Service Leader Creates Nonprofit to End Hunger in Her Florida Community

Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Karen Crumley. Read her story, and nominate an outstanding volunteer or family as a Daily Point of Light.  

After Karen Crumley discovered that students and families had challenges reaching food banks on weekends and after work hours, she knew she wanted to be a part of finding a solution for hunger relief in Plant City, Florida. That solution became Feeding PlantCity, a nonprofit dedicated to ending food poverty in the Plant City community. 

Crumley not only leads this volunteer-led nonprofit as the CEO, but she also volunteers her time to recruit hundreds of volunteers to paint the homes of blind homeowners with The Kind Helping the Blind, hurricane disaster relief projects and has even donated over five gallons of blood as a donor.  

What inspires you to volunteer?  

As the Plant City Lions Club’s Service Chairperson for local and global projects, and a Lion advisor for local high school young lion clubs (Leos) for service to the community. I encouraged students to volunteer and earn points towards our Hillsborough County Schools Bright Futures scholarships program for community service.  

I’ve been volunteering almost all my life because my parents were always getting involved in the community. I have volunteered on all types of projects — everything from conservation to hunger to even adopting a highway. Feeding PlantCity started because I do a lot of things with hurricane and hunger relief. In one of my volunteer meetings with The Young Lions Club, we were talking about the hunger relief programs that I was getting ready to start. They were saying, well, I would like to volunteer on that too.

Our families are having difficulty with getting food resources when both parents work and the food banks aren’t always open in the evenings or on the weekends. I started thinking that this is something that needs to be solved if people can’t get to food. The more I talked to the volunteers around me, I realized that it’s a noble cause that is in desperate need of a solution. In April of 2020, I filed in the state of Florida for my nonprofit status. We were 100% volunteers with no paid staff, and everybody that was associated with the organization was helping fill community needs.  

Tell us about your volunteer roles with Feeding PlantCity. 

When we first started out with Feeding PlantCity, I was working with Feeding America when they had a program called Farmers to Families in July of 2020. They had all these USDA food boxes of fruits and vegetables and they contacted a lot of Florida businesses, organizations and nonprofits to distribute them because there are thousands of these boxes nationwide. They contacted the Lions Club because we’re a large service organization and I also went ahead and said yes. We gave out around 100 boxes of food and also about 120 gallons of milk, sometimes in a day. All of my family got involved — my sons, my granddaughters and my niece. Everybody wanted to help and volunteer to get out these food products.  

I wanted the distribution to be on Saturdays to help the working families. I ended up partnering with organizations like Generations Renewed and Feeding Tampa Bay to do mobile food pantries where we pick four different locations in the rural areas around Plant City, in the northeast and southwest quadrants, to try to reach the lowest income people in need. We give out over 300,000 pounds of food each year on all these mobile food pantries. There are no restrictions; just show up and you get food. You get to choose what you want as you go around pallets in a big circle. 

What’s been the most rewarding part of your work? 

I get kind of choked up every time I talk about this. Every time we do these projects, it amazes me. I have so many young people that want to get involved and want to do service committee work. It just enriches my soul. It’s God’s work and it’s just amazing to see the new generations come through, help and understand the joy that you get in this volunteerism. I just had a granddaughter that ended up going to Nicaragua on a trip and helping serve in those countries, and she said it just enriched her soul so much and that her work was like grandma’s.  

What have you learned through your experiences as a volunteer?  

I think the learning thing is actually in my signature every time I send emails out to people. Everyone has the power to be kind. And if you think about it, and you foster that, you can make a positive difference in 

the United States. If we can get more and more kind-hearted people to band together to do free community service, to help the other person — that’s a legacy that I would like to add. 

Do you have any advice for people who want to start volunteering?  

Try to find service organizations that you know. There are women’s clubs, Lions Clubs, and rotaries and a lot of stuff around that are civic-oriented for the community. My heart is with the food banks. I can’t stand to see families with children or seniors go without food, and there are people actually literally starving. I delivered it to one elderly woman’s home and she goes, “Oh, I’m thanking God, because it’s been three days since I’ve had any food.” Oh my gosh, I’m just crying leaving there thinking that I made a difference in that person’s life.  She didn’t have any relatives. She didn’t have anybody to lean on. 

Do you have a favorite memory with Feeding PlantCity? 

Probably the one with little children when I delivered some food that had desserts and stuff in it. This family was pretty under resourced and when I delivered the food — it was just the main basic things — I included a bunch of desserts. There were some cookies in there, brownies and a cake. The little girls looked at it and one of the girls looked at me and she asked, is it Christmas? The mother responded that it’s only at Christmas time when we can afford sweets to give to the children. 

Tell us about future partnerships, programs or events that you are excited about.  

We’d love to try and partner with Amazon Prime to get more meat for these food pantries and maybe even our Publix store too. I want to partner with corporations like that so they can donate the meat and stuff needed because it seems like all of these donations that we get from local charities are usually fruits and vegetables or dry goods. So that’s my goal for the future. 

Do you want to make a difference in your community like Karen? Find local volunteer opportunities.