The desert’s regional food bank is getting a boost in support thanks to a recent grant from

Debbie Espinosa, President & CEO of FIND Food Bank, says those resources are greatly assisting them with broad and general uses. She also notes the nonprofit’s extraordinary reach in the region. 

“We go from the windmills on I-10 all the way to the California/Arizona border, and Blythe, then up to Anza, Joshua Tree, and 29 Palms, and then everything in between that,” she said. “We have a pretty expansive service area.” 

That helps, especially when it comes to the importance of equitability for the distribution food in the region. 

“We help fill, stock, and supply the local food pantries and food banks,” Espinosa said. “That’s our primary role. We are the regional food bank, and we ensure that the distributing agencies are place-based locations and in the smaller community areas, and that they are stocked and supplied.” 

To that end, FIND Food Bank is the only regional food bank serving eastern Riverside and southern San Bernardino Counties in southern California. In 2024, the nonprofit distributed 28 million pounds of food to 120,000 people on average every month at 175 distribution sites. 

Its varied community-based partners and programs include food pantries, soup kitchens, after-school and summer care, senior centers, faith-based organizations, and homeless shelters. 

Additionally, more than 25 mobile pantries venture out to fill in any food gaps. 

FIND Food Bank sprang to life in the early 1980s and remains one of the main cornerstones of the food security system in the region. Espinosa doesn’t take her role lightly.

“We feel the weight of that on our shoulders every day,” she said. “We want to make sure that we can take care of everybody—all the non-profit organizations that we support—as best we can.” 

A recent, and surely major, milestone is the nonprofit’s major expansion efforts, which created ample additional space to store food and distribute it more expeditiously.  

With its new 45,000-square-foot warehouse—its other facility was 38,000 square feet—Espinosa is thrilled that the nonprofit is close to 100,000 square feet of warehouse and distribution space. 

There was another perk to the new outpost, however. 

“When we envisioned this new building, we realized that with a lot of the warehousing and logistics companies coming closer to the Coachella Valley—the I-10 is really starting to develop out through Beaumont, Cabazon, and the Desert Hot Springs area—we have the capability of doing a workforce development program on operations and logistics and inventory management systems,” she added. “We do that so people can learn and gain professional development skills as part of our training center. And they can help the community at the same time.” 

Upon completing the program, those individuals would have found knowledge and new skills to “build out resumes and apply to other jobs,” Espinosa said. “They would have a better shot to end food insecurity.”

Ending hunger comes in three different stages, she added. “There’s ending hunger for today, which is our food distribution programs. Then there’s the food distribution programs, and, of course, a myriad of food distribution programs within that category.” 

Outreach services help people become established greater independent by signing them up on CalFresh, and connecting and interconnecting them with other resources that many food-insecure people can experience, such as utility assistance, housing assistance, and Medi-Cal registration. 

“We help people navigate through all that,” Espinosa said. 

“Ending hunger for a lifetime” programs also come into play. Here, the nonprofit addresses the root causes of hunger and focuses on four of the contributing factors to why people are in the food line.  

“There’s a multitude of factors, but the four that we can make a significant difference in is workforce development, educational attainment, financial literacy, and community engagement,” Espinosa said.  

When asked what she appreciates most about being part of the area’s revered nonprofit, the CEO was candid. 

“What I love most is that there’s so much community kindness here,” she said. “I’ve lived all over the United States. I went to school in the Midwest. I was up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I lived over in the coastal areas of Southern California. There’s something really special about the people in this community, and I feel it in such a different way than the other areas that I’ve lived in. 

“People here are concerned, and there’s a love to make sure people are taken care of and not left behind,” she added. “Another reason I love it is because I’ve been given an opportunity to go out and interact with the community in such a strong way, and to help feed people who are in need.” 

Learn more about FIND Food Bank by visiting FINDfoodbank.org. 

This story originally appeared in the Desert Sun, August 2025.

Stay up to date on all the good work we’re doing through the power of philanthropy. Sign up for our eNewsletter, Philanthropy Matters, today.

The post Grantee Spotlight: Grant helps FIND Food Bank thwart food insecurity appeared first on IECF.

Student volunteers back boxes at FIND Food Bank

Ending hunger today, tomorrow and for a lifetime is a bold endeavor. But that’s not deterring FIND Food Bank.

Founded by Wayne Johnson in 1983 in Cathedral City, FIND, which stands for Food in Need of Distribution, now serves about 5,000 square miles of eastern Riverside and southern San Bernardino counties. Its primary goal remains as strong as ever: “to relieve hunger, the causes of hunger, and the problems associated with hunger through awareness, education, and mobilization of resources and community involvement.”

“Our commitment is to always make sure there’s enough food for everybody to eat in our Valley, so that they don’t have to wonder where their next meal is,” says FIND Food Bank President and CEO Debbie Espinosa. “We want to give them that strong foundation to utilize and really tackle the root causes of hunger, and to be able to bring them out of the line.”

FIND’s food is comprised of donations, purchased goods, or federal government programs. The organization secures food donations at different points in the supply chain—statewide and local growers to wholesalers, manufacturers, and retail grocers. The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), for instance, is a federal program of the USDA, which helps food banks distribute diverse, pre-packed foods sourced from different people and places.

Espinoza says it’s all part of the organization’s unique approach to end hunger. Period.

To be sure, the organization’s tireless efforts have not gone unnoticed. It now boasts an extensive list of programs and outreach to better serve the community.

The Senior Feeding Program, for instance, is a commodity supplemental food program, that assists 60+ seniors with nutritious USDA commodity dietary supplemental foods. FIND Food Bank is one of 10 food banks in the program providing these commodities to improve the health of seniors.

Other programs stand out.

Because children comprise 40 percent of those at risk of hunger in FIND’s service area, the organization partners with schools and community organizations to provide healthy food. In fact, more than 84 percent of Coachella Valley public school students qualify for free and reduced-price school meals.

On that note, the nonprofit’s Kid’s Summer Market is a 10-week long program geared to filling meal gaps for students on summer vacation.

Debbie Espinoza

“In the summertime, we experience a strong increase in childhood food insecurity because they are not in schools where they’re receiving their school lunches and it impacts the entire family,” Espinoza says. “We partner with many of the school districts in order to ensure that it’s one-stop shopping. The school districts are doing the food distributions where they’re doing the meals, like the school lunches through the summer programs, but in addition to that, we’re doing the food distribution for the entire family to make sure they’re taking care of not just at lunch but at breakfast and at dinners, too throughout the summer.”

Elsewhere, FIND’s outreach team works one-on-one with clients, helping them apply for food benefits, rental and utility assistance, unemployment, SSI, and other financial resources. The goal is to offer people proper tools for self-sufficiency.

Recently, FIND Food Bank received a grant from The Todd Barajas Legacy Fund, from Inland Empire Community Foundation (IECF). The fund was established back 2016 for broad and general charitable uses and purposes. Espinosa says the grant buoyed the nonprofit’s general operating dollars, which supports all its programming.

“Our programmatic framework centers on ending hunger for today, tomorrow, and for a lifetime,” says Espinoza, noting that grant helped the nonprofit’s emergency food distribution sites for people that need food immediately, either because they’re running out of food or they’re experiencing food insecurity.

“It’s our mobile pantry programs,” she points out. “It’s our 150 distribution sites through supplying and supporting other non-profit organizations that have food pantries themselves, so they can focus on the people and the client services as opposed to sourcing for food to be able to put into their pantries.”

FIND Food Bank takes care of that for those entities, stocking their pantries. Additionally, the organization has about 44 community mobile markets, featuring food bank trucks that venture out to dense, high-food-insecurity areas.”

“We will bring the food directly into that community because they may or may not have a non-profit organization that has a food pantry there,” Espinoza says. “We want to make sure they have equitable access to healthy and nutritious foods throughout the Coachella Valley and the Desert region.”

Not surprisingly, the nonprofit has reached new highs over the last year.

“One of our biggest milestones was something we started this work in 2019 before COVID,” Espinoza shares. “We were very excited about launching the Ending Hunger for a Lifetime programmatic framework to really complete that 360-degree wraparound services. Then COVID happened and we had to take a little bit of a hiatus on launching those programs.

“But in the last year, we’ve really started to see the outcomes of that work in the initial first two years of investments,” she adds. “We’re getting amazing stories from people that are tapping into not just ending hunger for lifetime but utilizing all three of those elements to create a really food-secure platform.”

Learn more about FIND Food Bank at findfoodbank.org.

This story originally appeared in the Desert Sun, May 2024.

Learn more about the good work we’re doing at IECF through the power of philanthropy. Subscribe to our free monthly eNewsletter, Philanthropy Matters.

The post Spotlight on FIND Food Bank: Ending hunger today, tomorrow and for a lifetime in the Coachella Valley appeared first on IECF.