Carson Valley Community Food Closet (Food Closet) is a non-profit organization created in 1989 to provide supplemental food to people in need with a mission to achieve food security in Douglas County.
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History: The need for the Food Closet was identified in 1989 by a past Director of Douglas County Social Services and Carson Valley United Methodist Church members. With the help of local churches, service clubs, businesses, and individual volunteers, the Food Closet opened in a garage at the Carson Valley United Methodist Church in Gardnerville. The second location was a 400-square-foot space in downtown Gardnerville's Carson Valley Heating and Air Conditioning building. After about four years, the community's growing needs caused the Food Closet to seek a larger space. In 1996, through a block grant and a comprehensive campaign for time, material, money, and land donations, the Food Closet and Family Support Council became joint tenants in the newly constructed Hussman Building. The agency then outgrew that space, storing most of its palletized food in donated storage on a local ranch. In 2019, after completing a successful capital campaign, the agency built a new facility combining distribution services with warehousing.

Through its hard work and partnership with the Food Bank of Northern Nevada (FBNN), the Food Closet has been the foremost provider of food assistance in Douglas County since 1989 and is the only organization capable of handling a half-million pounds of donated food annually.
 
Service: At its core, the Food Closet provides food to residents of Douglas County in the form of monthly and/or weekly allotments. Food provided includes bakery items, produce, canned goods, dried goods, meat, dairy, pet food, and hygiene items. The agency provides access to groceries through ten different programs, some collaborating with FBNN. It utilizes local partnerships with Community Health Workers, Douglas County Social Services, Washoe Tribe Social Services, and many others to provide wrap-around services to those experiencing food insecurity.
Programs include:

• Home Delivery
• Fresh Tuesdays
• Golden Groceries
• Farmers Market
• Prescription Pantry
• TEFAP- The Emergency Food Assistance Program
• Saturday Parking Lot Distributions
• CSFP (Senior Commodities)
• Mobile Harvest- FBNN Host Site
• Community Pet Pantry
• Kitchen/Learning Center- helping recipients make groceries go farther.

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Mission : To achieve food security in Douglas County

Staff

Sarah Sanchez           
Director 

Desiree Witteman       
Manager

Traci Votel
Warehouse Manager

Michelle Latham
Mobile Distribution Coordinator

Cynthia Rodriguez
​Fiscal and Administration Coordinator
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Board of Directors

Michael Morton
Chair

Alycia Burton
Vice Chair

Anne Ham
Treasurer

Jeanette Johnson
Secretary

​Pat Cardinal
Cynthia Sawyer
Debbie Posnien
​Becky Tekansik
Michael Hineley
Gregg Carlson
​Marlissa Carlson
Stephanie Estes

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Carson Valley Community Food Closet, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation as registered with the Nevada Secretary of State. Your donation may be tax deductible pursuant to the provisions of section 170.c. of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, 26 U.S.C.

Carson Valley Community Food Closet
Federal I.D. #880258742
Nevada Non-Taxable NRS 372.325