By Saturday, the hundreds of thousands of Fresno area families using SNAP or CalFresh won’t be able to access the money that supplies food for their pantries.

And, even an 11th hour refunding by  the federal government won’t be in time to get the program funded. Thus Fresno nonprofits are gearing for a deluge of demand.

Zack Darrah, CEO of the Poverello House, says they’re expecting twice the 1,000 people they would normally serve at their restaurant a day.

“We’re talking about making our dining area larger, putting more outdoor dining, making sure that we have enough food ordered just in case,” Darrah said. “We’re prepared to see a much higher volume of people coming in.”

The five counties served by the Central California Food Bank use about $2.4 million of benefits, said Kym Dildine, co-CEO of the nonprofit. With the San Joaquin Valley’s harvest winding down, fresh food for the food bank is also thinning, Dildine said.

Federal funding has shrunk for nonprofits even outside of the shutdown, but what Dildine said they need the most is volunteers to help feed the deluge of people they anticipate.

“For every one meal that food banks and our member partners like the Poverello House provide, or the Fresno Mission provide, SNAP provides nine,” Dildine said. “The gap is just enormous in what we’re facing. We’re bracing for what we anticipate to be a really rough November.”

Federal Government Sitting on Billion-Dollar Emergency Fund: Dildine

A best-case scenario still means a delay of food stamps, said Amina Flores-Becker, deputy County Administrative Officer with Fresno County. The county has begun communicating with local food banks to coordinate to the anticipated need.

“There’s no influx of other resources that are coming in, but there’s going to be an influx of need,” Flores-Becker said.

Even if lawmakers vote on a budget and President Donald Trump signs off on it between now and Saturday, the federal government told counties not to send October data.

“They don’t even know who should be getting SNAP benefits in November,” Dildine said.

The federal government has an emergency fund of between $3 billion and $6 billion, she said. Nationwide, about $8 billion goes to SNAP each month so it won’t cover everything, but regardless, the administration told partners over the weekend they will not release that money.

A $80 million statewide fund in the most recent budget opens up some avenues to meet the rush, Dildine said. Normally, they would have to wait two or three weeks to get reimbursed, but the state modified its rules so nonprofits can get 100% cash advances on anticipated expenditures.

Nonprofits Dealing With Federal Cuts

Dildine also expects a deluge from the 5,000 federal workers in the area who could be accessing food needs for the first time.

The food bank will be doing one-off distributions in the coming days. They started with Lemoore Naval Air Base and are now working with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, and the IRS to do events for their employees at their offices.

The food bank partners heavily with growers, supplementing food orders with fresh produce from Central Valley farms. With harvest winding down, so do farm goods donated to the bank, Dildine said.

Nonprofits are also dealing with federal funding cuts. While a court blocked grant cuts from the Office of Business Management, that didn’t stop the federal government from ordering a review on those grants.

“Functionally, when your boss says ‘everything needs to be reviewed,’ everything stops to be reviewed,” Dildine said.

Of 32 truckloads of food ordered from the federal government earlier this year, 16 were canceled, primarily animal protein and dairy, she said. That didn’t cost the food bank anything, but that meant searching to fill the gap.

The Poverello House would normally receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but this year, after receiving the award letter they’ve gotten for a decade, that money was canceled, Darrah said.

“That right there is huge, huge, cut,” Darrah said.

Volunteers Needed: Dildine

Matthew, Dildine, CEO of the Fresno Mission, said people begin lining up at their free grocery store — the First Fruits Market — at 6 p.m. the night before to get groceries at 8:30 the next morning.

He said most are housed families simply needing food.

“People will literally wait outside for 14 hours just to get access to the food in the morning,” Matt Dildine said.

Nonprofits are putting out the call for donations and people can go to the Poverello House website, the Central California Food Bank, or the Fresno Mission to give. On top of resource donations, organizations also need volunteers.

Kym Dildine said the food bank can pivot quickly in an emergency, but an extended shutdown could disrupt getting food out.

“We really do well in short-term emergency situations, but if this continues on the longer it goes, the harder it is to manage,” she said.