It was an ordinary work week in 2020 for the employees of Community Partnership, a Butler County nonprofit focused on food insecurity. Until it wasn’t.

“We were supposed to have a distribution Tuesday of the week of the shutdowns,” Sandra Curry, executive director of Community Partnership, said of the start of the COVID-19 lockdown in Pennsylvania — which involved the mandatory closure of schools and nonessential businesses, masking, and social distancing. “That obviously didn’t happen.”

Five years after the pandemic disrupted communities, nonprofit food pantries around Butler County are continuing to grapple with challenges consistently highlighted during that time span.

In its first year of operation in 2019, Community Partnership served between 10,000 and 11,000 county residents across all of its programs.

However, factors relating to inflation and overall cost of living increases have more than doubled that number, with at least 21,000 residents receiving services throughout 2024, according to Curry.

That includes thousands of people who previously were relying on extra benefits from the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Those benefits were halted in March 2023.

“Inflation, I think 100%, and the decrease in pandemic SNAP benefits,” Curry said when asked what has attributed to the rise in the need for assistance. “I think it was those two things together.”

Curry also believes some of the stigma surrounding those benefits is misguided.

“The stereotype is that the people who are using those charitable food services are people who are not working,” she said. “Maybe in 2023 you could make the argument that we were serving a majority of people who were on Social Security, disability and those who were unemployed. Statistically, it’s now impossible to say that. You can’t make that argument anymore.”

During the early stages of the pandemic, nonprofits were forced to drastically adjust protocols.

Steps included less-traditional methods of getting food to those in need, such as drive-through operations and an increased number of home deliveries.

“April of 2020 is when the big drive-through distributions started,” Curry said. “We served about 1,000 cars on the first day; and I think we did something like 300 to 400 home deliveries that week.”

The effects of the pandemic also led to an increase in employees for the nonprofit, which began with just two employees in 2019. Not it operates with six, according to Curry.

Meanwhile, Gleaners Food Bank, which strictly serves Cranberry Township residents, has kept its drive-through operation going.

“The pandemic meant that we became and still are a drive-up distribution,” Gleaners director Linda Heery said. “This method works better than what we previously did. We never missed a monthly distribution. We quickly figured out a new game plan that we still use today. None of the volunteers came down with COVID-19 after the time spent during the setup and distribution day.”

That system has been a much easier process to manage for both volunteers and those seeking assistance.

“The feedback we got from our clients is they like not having to get out of their cars, especially the older ones in the winter,” Heery said. “That just all the way around worked better for them not having to park and it also made our process more streamlined.”

Employees still are adapting to increased demand, supply chain challenges and evolving community needs while finding innovative ways to serve those facing food insecurity.

There are plenty of noticeable differences before and after the COVID-19 pandemic for many nonprofits throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Perhaps most obvious is the uptick in local families that rely on the food pantries to ensure they have a sufficient number of meals throughout the week.

According to Carol Lambert, who operates Feed My Sheep Food Cupboard in Slippery Rock, inflation and an aging population have become issues food pantries must now face.

“Absolutely, one part of it is the rising costs,” she said. “Our population is getting older, too. About 90% of our clientele are senior families either on disability or on Social Security. They’re not making enough to stand alone, so they need to come. It’s just very sad.”

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics current employment statistics survey, non-farm payroll employment in the United States declined by 9.4 million in 2020, the highest calendar-year decline in the history of the survey.

“We experienced an increase of families signing up and former clients needing to come back,” Heery said of the immediate aftermath of the lockdown. “Job loss and a reduction in work hours for some seemed to be the contributory factor.”

Food pantry employees across the area always are looking ahead to what’s next.

While Community Partnership started in 2019, before the pandemic began, the nonprofit performed a needs assessment every three years to determine the best way to utilize its federal resources.

“That basically tells us what comes next in our programming,” Curry said. “Our last needs assessment was in 2022, and affordable food was the number two need in Butler County. The number one need was more mental and behavioral health professionals. That’s not really something I can do anything about, but affordable food is. That’s where we basically started our work post-COVID.”

For nonprofits such as Gleaners, which is supported through state dollars, employees have been forced to take a more short-term approach.

“I can just say that with confidence for the next year really,” Heery said, referring to her organization’s ability to maintain its current assistance levels moving forward. “That’s kind of what I look ahead to when planning what we spend. The fiscal year ends at the end of June, so I know I’m good through calendar year 2025.”