Meals on Wheels offers new services — for a fee

Meals on Wheels, best known for delivering frozen entrees to thousands of housebound seniors in King County, will start delivering a private company's fresh baby food to Seattle families — for a fee.

The unconventional collaboration is part of an all-out push to develop new funding sources for the financially strapped Meals on Wheels.

As part of that effort, Meals on Wheels is launching an urgent first-ever fundraising campaign that will include knocking on corporate doors, direct mail and a concert in the fall.

If the money isn't raised, the program will have to cut down to one the number of meals it delivers a day to older and disabled adults, and start a waiting list — actions some similar nutrition programs have already taken.

"We're hanging in there giving two meals a day. But we want people to know we need money," said Margaret Strachan, a vice president at the nonprofit Senior Services, a social-service agency based in Seattle that operates Meals on Wheels.

The program provides nearly 440,000 meals a year to nearly 2,600 people in King County, most of them low-income women over age 75 who live alone. Many are disabled.

Recipients are asked to make a donation for each frozen meal, which costs about $4 to make. The average donation is about 85 cents, and seniors get the food even if they don't pay.

In the baby-food venture, a Redmond-based organic baby-food caterer called Sprouts will pay Meals on Wheels for every drop-off its vans make to Sprouts' customers.

"Our customers are going to love it that our delivery fee isn't going into our pockets. It's going straight to Senior Services," said Mischelle Davis, a former Microsoft manager who helped found Sprouts 18 months ago.

Senior Services is trying to adopt the same entrepreneurial mind-set with its other programs in addition to Meals on Wheels.

In the past few months, it has created partnerships with other start-up companies offering services, such as a Web-site locator for long-term care and a health-care-insurance product. A new staff-run videography service charges to help people record personal histories.

Proceeds from these endeavors support the agency's traditional programs for low-income seniors who can't pay.

"I see these as very small pilots ... little embers that we can blow on and create an actual big flame," said Denise Klein, executive director of Senior Services.

Most of the Meals on Wheels food is packed and delivered by a corps of about 300 volunteers. This year, the program is facing a $140,550 budget shortfall, according to Senior Services.

The program's primary troubles have been flat government funding and stagnant donations while gas prices and other expenses have risen.

Statewide, the situation is the same for many Meals on Wheels programs, which are run by different kinds of nonprofit agencies.

"It's a tight situation all the way around for everybody," said Martha Peppones, nutrition-program director at Senior Services of Snohomish County.

The Snohomish County program was forced two years ago to cut back to one meal a day and had to raise $175,000 last year to avoid creating a waiting list.

It plans to build a production kitchen to produce upscale home-delivered meals for private-pay clients and use that money to subsidize the nutrition program.

Nationally, most meal programs are delivering one meal five days a week, and at least four out of 10 programs have waiting lists.

The aging of baby boomers will add more pressure.

"We're working very hard to prepare for what we know is going to be a huge burgeoning group of folks in the future," said Peggy Ingraham, a senior vice president with the Meals On Wheels Association of America.

Congress just approved an additional $20 million for the current fiscal year for senior-nutrition programs that are funded through the Older Americans Act.

But that won't feed every hungry senior or eliminate every waiting list, said Ingraham. "The goal is so far out there."

In Washington, a coalition called the Elder Care Alliance has asked lawmakers to approve $22.7 million to bolster services to seniors, including $2 million for nutrition programs for homebound seniors.

But the local Meals on Wheels can't afford to wait.

In about three weeks, its vans in Seattle will be rolling out with the traditional country-fried steak, roast turkey and hamburger stroganoff for seniors, along with new Sprouts fare — "Basghetti," "yummy yams" and a vegetable combo called "green monsters" for babies and toddlers.

Marsha King: 206-464-2232 or mking@seattletimes.com