Community Kitchen Pittsburgh

“Prior to the form 990 being filed, the finance committee reviews the form. The finance committee will in turn provide the form to the full board for board member approval.”

“Periodic reviews are performed.”

“The board reviewed compensation studies from both charity navigator and bridgespan consulting; considered the budget; and discussed the recommendation in a closed door session”

“Documents are available upon request during business hours.”

“Community kitchen pittsburgh is a nonprofit food service company. Because poverty, food insecurity and employment are entwined issues, we work across these focus areas, engaging in the following activities: "culinary based workforce training: we offer a 12 week culinary based training program targeting chronically unemployed, low-income individuals with barriers to employment. Our clients are transitioning from incarceration, homelessness, addiction and other barriers. We provide applied training in our commissary kitchen based on an established, proven curriculum, along with remedial math, cognitive behavioral therapy, and employability skills. We work with clients on job search and placement, and follow them for 12 months post-placement to ensure retention. "food services: we utilize tens of thousands of pounds of short-shelf-life fresh product every month that otherwise would be thrown away, and use that to prepare nutritious food for struggling individuals and families through congregate feeding sites, shelters, drop-in centers, meals on wheels, and through other nonprofits who feed low-income and food-insecure individuals. We also provide freshly prepared daily meal services to schools and nonprofit managed care providers that are interested in healthy scratch foods for their students and patients as part of an overall holistic approach to both education and health. All of the meals we prepare become part of our culinary curriculum, with clients working under the direction of chef trainers to learn culinary concepts in the process of preparing meals. "food education: we provide in-classroom and community-based education for youth and families around topics like understanding nutrition labels, choosing healthy options, cooking on a budget, cooking safely for younger siblings, and advocating for better food in their schools and neighborhood stores. "food access: in partnership with our community partners, we work to ensure our eligible consumers are enrolled in snap and accessing cacfp feeding sites, and that our school partners are utilizing nslp, free breakfast programs, and fresh fruit initiatives available to them so that their low-income students have daily access to nutritious food. Community kitchen pittsburgh is especially committed to increasing the number of afterschool and summer feeding meal sites for food-insecure children. We are a cacfp sponsor agency and in partnership with other cacfp sponsors, we identify host sites where children come for programming or activities, and deliver freshly prepared healthy meals, provide required site monitoring, and process all the required paperwork to ease the burden on the host agencies who often do not have the internal capacity to manage a feeding program.”

“Workforce development:culinary training program we operate two workforce programs that are integrated into several social enterprise food service business lines for on-the-job training and experience. We cover about 50% of our budget through earned revenue from our social enterprises, and the rest comes from charitable donations and goverment workforce training contracts. We provide culinary training to hardto-serve, chronically unemployed adults. Our culinary training program is a 12-week full-time program that prepares adults for work in the food service industry. Our clients come to us experiencing homelessness, incarceration, addiction, mental illness, poverty, trauma, lack of education (including a percentage without a ged or hs diploma), and usually a combination of two or more of these major barriers to employment. We also provide transitional employment to adults with culinary experience who are serving the last 3 to 4 months of a jail/prison sentence and dealing with reentry challenges. We provide temporary employment to bridge their release, assist with transitional difficulties (often this includes securing approved housing postrelease), and help them obtain permanent employment. Community kitchen pittsburgh is a key partner in a community-focused career pathway system for ex-offenders and other chronically un/under-employed individuals. We integrate best practices and evidence-based programming models from around the country beginning with recruiting an individual (client), identifying and supporting their needs, following their specific training and placement, supporting them in retention and assisting them with wage progression. We also have an education and outreach department working in schools and in community settings providing cooking demonstrations, educational programming, and promotional events highlighting our social enterprises and training programs, and engaging chefs and other industry people in our mission. The impact of this programming is consistently rated very high by teachers, administrators, parents and students. We interact with around 800 students per month. Our annual event, project lunch tray, matches professional chefs with middle school students to reinvent school lunch in an annual cooking competition. Our education work is increasingly focused on working with at-risk populations, such as women transitioning from homelessness, young adults aging out of foster care, teen mothers, and adjudicated youth. In keeping with our interest in facilitating self-reliance, we provide workshops to homeless and adjudicated youth centered around shopping and cooking healthy on a budget to help these populations transition to independence.”