Jim Conklin On How Cultivate Turns Food Waste Into Free Meals

We talk with Jim Conklin of Cultivate Food Rescue about why hunger keeps showing up even when our food system produces massive excess. We trace how a local, logistics-first model rescues perishable food, turns it into real meals, and helps communities aim for near zero hunger. 
• Cultivate’s pivot from culinary school roots to perishable food rescue 
• How food waste and food insecurity intersect across the supply chain 
• Transportation as the biggest barrier to getting food to people 
• Hunger Ends Here as a collaboration model for funders, distributors, and pantries 
• Rural vs urban food insecurity and why logistics differ by place 
• The difference between a food bank and a food pantry 
• How rescued food becomes frozen backpack meals for kids 
• Why chef-made meals and better nutrition change long-term outcomes 
• Hypergrowth challenges in a nonprofit without a clear template 
• Leadership advice about thinking beyond constraints and building strong teams 
Sign up online. It’s really easy to do. 
You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Jim Conklin

Marshall King 0:04

Welcome to the Inspiring Good Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Community Foundation of Elkar County, which serves a vibrant community in northern Indiana, known for its generosity and strong network of nonprofit organizations. I'm Marshall King, your co-host with Kevin Deary, a veteran nonprofit CEO who now coaches others. Today our guest is Jim Conklin, co-founder and executive director of Cultivate Food Rescue. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Conklin 0:30

Thanks for having me.

Kevin Deary 0:31

Jim, it's so good to have you on our podcast. And let's start with Cultivate. That's a great name for somebody that focuses on food. So let's talk a little bit about what Cultivate is and the genesis behind Cultivate.

Jim Conklin 0:44

Yeah, you know,

What Food Rescue Really Means

Jim Conklin 0:45

it's it's it's kind of a noun and an adjective and a verb. So it's really exciting for me. Food rescue is new-ish. Certainly the version that we do really focused on perishable food. So our food supply chain is long. We waste 70 million tons, tons of food. It's always hard to picture that, especially on a pet podcast. But our role is really to rescue it and get it to community members in need that are hungry on a day-to-day basis or hungry for a few moments while they're moving or in foster care or in a bad medical situation. So there's a lot of reasons why somebody might be hungry. So what we do is find the food and connect the food to the people that need it.

Kevin Deary 1:30

You know, many years ago in my life, I was just starting out, coming out of the military, and I was just getting involved in in nonprofit work. I was a frontline worker. I was married with a small child, and I remembered that I think I was getting paid $5.50 an hour, $6 an hour, but it was a labor of love for me. And I remember my wife had a had an accident, car accident, her to back, couldn't work for six months or so. And we were really struggling trying to figure out how to pay the bills. Very proud people, suddenly going from you know low middle class to like really hurting. And I remember our local uh rotary club. I don't know how they found out about it, but I got a huge box of food delivered to our front door, I don't know who did it, with a gift card for the local shopping for a food store for like a hundred dollars. And and that that was back in the eighties, and that meant so much to me. I never forgot that. And so I have a great appreciation for your mission. So when you and the co-founder were thinking about this, how did you start to lay the framework of what cultivate is today?

Pivoting From Restaurant To Rescue

Jim Conklin 2:40

Yeah, it's you know, I don't know that this is what we originally started thinking of. We shut a restaurant down and we were working with the crossing here in Elkhart County, and we started off as a culinary school. And what I love about my upbringing in Elkhart County, you can pivot, right? You have an idea and you start something, but you growing up in this county, you see people start up businesses and you live around and you kind of just absorb it. And so we had this great idea of teaching students how to earn a living, you know, in in restaurants and as a chef. And we came across another opportunity, this food rescue concept. And so we pivoted, and that's that's the world we grew up in. So it wasn't really part of the original plan. I say a lot, it was part of God's plan. We just didn't know it at the time. And so that's what we did. We we pivoted to this, and and this county is special to me. It's home. And so what we're doing here with the community foundation is really a a special part of this cultivate mission.

Kevin Deary 3:43

So you went from a business that you had to close down to looking at doing some some kids some culinary teaching, which speaks to Marshall's being a chef himself, that speaks to his heart. He's he's always been a huge fan of cultivate, as I have, and I'm a huge fan of yours. So but to and you but f interestingly enough, your background is accounting.

Jim Conklin 4:05

Yeah.

Kevin Deary 4:06

So how does an accountant go to becoming a CEO of a nonprofit that that's built around food?

Jim Conklin 4:13

Yeah.

A Health Crisis That Refocused Life

Jim Conklin 4:16

For me personally, it it's great to have a business background. I mean, a nonprofit, it's a it's a unique vision of what we do. We're definitely running a business. Uh, but for me personally, it was a it was a medical issue. 2010, found out I had a tumor and needed surgery two weeks later. And so just reshaped my focus in life, loved the business world, loved being a CFO, worked for some great companies, but I said, what can I do with these skills that I have to really help people? Um I grew up in a home, my mom's a servant at heart. I've watched my whole life for taking care of less fortunate people, grew up in a lower middle class home. Remember getting $5 of gasoline in the tank and going to the grocery store a couple times because you just simply didn't have the money to buy everything. So never was hungry, but kind of on that line of being hungry. So I think God was kind of bringing all these pieces together where I I was thinking I was going to be a successful CFO and he said, Nope, I got a different, different plan for you. And some life-altering medical situations really kind of made me see what the plan was.

Kevin Deary 5:31

And since you open up that door, I think we'll just go ahead and jump into it now. But we we both share the same challenges and have overcome some life-threatening brain surgeries. Yeah. Multiple, both of us. Yeah. And and for me, oh, very few people have had that experience and have lived. And here are the two of us on the broadcast. Hold on, let me check with Marshall. Nope. I'm the only guy in the room who hasn't had his head cut into. Okay, so so it looks like it's just us two today. But that was a special bonding time for us. I remember when you came to visit me and you had not you were not that far out from your you were still recovering.

Jim Conklin 6:09

Yeah.

Kevin Deary 6:10

Yeah, but you were able to drive, and I wasn't able to drive yet. And I just remember how much that meant to me. So I think a lot of your mom's servant heart has been passed on to you because you are absolutely a servant leader who just happens to be really good at business and and has an amazing accounting numbers background, which has got to be incredibly helpful. Usually you have very passionate people who are running nonprofits who don't have the business, but they recruit board members who have the business. You know, you have the business and the heart for it. So Cultivate opens its doors in what year?

Scaling Fast With Logistics Thinking

Jim Conklin 6:45

We started unofficially in 2016 as a culinary school, and then food rescue started July of 2017.

Kevin Deary 6:53

And I remember I was still CEO of Boys and Girls Cub when you and I met, and we became one of the Boys and Girls Scu became one of the first recipients of some of your food, which was a huge underwriting for us. And you delivered it. So you've not only delivered to food deserts, but you also have figured out the transportation piece. And that's incredible. Can you talk a little bit about how big you have grown in these 10 or 11 years and nine years, 10 years, and talked about this growth and how you have particularly figured out the transportation as well?

Jim Conklin 7:29

Yeah. So one of the things that my team always laughs and I focus on is uh what's called a compound annual growth rate. And like I know that because that's my background. It's a a way to measure growth, and it's it's 80% over nine years, which is pretty spectacular for people that if you don't know what that is, go look it up. But it's it really is quite unique, especially for a nonprofit. Um, and it really comes down to people believing in what your mission is. My background is find out what your industry is, you know, learn about why it's successful and how companies aren't successful. So whether I was in the RV industry, look at the market, look at the bigger place that you're operating, or the agricultural industry. What are the trends? What's the economy like? What's impacting your business? And I do the same thing at Cultivate and really two simple things. We waste a lot of food, 70 million tons, and access is the large obstacle for people that need food. And so it's 80% of the problem. Um either they can't travel from home, their car's not reliable, and they have to rely on the public transport system. How do you get food to the people? That's the that's the thing to solve. And so transportation was the solution. The other one is the cost. And so we do it all for free. And it's a huge challenge, you know, working with a board and throw them a little bit under the bus here. But, you know, it's hard to raise all the money. But again, growing back up in Elkart, you know that there are people that are successful and then they're charitable. Explain to them what you're trying to accomplish. Get the work done, which is what cultivate's been able to do for nine years in a row with a great team of not just employees, but volunteers, and a great board that challenges you and solve it, right? Figure it out. It's actually not very difficult. It's hard to do, but the solution's pretty easy. Develop logistics and do it all for free.

Why Hunger Persists Despite Plenty

Marshall King 9:36

So you're you're approaching this as a logistics guy. I mean, I've been a food writer now for 25 years or so. How is it that in 2026 in the United States of America, we have so many people going hungry? What's the what it's a wicked problem? What's the root of the problem?

Jim Conklin 9:57

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned before we got on on the air here that you know food waste has actually gone up since the 80s. And you think about technology just in time, just people being more business savvy, all these things that come together, you you wouldn't think that's the case. You'd think there'd be less waste, but really it's a global supply chain. But specifically in our place, and we we have it here at the community foundation, Hunger Ints here, is there isn't a lot of collaboration. Everybody kind of works independently. I mean, one of the things that that Qualtivate has done is bring the community together, and that's really true here with Hunger Ints here in No Cart County. How do you get organizations to really work together? Funders like the community foundation, but also the the pantries and social service agencies like the boys and girls. How do you really get everybody to work together? Unfortunately, in our nonprofit space, I think people think, oh, you're you know, you're competing for dollars, kind of, right? But I think if you're successful, you make a big impact, people are supporting you. And that's been our mindset from the very beginning. We just want to help people get the food that they need. And and really the the issue is not even the waste, we just throw it away. So there's this structural thing that we have grown up in in this country that we have the excess. And when we do as a business or even at home, we just throw it away. And and and it's what we do is hard to do, but it's not hard to understand. We just got to stop throwing it away and put like what we do as an organization as a next step of wait, we have too much. What do we do?

Kevin Deary 11:42

Well, we give it away. Well, I I think that's a huge gift to the our our community. My wife would often tell me restaurants overserve. You pay for a meal and they give you too many, too much, too much food, too many potatoes, french fries, too much waste, too much, too much vegetables, maybe, even good, really good stuff. But it's too much. The servings are way too big, which uh which really causes health issues and other problems. And then a lot of that food doesn't even get finished, they just throw it away. Yeah.

Building The Hunger Ends Here Network

Kevin Deary 12:15

So I really you opened up the door to hunger ends here. Talk a little bit about what that is, who's part of it, and what you're trying to achieve.

Jim Conklin 12:25

Yeah, it it really is core to what Cultivate has been trying to do since day one. But then you have Andy Murray, which led this internally here at the Community Foundation, and Dave O'Connor, which on the marketing side of like how do you bring the community together? And Elkart is inherently built this way, working together. And so I think it kind of is the right recipe here for those things to happen in a space where we operate in, it has just been historically independent from each other. And my background is like, wait, we have a retail business, like in these pantries, we're serving serving community members like a grocery store would. And and we know in today's world we don't have standalone grocery stores, but in our nonprofit space of a grocery store, everybody's kind of standalone. And it's just not as effective as it could be and not as efficient, not because the people that run these pantries are just amazing people, big hearts, right? But the problem has gotten so big. It's you have to work together. And and so that's what I really enjoy about Hunger Ends here from a funding side, from a serving side. It's just people coming together as community, because all communities struggle, no matter how wealthy the community is, they all struggle with food insecurity. Every county in the U.S. has a food insecurity. So we haven't really figured out that problem yet.

Kevin Deary 13:52

Is there

Rural Food Insecurity And Access

Kevin Deary 13:53

a difference between urban food secure insecurity and rural?

Jim Conklin 13:58

Yeah. So I mean rural across the country is worse. It there's less people, but there's less access to food. So think about our area. If you go out to Bristol or Middlebury, right? People are more spread apart. And so that's really the challenge, is logistics.

Marshall King 14:14

So you work in this space, you've talked about the recipe of collaboration and all that. If you could snap your fingers and and and change the world, change systems at their core, what would you do to fix hunger?

Jim Conklin 14:30

Yeah, I mean, we have this national system feeding America, which is a key part of it, but we need the local system. We need the local system to add to what they're doing. You can't just throw dollars at this, right? And that's since really since the 80s, that's what we've been doing at the federal level, is throw dollars. It's got to be a plan network, not just at a national level, but at a local level. Because the logistics in a rural area, Bristol, right, Middlebury, is way different than downtown Elkhart. And so how do we bring the pieces together? And one of the great things is we don't compete with anybody. So we can all work together, right? It's not a monopoly, let's all work together and figure out where the need is and get food to that area, where it's rural or or urban, because you need a lot more food in an urban area than you do a rural area, but you need a lot more transportation in a rural area than you do in urban. So really it's it's uh it all comes back to logistics. And we can do that today, right? We have great logistics, we just have to apply it to a non-for-profit space.

Food Banks Vs Pantries Explained

Kevin Deary 15:36

What's the difference, Jim, between a food bank and a food pantry?

Jim Conklin 15:41

Yeah, one's a wholesaler, you know, like if you think business world, one's a distributor. So the food bank of northern Indiana, cultivate, Jimtown Food Bank, Milford Food Pantry, we're distributors. And a food pantry is kind of the retail grocery store.

How Donated Food Gets Rescued

Marshall King 15:55

So cultivate, I mean, I don't I don't know if we've described it. You talked about food waste. So tell I mean, let's make sure our listeners know exactly what it is you're doing. Yeah. From a caterer, from an event, like food is made for a local something, and then you step in. Like walk us through this process.

Jim Conklin 16:18

Yeah, the best way to examples Chick-fil-A. High standards, people love it. 20 minutes, they make the food, and you know it has to be fast at Chick-fil-A, right? The line is long and it has to be fast. But if something stays in a warmer 20 minutes, it gets donated. But it's it doesn't get thrown away, right? They intentionally donate. So University of Notre Dame, home football games, right? You're entertaining people, it's a great event. You always make too much. Think about Christmas, Thanksgiving. You always make too much. What you don't see is what hasn't been served. That's what we rescue of farmer apples, right? Great harvest season, way too many apples. What do you do with it? Well, you just let them fall the ground. No, don't let them fall to the ground. Donate it, right? Really, it's a it's a supply chain. It doesn't really matter if it's the farm, the grocery store, catering business. It doesn't matter. There's always excess because food is the lowest cost item. And you don't want to disappoint your customer. You don't want to run out of food because they're going to be disappointed. You ask that why do you serve so much? You don't want your client to be disappointed. When they come in, they want to take leftovers home, but they want to be full. And if they aren't, they're going to be really disappointed with your business.

Kevin Deary 17:36

So how do we balance that with fine dining, which gives you these little plates for $300, a little plate with nothing on it?

Jim Conklin 17:44

Um Yeah, I mean, it's it certainly there's no waste in fine dining because you pay a lot for it. Love our fine dining restaurants here in town. But it really is consumer choice. A business only responds to what the consumer wants. A grocery store, you go into Martin's, you're not going to see imperfect fruit, right? You're going to see the best fruit and veggies possible. But those imperfect items are as nutritious as those perfect items. What the problem with food waste is you don't see the food.

Marshall King 18:13

So, Jim, once you get this food, you become, in some ways, a restaurant, a wholesaler, you know, the grocery store, all of the above. Explain that. Like how once you rescue this food, what do you do with it?

Jim Conklin 18:25

Yeah.

Frozen Backpack Meals For Weekends

Jim Conklin 18:26

So we have two things that we do. We make prepared frozen meals for a school backpack program in every school in our three counties. So kids going home, they get lunch and breakfast at school. Six meals go home every weekend so they can eat over the weekend. So take the Notre Dame example. The food is prepared already. We rescue it. We have we had 7,000 volunteers come in last year. It gets put into a frozen meal, a TV dinner, if you're old enough to remember what those are, right? And so it gets put put into a tray and frozen and it goes home every weekend. It literally is the only frozen meal backpack program in the country. I don't know why nobody else does it. It makes a ton of sense to us. It was a wild idea, and we just started doing it. But then is the the bulk items, the big items that come in by the truckload. We're that distribution company, we're the we're the stands, we're the U.S. foods, we're the Cisco. And so our pantry partners and our other social service agencies that feed people daily, they go online just like Amazon and they order food. We just don't charge them for it and we deliver it to them.

Kevin Deary 19:36

Tell me a little bit more about who's at the table at Hunger Ends here and what specifically are they doing together now they weren't doing before?

Jim Conklin 19:45

Yeah, I it it's really the whole community. So it's it's it's the funding part of what makes all this happen. It's the distributors, so like Jim Town and Milford and Cultivate, so that distribution level of the supply chain, but it's also that like the retail. I always say grocery stores, that's kind of what pantries are, but it's all that coming together, the whole network coming together that serves that client. And that's what makes it unique. Having that monthly conversation. How do we make this all work better? Because every one of us has the same heart. We want to serve more people. And we, you know, our goal is to have near zero hunger. We we have the food, 70 million tons. We need about 12 million tons to feed everybody. So the math is there. We need less than 20% of the food, and we can feed everybody. What you need is logistics.

Farmers, Protein, And Healthy Options

Kevin Deary 20:37

How do how does the farmer fit into this?

Jim Conklin 20:40

Yeah, you know, the farm excess is again, all kind of goes back to you don't see it. So I had spent time in the ag industry about 10 years. There's a lot of excess. And it's hard to count because it gets plowed under or it just falls to the ground. And so farmers are naturally generous people, and it's a lot of the healthy food, you know, lots of the fruits and veggies that that people that live in a poverty situation don't get on a daily basis. We we think often think, oh, they don't, you know, they, whoever they are, don't eat healthy food. No, they don't have access to it, right? It's not typically in our pantries. Protein's another good example. If a pantry can hand out one pound a month, that's good. Think about one pound of protein for your family or for for you individually per month. If they can hand out one, that's a good number. We can do better than this.

Kevin Deary 21:36

So

Near Zero Hunger As A Real Goal

Kevin Deary 21:37

what's your vision five and ten years from now? What'll hunger in here look like?

Jim Conklin 21:42

Yeah, I I think our vision, and specifically, I think we're in El Kart having everybody come together is to not have hunger. Like this is an achievable thing. I think as people, there are some problems like homelessness and you know, hunger that, oh, we could never solve that. That's that's the start of the problem because you think it can't be solved. And so if you think it can't be solved, you don't take steps to solve it. And I'm telling you from a numbers point of view, we can solve the problem. We just have to put the logistical plan in place.

Kevin Deary 22:14

Many years ago, early in my social work career, I remember kids coming after school and my staff were pulling their hair out because there were so many discipline issues. And there was two things that I I pointed out to them. It it helps that you're I was a parent, so that helped. But one of them was kids need time to burn off. So put it into the program. Let them, you know, run them around, having fun before you do homework, before you do anything. And the second thing is the ones who you're having discipline issues that you're sending home, I want you to make them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is before we had snack programs and dinner programs. And they did, and and those discipline problems were were gone. You you feed a child and their behavior changes. You don't feed a child and their behavior changes. So does ours, by the way, as adults. So I love the concept of that, but you have had so much organizational growth.

Budget, Growth, And Donor Value

Kevin Deary 23:10

I mean, it is hyper growth. I don't it's it's like weed and feed. I don't know what your feed and cultivate, but it is become just this very large organization. What's your total budget now? Four million this dollar this yeah upcoming year. And if you and if you looked at the if you put in a monitoring to all the food that comes in that's donated, what would that be?

Jim Conklin 23:31

Yeah, so for every dollar that gets donated, it's about three dollars worth of food. So $12 million this year, probably worth of food. And that's real value. And I think that's from a numbers point of view, if you're if you're donor to an organization, you get an immediate return. So if I was selling you an investment and I could say I could triple your money this year, that's what we do. Right? We can triple your money in food this year and helping people right here in the community. And that's the other important piece. It's local, right? This is a local solution. It's local people donating, it's local food donors, it's local people being served, similar to Boys and Girls Club, right? This is right here in our community, and we know Elkart, that's really important in El Kart, and really in a lot of communities that your dollars stay here, get invested here, help people here.

Kevin Deary 24:22

So you do you work with local restaurants? And what does that look like?

Jim Conklin 24:27

Yeah. So when you get to the the individual restaurant, those businesses have to repurpose and they can't have a lot of food waste, or you go out of business. But what one step back from there, the food distributors, back to the food manufacturers, the transportation in between, back to the farms. That's where a lot of the waste happens, and that's where we really focus on. It happens at home too. Unfortunately, the Department of Health won't allow us to rescue from your home, but we can from your garden. So we have gardeners that bring in food as well, which is which is kind of great that that happens. So the local part is huge.

The Chef Challenge And Better Nutrition

Marshall King 25:06

And you're not just like getting a chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A and plopping it in the tray and freezing it and sending it home with a kid. Like you've got a chef and culinary folks and incredible equipment, and you're like taking your like it's it's the creativity involved in what you're creating with what you get is it's pretty astounding. So talk a little bit about that.

Jim Conklin 25:34

Yeah, the the chef is huge, and it's a job, obviously it's a job in an organization that A, you don't want me to do, and I don't want because it's it's really hard because we know that we're making 12,000 meals this week. 12,000 out of one kitchen. We have no idea what's coming in the door. So it is it is chopped on steroids, but but here's the beautiful thing about a chef, and we kind of forget this, they're still artists. And and in today's society, we kind of miss the artist part of being a chef. And we have one that's really good. Actually, we've had several that's really good that takes this and they look at it as a puzzle a challenge. How am I going to turn this into 12,000 meals? I couldn't do it, but it's a huge part of our model. And then the frozen meal, it's a meal, it's real food made by real chefs. And and it's always a protein, a starch, a fruit, or veggies, sometimes both. And so getting a meal when you're living in a low-income situation and you're food insecure, it's not can-in-box items. This is something somebody made for somebody to eat. When you're not food insecure, we we can take that for granted. We don't learn to cook. You appreciate we don't learn to cook at home anymore, especially living in a poverty community. It's just not a skill set that's been passed down. But even as a society as a whole, so when you get something that's made by a chef, uh, especially a talented one, it just makes you feel better as a human. It makes you feel like, oh, wait, I've got I got a real meal, and I'm not just eating this out of a can.

Kevin Deary 27:10

Well, I think you brought brought up a good correlation between poverty and processed foods, and then the the lifelong issues that come with health with that. So does cultivate your chef, how do they handle the question of is the food processed?

Jim Conklin 27:27

Yeah. It's really good because our chef now, April, Chef April, has celiac, and so she has to very regimen diet. And what I what I love about Chef April, she knows that we're serving kids. Right. So you get this fine balance of, hey, we have Chick-fil-A, right? And then you go, we need to get fruits and veggies. But when we make oatmeal, there's always fruits in it. Right. So you get this kind of fine balance of, yeah, there's things that we'd like to eat, and and there's things that we need to eat. And that's just an important part of what we do as well. How you learn to eat as a child is how you eat as an adult. For for women, as you go up the income level, they will change their diets. For men, that largely does not happen unless we have a significant medical event. And sometimes that doesn't. Men, you just what you eat is how you learn to eat, and that's the way we eat. That's true for me. Like this is I grew up on canned and box items and processed food. And that's a lifelong impact. When you can change that as a child, not only you're feeding them in the moment so they can be more successful, right? Because if we don't, as kids, if kids don't eat and their brains don't develop and they don't get enough protein, they won't do as well in school. And when you don't do as well in school, we know at third grade, when you you're not reading at level, we know what happens, the probability of what happens is not as good. So kids need to eat. We go back to Maslow, right? You got to breathe and you gotta eat. And when you eat well, you develop well, you develop well, you have the capacity to learn. And that's what you know, part of what working with the community foundation here. We know how important education is for kids, but eating is a big part of being able, being ready to learn when you walk in the classroom.

Building The Plane Mid Flight

Kevin Deary 29:15

Let's talk a little bit about organizational structure. To support the logistics needs uh paid staff. And then they have to know what their role is. And you've had to develop all this. You're basically building the airplane as it's in the air. And that's thrilling in many ways, but super challenging. So, what are some of the challenges you've seen as you're building the airplane that's that's uh holding this incredibly popular and important mission?

Jim Conklin 29:44

Yeah, the speed is is the big part. If you because there was no design, like there are not cultivates in every community. That's that's one important thing to realize is that this perishable food rescue is not everywhere. In fact, it at this scale, it's in very few places. I can think of six that that pop out in my head. And so there isn't a model, right? I can't look at franchise for a subway and go, this is how I do it. It doesn't exist. But again, it kind of comes back to growing up here in Elkhart, right? You just start and you figure it out and you're you're motivated to figure out and solve the problem, and you know there are people right here that need help with food and especially children. I always think of a single mom. That's my motivation, is is that working full time, trying to care for kids. Imagine being that mom and not being able to feed your kids. It's it's it's the mental struggle of all that, providing a home and not being able to provide. And a lot of times you you didn't make a bad decision. Life just happened. And that's where community comes in for me. It's community stepping up. But I love the puzzle of figuring out, right? I grew up in a a town, that's just how it works. You know, it's a little different today than it was. You could start in your garage back in the day with a good salesperson and some know-how. It's a little different today, but that spirit of, hey, let's let's there's there's people that need to be helped. Let's figure out how to do this better. And like we should be able to do this better.

Kevin Deary 31:21

Well, I remember when you started, and I remember we're seeing you this concept, watching it grow has been incredible. You're an amazing leader. You've become a mentor. It's funny, we're usually mentored in a new business world or item, like cultivate like cultivate would be culinary. Uh, a master chef would work with a junior chef or a sous chef. But somewhere along the line, you went from being the student to being the teacher in nonprofit work. And I love that about you. You're always willing to share, to give information.

Advice For New Nonprofit CEOs

Kevin Deary 31:52

If there was any advice you could give a new CEO who's starting today in the nonprofit world with a board, having to raise a lot of money, having to figure out logistics, operations, deliverables. What advice would you give a new CEO?

Jim Conklin 32:06

Don't just think about the constraints. Like allow your mind to live in a world of no constraints. NVIDIA calls it the R of possible. Like we I think as people, especially in the business world, we start thinking about risk, and risk dominates your thought and and you think of a world of scarce resources. Believe me, I'm the accountant. We all have scarce resources, we often use prudently, but allow you yourself to escape to where there's no scarcity, where there's no constraints to what you're doing. And we've lived there for nine years. And and because for me personally, we serve a God that's great and will provide all resources to you. When you bring that to planet Earth, though, you're surrounded by, oh, wait, we have all these scarce resources. You have to get people to think outside of that. We kill hope before it even starts, right? And I'm somebody that used to do that for a living, right? But I think that's the big thing is that you have to allow yourself to live outside of your constraints for a little while to see where you need to go. And then believe, believe that it's possible to raise this amount of money. I never thought about this becoming a four million dollar organization. I had no idea where it would go and what would happen. I just kept taking the steps and allowing it to go. And we live in a great community with great people that really love doing something new a new way. And that's that's a big part of it. It's not just Jim and we have great team members. I have limitations, a lot of them. You can ask my wife Amy about them. But but having good team members around you, but also living in a community, 7,000 volunteers. I mean, that by itself is something most organizations don't do. But it really is about people buying in and wanting to help their neighbors. And there's just something special about that. And you just keep making steps and things continue to happen.

How To Volunteer, Give, Or Donate Food

Marshall King 34:05

Jim, if somebody wants to get involved, if somebody's been captured by your story and they want to bring a group of people to volunteer, or they want to give you money, or they want to bring you some tomatoes, what how do they do that?

Jim Conklin 34:15

Yeah, it certainly there's two facilities, one here on in Elkart and 17 in Middlebury, and then in South Bend. So there's two locations every day of the week. You'll yeah, almost every day of the week you can find a place to volunteer. Sign up online. It's really easy to do. You can bring a group in. What I love is weekends, because you see family and kids. You see that being passed on, whether that's for faith reasons or or just being a good community member, teaching kids how to give. I love that part of what we do. Our website's a great source of information. Uh, social media too. I gotta give Dave some prompts. Our social media is great. So stop by. There is somebody, especially in South Bend, that's willing to show you around. There's nothing like walking around our facility over in South Bend and being a part of the volunteer process. Two hours I just people change when they come in and do it because it's hands-on. And you know that some child is going to be fed with your work that weekend. And that's that's powerful.

Marshall King 35:20

And Jim, thank you for being on the podcast. But also, because of you, a lot of kids do not go to bed hungry. And that's a remarkable thing.

Jim Conklin 35:28

Yeah. It's, you know, Elkart's.

Marshall King 35:30

Because of you and your team. I know it's not just you, but you had the vision.

Jim Conklin 35:32

Yep. Elkhart's very successful, but we also we struggle with children being hungry, just as St. Joe and and Marshall County. And so Yeah, I just created a path for people to walk down. And we live in a community that people are willing to help and uh support your organization. So I think that's a special part of it, is that we created a structure in which people can help, but there's so many people out there that want to do something to help people. We just we just kind of made it a little easy for them to do that.

What Gives Hope And Closing Credits

Jim Conklin 36:03

Yeah.

Marshall King 36:03

We always wrap up with a question what gives you hope?

Jim Conklin 36:07

For me, it's always my faith. I shouldn't be here, right? I am the least likely person to leave a nonprofit. Literally, if you look up Counton in a dictionary, you'd see my face. That is me. I am definitely never played the role of a visionary, but uh five brain surgeries, five radiation procedures, God had a different plan. And um I that part is like life gets tough. And the folks that we hope, they they have tough circumstances. And I think as an individual, as community members, we have to look at these challenges like hunger as being solvable, and if we can get people to do that, we'll find a way to solve them.

Marshall King 36:51

This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded at the Community Foundation's offices in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Music is provided by sensational sounds. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkart County at inspiringgood.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired and inspire good in your community.