Food Bank offered $450,000 matching grant

The Lowcountry Food Bank could be $450,000 richer in the forme of a matching grant from the Kresge Foundation of Detroit.

The Food Bank will receive the money after it raises a $460,000 grant match, Executive Director Jermaine Husser said. The grant application sought $300,000, but the foundation was so impressed that it awarded another $150,000. "We're pretty excited about it," Husser said.

The funds are the last phase of the Food Bank's $5 million capital campaign for the cost of its new building on Azalea Drive. Last year, Charleston attorney Paul Hulsey donated $1 million to the bank, which bears his name.

The Lowcountry Food Bank was the only South Carolina organization to receive a Kresge award. The awards were announced Wednesday. The bank, founded in 1983, feeds the poor and hungry of the state's 10 coastal counties. It collects, inspects, maintains and distributes otherwise wasted food products from businesses, the government, and farmers. The food goes to a network of 416 member agencies.

The Kresge Foundation awarded $63.6 million for community development, health and environmental initiatives at its fourth-quarter meeting in December, including the $450,000 awarded to the Lowcountry Food Bank. The 125 awards included organizations in 30 states and the District of Columbia, Canada, Great Britain and South Africa. Last year, the foundation doled out $181 million in grants, the most generous in its 85-year history.

"If ever there was a time for Kresge to put its resources on the line to help nonprofit organizations serving the poor and disadvantaged, it is now," said Elaine D. Rosen, Kresge board chairwoman. "The magnitude of the economic contraction demands we be both creative and aggressive in our grantmaking."