The Harrisburg-based Central Pennsylvania Food Bank recently cleaned up a three-course fundraising effort for its new Hollidaysburg Hub location on Scotch Valley Road in Hollidaysburg.

At a news conference Thursday at the hub, officials celebrated reaching their goal of $1 million to cover operational expenses for the first three years at the facility — highlighting M&T Bank for serving up an appetizer of $100,000 last year to get the operational funding campaign started.

Prior to that, the food bank raised $1 million to buy the property, then $700,000 to renovate it, for a total fundraising investment of $2.4 million, all raised in the hub’s seven-county region, according to Joe Arthur, former CEO and now vice president.

The $1 million raised in the last year for operational expenses for the local hub came from about 100 contributors — businesses, individual business leaders and ordinary residents, Arthur said.

He’s happy but not overly surprised at the success of the three campaigns, given that the food bank is “a known commodity” and “people really believe in the mission,” he said.

“People can relate,” he said. “We all eat.”

Moreover, the COVID pandemic helped sensitize people to the needs of others, as many experienced losses they would never have otherwise expected, according to Arthur.

It made people feel they were “on common ground” with others, he said.

M&T has been a long-time supporter of the food bank, said Nora Habig, president of M&T’s central and western Pennsylvania region.

That generosity is needed more than ever, according to Arthur.

After COVID, food bank officials figured the need in its 27-county overall territory would subside — but that was wrong, Arthur said. Food insecurity has actually worsened.

In the local hub’s region, comprising Blair, Centre, Clearfield, Fulton, Huntingdon and Mifflin counties, one in eight adults and one in six children struggle with hunger, Arthur said.

Last year in that local region, 70,000 people needed help — including 17,000 children — leading to the food bank’s delivery of 70 million pounds of food, with the help of 1,000 partner agencies, he said.

Things are likely to get worse, too, as the recently passed Big, Beautiful Bill’s cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid take hold, according to Arthur.

The population that benefits from those programs “crosses over deeply” with the population the food bank serves, Arthur said.

There’s also inflation, which has subsided, but nevertheless continues, he said.

Families that may have come out of COVID without too much damage may now be getting less help with food and health care expenses due to the legislative changes, even as they deal with rising costs for housing, childcare and other necessities, he said.

That puts more pressure on the food bank.

People may think that food banks deal primarily in junk food, but that’s not true, he said.

The boxes clients take out of the hub are actually more healthful than the contents of the average family’s grocery cart, thanks to the food bank having ramped up its proportion of healthy items — mainly frozen and fresh — so that it’s approximately 50-50 with dry-storage goods, Arthur said.

It has managed to do that by increasing its cold storage space at its main location in Harrisburg and the hubs in Williamsport and now Hollidaysburg and by partnering with more than 100 farms and orchards, he said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.