Interview with Gayle Woodsum, Founder and CEO

Angel: “Hello! This is our 15 year capstone review, talking with CEO and founder, Gayle Woodsum. What was your vision when starting FLV?”

Gayle: “Well it started because I’d been working for two years with a lot of community elders. People who were dealing with a variety of challenges in their lives. And the common thread between all of them was access to healthy food. And that even of itself got me started thinking about-what does 'access' mean? It’s questions like, do I have enough money to buy food? How close is my grocery store? Does that store have food that reflects what I like to eat or what my cultural background or family is accustomed to eating? It was really interesting to start thinking about it from a broader perspective.Of course what I’ve known as a long time activist since the early 1980s is that all kind of social change or community change depends on genuine, sincere relationships. No we-them attitudes. Those can set up barriers. I’m always looking for ways to connect with others. 

I also started asking, what’s missing here in Albany County? 15 years ago there were a lot of traditional methods like food banks … virtually all of those food banks weren’t set up for fresh produce. The typical meal you’d get a vegetable, a meat, and a starch, and very often those were canned or pre-fab. 

But the most important thing people need is to be given respect and connection. If you give people less than the best, then you’re telling them that they’re deserving of less than the best. So the vision at the starting gate was that we wanted there to be fresh produce and it had to be of the highest possible quality. By doing both we hope to show you that one, we hear you; and two, we want you to feel good about the exchange."

Angel: “How do you think FLV aligns with that original vision today?”

Gayle: "I think it’s even bigger and better than ever because we get better at listening. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves to always be listening. On that wall over there is one of my favorite pictures of our volunteers. That picture of volunteers picking through blueberries. We were adamant that no blueberry with a white dot was going to anybody. That’s how far we went even at the beginning for the highest quality and we still do - but now we serve 750 people a week.”

Angel: “It was 700 not too long ago either.”

Gayle: "Even two years ago. You know it’s not easy to grow food or really serve a diverse group of people and really listen and respect all of it."

Angel: “What’s a key thing that you’ve learned since starting FLV?”

Gayle: “Well, the day I die is the day I stop learning. I think there are lots and lots and lots of things. Usually there’s not even an hour that goes by that I don’t think I’ve learned something. One thing I learned was when we were growing lettuce and spinach (it grew before other produce that year), and we were getting feedback that people don’t want greens and that we were growing too much of that. We started thinking, oh, we’re doing things wrong, pushing things on people that they don’t want. A month later we started getting cucumbers and tomatoes and people go, “where’s the lettuce?” And we realized that what they really wanted was to make a salad. We weren’t hearing what they were actually saying. It was one of those 'Duh' moments. How do we listen more deeply?"

Angel: “Interesting! What would you say are FLV’s most urgent needs at the moment?”

Gayle: “It’s really important that we live up to what we’ve told people we will do. But the numbers are exploding. We’re in a difficult time for everyone. Donations have gone down. And costs are going up for us too. But we cannot afford to reduce what we’re doing for the community. We have emergency needs but recognize that right now everyone has to take care of themselves.” 

Angel: “Where does most of your funding come from? What percentage is from private donations?” 

Gayle: “We’re nowhere where we should be; we’re about 80% grant-funded. We’re very fortunate, and there are grants for mid-supply chain efforts like the Food Hub. You asked about private donors; our donors are wonderful. We have a wonderful volunteer team we couldn’t do this without. Our donors, we have some that are anonymous, people we don’t even know who’ve been donating $10 a month for 3+ years. And I’m thinking, that’s amazing! We have a small handful of people who are able to give us what I consider a sizable donation a year or a few times a year. It’s still only about 11% of our funding.”

Angel: “What partnerships are you excited about currently? What are some other organizations that you’ve worked with since the beginning?” 

Gayle: “There’s so many people doing really good work, I’ll tell you, go eat at the Mountain View Café at the Ivinson Memorial Hospital, and you’ll see where some of it is going. If you’re a meat eater, you’re gonna get beef that is local, it never leaves the state. It tastes like nothing anywhere else. There are so so many. We are thankful to work with Action Resources International. ARI is the Wyoming-based, grass-roots organization with the 501(c)3 status that is the umbrella organization that allows us to get grants. We started looking for other programs that share our philosophy, which is that the people who have the problems we’re trying to address are the ones with the answers to solve them: community-driven, community-led. 

Also, one of the things we’ve been doing for years as a part of the AmeriCorps program is that we are an intermediary program for AmeriCorps VISTA and for the Foster Grandparents program. Through the VISTA program we are able to provide dozens of non-profit organizations with a year-long committed person who can help them get ready to have staff and help them move their capacity forward. With the Foster Grandparents program you’re serving schools and you’re serving children and you’re serving elders in one fell swoop. 

We’ve also got our Food Hub going. We’re ready to help support the establishment of other food hubs and that’s the biggie." 

Angel: “Briefly can you explain what a food hub does?”

Gayle: “So a food hub is like an ultimate collaboration in supply-chain. A food hub provides facilities and an organizational, administrative approach to things that connect producers of all sizes (in particular small starting out) and larger ones to institutions and customers that they wouldn’t be able to access without someone in the middle. But at the same time, the institution, for example, what Ivinson Memorial Hospital needs is more than any one producer is currently producing. A food hub aggregates. We can get spinach from a variety of locations - we can get the amount the hospital needs because we have enough small suppliers to make that quota. Then we’re responsible for that order coming through. It really is a system.”

Angel: “Are there any last thoughts to leave with us?”

Gayle: “I was just thinking of the 15 year process … When we first started, the food banks were serving thousands of people. But not in the way of fresh produce. Produce was the cast off from everything else. I remember the executive director of Interfaith said at the time that people never came on Saturdays, but they figured out that we were collecting produce on Friday evenings, sitting on the curb from the Farmer’s Market and sorting out what the Soup Kitchen, Interfaith, or individuals could use that week. As soon as people figured out that we were serving high-quality, fresh produce, people were showing up where people weren’t before. Now the Downtown Clinic, they have their own garden. All these places are now adding gardens to their health and wellness missions - that kind of growth is astounding. That’s what collaboration does.

And so we hope with the Food Hub, we can use our production gardens to grow and support the Food Hub. We can provide immediate produce that other producers can’t provide for the Food Hub while also helping new farmers and ranchers with land that they can start developing their own businesses.”

Angel: “Well, thank you so much I appreciate you for meeting up to talk about the last 15 years of Feeding Laramie!"