Birch Community Services, Inc.

Birch Community Services Inc.'s mission is to build a financially stable community by providing education, food, and nurturing accountability. We are an innovative organization that addresses the roots of hunger and poverty by partnering with working, struggling families to meet a basic needs, but more importantly to repurpose savings. By redistributing over 10 million pounds of food, clothing, and household items that would typically be put into a landfill, BCS is able to use food as a platform to instill financial literacy throughout the Portland community. Each week, BCS partners with 600 families to redistribute excess product from over 240+ companies (food, clothing, etc.). Families participate in financial literacy courses to repurpose grocery savings to move towards sustainability. Our families give back by paying a monthly service fee and contributing volunteer hours. In this way, the BCS theory of change is based on accountability and the power of human dignity. We believe that personal responsibility empowers people to develop their own capacity to be self-sufficient and that the best context for this transformation is within a community in which participants work together to attain their goals. BCS embodies this as an organization by utilizing a small service fee and recycling revenue which accounts for approximately 70% of operating costs. This internal revenue makes operations as a nonprofit highly sustainable and flexible when it comes to external revenue sources.