The Sackville Food Bank is starting a $500,000 fundraising campaign to purchase a new building to house both the food bank and Second Chances Thrift Store.
The capital fundraising campaign is in its initial stages, with plans for an announcement event expected in the coming months.
Despite the size of the goal, they’re confident the community will step up as they have so often over the years, said Chris Farella, who does marketing and communications for the food bank.
 ”Kelli was saying to me today, ‘if we can get 100 people to donate $5,000, we’ve reached our goal,’ and we believe there is, within the larger community, there’s the right people to reach out to.”
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Out of space
Across the country, food bank usage is up, with over 2.1 million visits across the country in 2025. Provincially, across 68 food banks, there were 32,343 visits, including 10,781 children. That’s a 45.3 per cent increase in total annual visits from 2019-2025.
Things are no different locally, where the food bank was started 40 years ago as a temporary measure, said Kelli Taylor, president of the Sackville and District Assistance Centre, which is the parent organization of the Sackville Food Bank and Second Chances Thrift Store.
“ We pretty much know it’s permanent, and the need has gone up and up and up. And since COVID, the need, particularly in our community, has doubled . . . we were serving about 50 households a week. Now we’re regularly up to about 100.”
As that number goes up, that means more food, which in turn requires more space to store and package it. Their current location on Willow Lane is only about 900 square feet, and despite their landlords expanding, they continue to outgrow the space, said Taylor.
“ Anybody that’s been there to volunteer knows how tight it is once you get 10, 12 volunteers in there, and then all the food, and then serving clients. It’s really cramped.”
Renters to owners
Part of the reason for such a large goal is the desire to purchase outright a building that would fit both operations. Though they have excellent landlords at both locations with stable agreements, Taylor said owning their own building would open up more grant opportunities.
As an example, Taylor said the food bank has tried unsuccessfully to get grant funding for a generator to keep their fridges and freezers running in the event of a power outage.
“ We’ve never been able to get approved because they look at you renting a building (and) if you move, what happens to the generator? It has to stay behind,” she said. “If you own your own building, grant money becomes available that you can apply for capital renovations and capital infrastructure that you need to run your building and to run your business, and that is not available to us because we rent.”
So the plan is to raise the money to be ready for whenever a suitable building pops up, which for Taylor would be at least 5,000 square feet. And if they find something bigger, Taylor has plenty of ideas to fill the space.
“It’d be wonderful if we could have a working kitchen. We could do cooking classes, nutrition classes, food recovery plans. We could rent out the kitchen to people that need it for any large events or if you’re doing canning or something like that.”
For now, though, the team is focused on communicating with and educating the community about their needs, said Farella.
 ”It’s really important for me to have everybody in Sackville know that this is their place and that they’re helping us build it, and every donation that they make, whether it’s financial towards a capital campaign or DVDs that they no longer use, they’re critical to Sackville and the food bank.”
