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The website refresh leads the 41-year-old hunger-fighting organization into a new era at a time when food insecurity is at a high point.
Food for Lane County unveiled a new website and a new feature called Food Finder, which helps people find food pantries and meal sites, filtering them by location and day of the week. The website can be viewed in 11 languages.
The Food Finder tool and the new website are part of a rebranding the nonprofit announced at its annual Empty Bowls benefit auction Saturday, Oct. 4. The fundraiser set a record, raising $500,000, about $100,000 more than the previous year. The funds, and the rebrand, come at an important time for the 41-year-old organization, as food insecurity is on the rise in Lane County.
The new tagline is “Welcoming everyone to the table.” The website was created through an $85,000 donation in website, branding and photography services by Turell Group, a Eugene-based marketing agency.
The new logo has the bottom of a plant, with two leaves sprouting from the sides, which turns into a fork in place of a blossom, in a fresh green color.
“It’s very bittersweet to say goodbye to a logo that’s well known,” said Rebecca Sprinson, Food for Lane County’s director of development and communications, referring to the sprig of wheat that was a part of the previous logo. “However, our prior logo was designed before we were all using computers and smartphones to access information, and it’s reflective of a different era of food banking.”
Loss of fall food drive
Eugene has historically hosted two food drives in partnership with the United States Postal Service. The official USPS Stamp Out Hunger food drive is held the second Saturday in May, while a Eugene-specific drive had been held in November. The letter carriers’ food drive tradition started in the mid-1980s, but in 2024, for the first time, the Eugene letter carriers did not participate in the drive. This year, they also will not be participating. Sprinson said USPS gave no explanation for the change.
“The November food drive is held at a time when donated food is super important to help support families going into the holiday season,” Sprinson said. “Last year, the Eugene letter carriers did not participate, which struck about a 40,000-pound blow to what we would normally collect.”
Last year, Market of Choice’s leadership made a commitment to place food collection barrels in each of their Eugene stores. They will do the same this year and will also make a $10,000 match for donations made at the register through Nov. 30. Market of Choice CEO Rick Wright committed to the donation match before he died earlier this year.
“Market of Choice was enthusiastic about doing this again this year, even before we knew that the letter carriers in Lane County wouldn’t participate,” Sprinson said. “It’s an incredibly important time for folks to make donations at the register, because they’ll be doubled.”
On Thursday, Sprinson, other representatives of Food for Lane County, and Dewey Weddington, Market of Choice’s vice president of marketing, set up a booth in front of the Market of Choice store at 67 W. 29th Ave. in Eugene to host a food drive and get the word out about the matching donations at the register.
Food insecurity touches everyone, even people you might not expect, Weddington said.
“Part of the overall philosophy for Market of Choice is that our stores are feeding our communities, but there are a lot of people that can’t shop in our stores,” Weddington said. “It’s important for us to be able to nourish our communities in every way that we can, and we know that we can’t always do that through our stores. Food for Lane County provides us an avenue and a partner.”
Record-breaking auction
The auction sparked record donations, at a time when food banks across the state are losing funding. The auction also drew about 50 additional people, which helped boost donations.
“Right now, we have an 18% cut in our food supply from the federal government, and we’re really concerned about our neighbors who rely on SNAP, who are facing significant limitations to the SNAP program, starting on Nov. 1,” Sprinson said, referring to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “We are so grateful to people stepping up and being generous, individuals and businesses. It just makes a huge difference, and those funds are needed so crucially.”
