Dear Metro Caring Community,
Since 1974, Metro Caring has stood alongside our neighbors, helping hundreds of thousands of families put food on the table. What has always set us apart is the heart and resilience of this community—your unwavering support and your dedication to ending hunger at its root.
We want to be transparent with you about the challenges we are currently facing and how we are responding to ensure our work continues for the long haul.
The current economic climate is incredibly difficult, and many in our community are living with the effects day to day. Unfortunately, this reality is also having cascading effects for nonprofits around the country, including ours. Like so many others, Metro Caring is grappling with rising costs and declining public funding, and we find ourselves having to tighten our belt and make hard choices to ensure the sustainability of our mission.
After an extensive and thoughtful budgeting process, we have made the incredibly difficult decision to sunset our Strategic Initiatives and Urban Agriculture programs. These changes come after significant expense reductions that allow us to remain fiscally responsible while staying grounded in our mission.
These program transitions started in our new fiscal year, which began on April 1, and we have been working closely with affected team members and partners.
Our Strategic Initiatives program was launched to incubate bold, innovative ideas that could disrupt systemic hunger in our community. The program succeeded in advancing ideas of Universal Basic Food and a Community Food Utility and moved conversations forward across the food justice movement through op-eds and reports and presenting at conferences and events. While we have struggled to secure funding to develop a full Universal Basic Food pilot, we will carry forward much of the research and lessons into our Food Access team’s work to inform how we procure and distribute food for the Fresh Foods Market in alignment with our values.
The decision to sunset our Urban Agriculture program was incredibly hard and one we did not take lightly. For the past five years, the Urban Agriculture program has empowered thousands of people to grow their own food in their own communities—regardless of where they live. Its impact has been deeply felt, and we are proud of the work accomplished by everyone involved.
While we’ve been incredibly fortunate to grow our programming over the years, there have been times in our history when we’ve had to make hard decisions like this, and they’re never easy. But in times of economic uncertainty, we must recenter and focus on remaining a reliable resource for our community in the ways they depend on us.
We also want to acknowledge the incredible team members who have contributed their time, care, and creativity to these programs.
We want to be clear: while Metro Caring will no longer directly lead urban agriculture work, we are not walking away. We are committed to collaborating with community partners with missions centered on urban agriculture who can lead the work with the same spirit and care. Together, we will explore creative ways to share our spaces, such as our greenhouse, community gardens, and seedling distribution with partners aligned with our vision of food sovereignty and a just and sustainable food system. We will also ensure that our community continues to have free access to the resources our Urban Agriculture program has offered while we transition ownership of the program.
Creating the future of this work with partners will take time, and we are committed to doing it thoughtfully. We will keep you informed and look forward to sharing more as these collaborations take shape.
Our commitment to ending hunger remains as strong as ever—and we are sustained by the people who show up for this work with us. Thank you to our community, volunteers, supporters, and partners for being a vital part of Metro Caring and for always sticking with us. We deeply appreciate your commitment, your generosity, and your time.
While these decisions are difficult, they come from a deep commitment to doing what’s right for the long-term health of our organization and our community. Our focus remains on working alongside our community to end hunger at its root.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being a part of the Metro Caring community.
With gratitude,
Erik Hicks
CEO-Integrator
Teva Sienicki
CEO-Visionary
