The Ceres Community Project

“The form 990 is reviewed and approved by the finance committee and distributed to the board of directors prior to filing.”

“The organization reviews all compensation of officers and employees annually and requests disclosure of any possible conflict of interest of board members, officers and employees in order to enforce compliance with this policy.”

“The compensation of the executive director was compared to a study of non profit salaries for similar sized organizations in the san francisco bay area.”

“The compensation of other employees were compared to a study of non profit salaries for similar sized organizations in the san francisco bay area.”

“The organization makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy and financial statements available to the public upon request in writing or in person.”

“Ceres Community Project's mission is to improve health for people, communities and the planet through love, healing meals and empowering the next generation. 2023 Highlights: - Meal Program - We provided 215,924 meals - more than ever before - for 1,390 clients and their family members. - Youth Program - 319 young people from 47 different schools participated in 14,835 hours of service and learning at Ceres. - We completed cohort one and launched cohort two of the Healthy Eating Educator Internship. Twenty-three interns taught 75 classes during the year, reaching 777 children and youth. - We completed the remodel and move to a new kitchen in Novato and expanded that program from 3 to 4 days a week, adding a second delivery shift. This site offers additional capacity of up to 50,000 meals annually beyond what we had before which is critical given that we are at capacity in the Santa Rosa and Sebastopol kitchens. - We made significant progress towards realizing the Center for Food, Youth & Community, our new central facility that will support more efficient and long-term scaling of our impact. We ended 2023 with 64% ($13.4 million) of the funding committed; we have submitted for construction permits; and are in the process of selecting our general contractor. - In our Affiliate Program, we welcomed four new Executive Directors and one new program - Snohomish Healing Project. - In our policy work, we helped facilitate a two-day meeting of the Aspen Institute Food & Society Program and the development of a Mass Feeding Plan for County of Marin; advocated for the importance of locally-based food as medicine solutions; and convened a group of state policy leaders to develop a strategy to preference organic food within California's MediCal food benefit. - On the operational front, we made continued progress on building out new technology solutions and workflows to support the organization that we are becoming. This included a redesign of the Client section of our Salesforce database; growing our capacity to manage health care contracts and claims billing; systems to track and manage the volunteer pipeline and volunteer engagement; and beginning work around nutrition risk screening and increasing client support from our two registered dietitian nutritionists. Summary Metrics - The following table summarizes our overall "reach" for the year. 2022- 2023 REACH 2020 2021 2022 2023 Change ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- Direct 3,697 3,996 3,868 4,127 6.7% Clients & Family Members (Meals) 2,211 2,253 2,559 2,419 -5.5% Youth Volunteers 324 325 291 319 9.6% Adult Volunteers 616 562 582 612 5.2% Nutrition Education Class Participants 546 856 436 777 78.2% Digital (Email & Social) 17,000 17,000 16,200 20,745 28.1% Unique Web Visitors 44,000 42,200 -4.1% Press (Millions) 17.3 39.0 23.1 70.7 206.1% Program Metrics Summary - Meal growth slowed from 12% in 2022 to 6.5% in 2023. Our increased focus on the Youth Development Program paid off with a 10% increase in the number of youth involved and a 16% increase in youth hours. Adult volunteer engagement also grew slightly. Overall metrics for the year are as follows: 2022- 2023 2020 2021 2022 2023 Change ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- Clients 1,579 1,609 1,319 1,390 5.4% Meals 183,761 181,215 202,810 215,924 6.5% Youth 324 325 291 319 9.6% Youth Hours Total 11,876 13,908 12,802 14,835 15.9% Garden Youth 119 272 166 172 3.6% Garden Youth Hours 2,858 4,123 3,142 2,635 -16.1% Adult Vol 616 562 582 612 5.2% Adult Hours 17,963 27,891 29,229 31,703 8.5% 2022- 2023 Client Demographics* 2020 2021 2022 2023 Change ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- Female 62.1% 66.8% 66.3% 54.20% -18.3% 60+ 68.0% 57.8% 58.4% 64.00% 9.6% Non-Caucasian 27.3% 46.5% 43.3% 46.50% 7.4% Hispanic 19.7% 35.9% 32.9% 32.30% -1.8% Spanish Speaking 14.3% 31.0% 27.5% 19.50% -29.1% < 200% Poverty 77.1% 84.9% 83.2% 82.30% -1.1% Living Alone 73.3% 79.7% 52.4% 59.30% 13.2% Cancer 30.3% 25.7% 27.5% 30.6% 11.3% Chronic Conditions 48.3%”

“Driving System Change - During 2023, Ceres remained active in regional, state and national coalitions working to build a healthier, more just and more sustainable food system, as well as continuing our work to educate our stakeholders and community about important issues related to building a healthy, just and sustainable future. Key highlights include: White House Conference: In 2023, Cathryn participated in a panel discussion at a regional "Come to the Table" event sponsored by USDA and The Root Cause Coalition as a follow-up to the White House Conference. Coding for Food: As efforts move forward to integrate medically tailored meals and other food interventions into health care, it is vital to have approved codes to document assessment of food needs, referral to food interventions, and the provision of various interventions. Coding is complex and overseen by a number of different entities. Beginning in early 2022, Cathryn has served on a national steering committee that is leading the effort to establish medical codes for food is medicine interventions. We now have funding to support this effort and have partnered with the Gravity Project (https://thegravityproject.net/) which will be leading this effort with our guidance. She and Nutrition Care Manager Kim Madsen will continue to serve on the steering committee to help guide this work. CalAIM Community Supports Benefit: The new medically tailored meal benefit under California's MediCal health system went live in January 2022. Building health care contracting and claims billing capacity continued to be a significant priority for Ceres in 2023 and we were able to scale billing from $94,000 at the end of 2022 to about $580,000 in 2023. California Health Care Foundation CalAIM CBO Consortium: Ceres' CEO was one of eight nonprofit leaders invited to participate in a CBO consortium to provide feedback to Department of Health Care Services on the roll-out of CalAIM. This was a critically important opportunity to shape the implementation of CalAIM in a way that benefits California CBOs, communities, and local sustainable agriculture. This resulted in a presentation directly to DHCS staff in 2022, and a second meeting in early 2023. Prioritizing Organics: It is likely that in 2027 the current Medically Supportive Food & Nutrition "service" will move to a permanent benefit in the state's MediCal system. Instead of individual health plans choosing whether or not to offer this service, it will be required for individuals with certain diagnoses. At that point, the state itself will be "paying for food". Recently, as part of the state's climate strategy, California set a goal to double land in organic production by 2024 (from 10% to 20% of state agriculture). In early 2023, Cathryn convened a group of policy leaders to discuss whether this set the stage for including a preference for organically grown food (with a potential price premium) within the eventual MediCal benefit. This group includes leaders from Health Care without Harm, California Certified Organic Farmers, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation at Harvard Law. Ceres has facilitated five or six meetings of this initial stakeholder group and we have agreed that there is a policy opportunity worth pursuing. In 2024 we will continue to provide coordination and facilitation support for this ongoing effort and expect to begin a coordinated advocacy strategy by the end of this year. Aspen Institute Food is Medicine Research Action Plan: Cathryn was an advisor to the development of this document during the early stages of COVID. In 2023, she co-facilitated a two-day meeting to gather input for a revision to the plan focused specifically on what we are learning in California from the roll-out of the Medically Supportive Food & Nutrition services in MediCal. She continues to advise in this update and will be involved in several meetings in 2024 to roll out the new plan. Kaiser Family Medi”

“Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) - Ceres continued our commitment to ED&I work in 2023 through the leadership of a staff-led DEIB Committee. Along with continued steps to make our services more accessible to Latinx and Spanish-speaking clients, we also moved this work forward at the board and staff level. In 2023, we provided the following trainings via staff meetings and emails: - "EDIB - What Does it Mean?" Staff meeting presentation (2/10/2023) - "Resources for Black History Month" email to staff (2/27/2023) - "Neurodiversity Celebration Week" email to staff (3/23/2023) - "Trans Day of Visibility & Cesar Chavez Day" email to staff (3/30/2023) - "Neurodiversity and Ceres" staff meeting presentation by Billy and G (4/14/2023) - "Mental Health Awareness Month" email to staff (5/22/2023) - "Pride Month" email to staff (6/7/2023) - "Mental Health and Nutrition" staff meeting presentation by Rachel, Billy, G and guest presenter, John (8/11/2023) - "Food and Racial Equity" guest speaker presentation by Agricultural Institute of Marin (10/13/2023) - "National Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month" email to staff (11/10/2023) Emergency Preparedness/Continuity of Operations - Beginning with the 2017 wildfires, Ceres has served as an emergency food provider. As the continued threats from wildfires, power outages and floods in our region have become evident, we have worked to protect Ceres' ability to maintain operations during disasters, and to formalize contracts to support this work. 2023 efforts included: - Under our contract with County of Sonoma, delivered meals to the county-operated shelter in response to the January flood emergency. - Supported the development of a Disaster Feeding Plan for county of Marin; now serving on Disaster Food Workgroup. - Participated in both the Marin County VOAD and the Sonoma County COAD (Volunteer/Community Organizations Active in Disasters), as well as the Emergency Food work groups of both entities. - Convened Ceres Incident Command Team for several meetings, including a tabletop exercise to test new systems put in place for disasters.”