to run a food bank; managing deliveries, tracking inventory, stocking the shelves, registering and greeting the clients and much more. Much of the work is difficult and time consuming. However, many of these labor intensive tasks can be streamlined by a simple technology upgrade called ‘Client Card”.

United Way of King County’s “Why the Fork” grant will allow six food banks in South King County region to upgrade their computer hardware and software and begin to use the Client Card system.

Executive Director of the Auburn Food Bank, Debbie Christian told us they doubled their intake of clients when they started using Client Card, cutting client registration down from four minutes to less than one.

In the past year the six food banks who will benefit from the Why the Fork grant have served a total of 6.5 million pounds of food to 48,000 individuals.

YOU can help South King County Food Banks serve even more families with a donation at http://whythefork.orgThrough April 14, all gifts will be matched dollar-for-dollar.