Sunshine Division, Inc.

Since 1923, the Sunshine Division has been providing emergency food and clothing relief to Portland families and individuals in need. Whether due to the loss of a job, domestic crime, illness, or victims of fire or disaster, the Sunshine Division has built an 96-year legacy of mobilizing quickly and efficiently to assist distressed Portlanders. We offer emergency food assistance six days a week at our two food pantry locations as well as 24/7 through our partnership with the Portland Police Bureau who store food boxes at each police precinct that can be dispatched to people in need at any time. We also provide thousands of holiday, thanksgiving, summer and emergency food boxes throughout the year. In addition to food relief we also offer new and gently used clothing to those in need at our facilities.

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Having leadership staff participate in webinars from local foundations with regard to the changing climate of philanthropy and non-profit leadership since the onset of the pandemic.

Our organization works with more than 100 local schools, faith based organizations, non-profits and law enforcement to support them with access to free emergency food. In addition to our core services of our pantry and home delivery we specifically partner with dozens of local groups for our holiday food programs around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Martin Luther King Jr. holidays as well as at the end of the school year. Sunshine selects partners from a diverse group of organizations and diverse geography around the Portland metro area to reach families and individuals who work closely with these partner agencies to provide them access to Sunshine's services.

Our organization has adapted to external changes in our community in a variety of ways. Eleven years ago we adapted to implement our first "shopping style" food pantry at our headquarters to better serve the families accessing food with a more robust offering. When the demographics of the neighborhood near our facility dramatically shifted we purposefully sough and located a second pantry location five years ago in east Portland so that we not only increased access to our services but also had a pantry site in the area of greatest need in our community. In April of 2020 we adapted significantly in response to the pandemic. Our two food pantry sites remained open and busier than ever in our organizations 90+ year history distributing emergency food boxes outside of the two buildings to keep our clients safe and in close exposure or proximity to staff and volunteers throughout the COVID-19 crisis. We also launched a home delivery program in April of 2020 to directly serve households that were disrupted by the pandemic. Fast forward nearly three years later and the home delivery program has continued and is now a core program having successfully home delivered and emergency food box to more than 85,000 doorsteps since spring of 2020. In late 2022 we continue to adapt and evolve as the fallout of the pandemic and record inflation have made the need for our services greater than ever in our 99 year history. We remain nimble and responsive looking for the best and most accessible ways to ensure emergency food is available to anyone in crisis.