Fitzgerald has decades of food bank, pantry experience
By Patty Hastings, Columbian
Social Services, Demographics, Faith
Published: February 27, 2018, 5:54pm
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FISH Westside Food Pantry of Vancouver’s downtown facility. The board of FISH has hired the Clark County Food Bank’s James Fitzgerald to be the nonprofit’s first paid, professional executive director. Alisha Jucevic/The Columbian
James Fitzgerald will become FISH Westside Food Pantry of Vancouver’s first paid, professional executive director.
“Probably nobody has more food bank and food pantry experience in Clark County than James,” said Katlin Smith, FISH’s board president. “We’re very excited about having the support staff.”
In 1997, Fitzgerald started working at the local Salvation Army, which operated the Stop Hunger Warehouse. In 2013, it branched off, becoming an independent nonprofit, the Clark County Food Bank, where Fitzgerald became director of operations. The food bank supplies food to dozens of local pantries, including FISH.
Fitzgerald starts March 12 at FISH and will receive an annual salary of $67,000. He was one of 66 applicants for the job.
“I am sad to leave my home of many years here at the Clark County Food Bank,” Fitzgerald said.
He said he’s watched FISH grow and thought the job opening was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. While he’s always worked behind the scenes on the distribution side, he’s interested in having more interactions with clients in his new role. FISH is one of the largest pantries in Clark County and serves about 1,600 families monthly — quite a change from its humble beginnings in 1969, distributing food to families out of a garage. FISH focuses on eliminating hunger on the city’s west side.
Smith said the board saw a need for professional staff after FISH moved to its current 6,000-square-foot space downtown in 2015 and started serving more people and working with more volunteers. Having paid and volunteer staff became part of the nonprofit’s strategic plan. So, the next year the board hired Wendy Bukoski as a part-time operations director, its first paid employee; she now works full time. Funding for staff comes from private donors, Smith said.
There are more than 140 regular volunteers at FISH who put in 22,000 hours of work last year, about the equivalent of nine full-time employees.
Expanding hours is the board’s biggest goal. FISH is currently open 10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on weekdays, a time frame that’s inconvenient for many working families. Smith said they hope to open one evening every week and also on Saturdays.
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