Otto Bremer Trust awards grant to North Valley Food Bank

The North Valley Food Bank has been awarded a highly competitive grant of $75,000 from the Otto Bremer Trust (OBT) in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The grant will provide the food bank with general operations support to close the hunger gap in the northern Flathead Valley, as well as capital support to help close the final phase of its facility upgrade. The generous award will direct $50,000 toward food processing equipment for the food bank’s new commercial-grade community kitchen. The remaining $25,000 will provide general support to initiate kitchen programs.

The North Valley Food Bank is thrilled to be on the verge of completing the commercial-grade kitchen and larger capital campaign.

“The commercial kitchen will allow North Valley Food Bank to process more fresh, nutritious food from local growers for distribution,” NVFB Executive Director Sophie Albert said. “We are in the process of developing a harvesting and gleaning program and have started to work with local farms to fulfill our long-held dream of providing nutrient-dense food year-round.”

The OBT grant will allow for the purchase of two critical pieces of equipment for food processing. The remaining $25,000 of general support funds will help to underwrite the first year of NVFB’s Food Processing program — one of three community kitchen programs the food bank is gearing up to launch. The other two programs will center around food education and jobs skills training.

In the past two years, North Valley Food Bank (NVFB) has responded to a dramatic increase in food bank customers throughout the northern Flathead Valley and neighboring communities. In 2020, NVFB served 4,445 individuals regularly compared to only 1,294 the previous year. Currently, an average of 160 households use NVFB drive-thru and delivery food distribution services in Whitefish weekly. Due to the pandemic, inflation and a dramatic rise in living costs, this number remains at an all-time high.

In addition, NVFB added three mobile pantries to Essex, Trego and Olney in 2020. In two short years the number of rural households served in Trego went from 25 to 150 weekly. NVFB has also been supporting rural food pantries throughout the Northern Flathead, Lincoln and Glacier Counties by storing food and shuttling it to their locations in its refrigerated truck. NVFB currently moves an average of 100,000 pounds of food through the building monthly.

The Otto Bremer Trust is a bank holding company and a private charitable trust based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that works at the intersection of finance and philanthropy. Created in 1944 by Otto Bremer, it is today one of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations and is committed to supporting a better quality of life for residents of Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. OBT is the majority owner of Bremer Financial Corporation, a regional financial services company; manages a diversified investment portfolio; and operates Community Benefit Financial Company, a financial resources subsidiary. Since its founding, OBT has invested more than $841 million in people, places, and opportunities in the Upper Midwest. Visit ottobremer.org.