If Central Oregon is typical, about one of every eight of us must rely on food pantries in the region to stave off hunger, at least occasionally. The Central Oregon pantries, in turn, rely on NeighborImpact for a chunk of what they give away, and on local communities for volunteers and financial support.

In fact, without locals, neither the food bank or smaller pantries would be able to operate. That’s all too clear in Prineville, where the food pantry run by St. Vincent de Paul is set to close at the end of the month because it lacks the money needed to keep the doors open. NeighborImpact and others are working to make sure there are no gaps in food distribution in Prineville, and while they expect to be successful, their plans are still a work in progress.

There’s more to food pantries than cans of creamed corn and bags of oatmeal. There are heating bills to be paid, sometimes rent, and many of the other expenses any small business might encounter. General staffing may be done by volunteers, to be sure, but someone, often paid, has to be in charge and do much of the coordination that helps keep them running. Perhaps because food pantries are frequently, but certainly not always, run by churches, it can be difficult to persuade the public that cash, in addition to faith, is needed to keep the doors open.

If you question the need, consider these statistics from the St. Vincent de Paul pantry in Prineville. It’s one of two pantries in a county of about 23,000, and in 2017 it provided food to 9,646 people. Its volunteers gave more than 7,000 hours to the cause that year, and put more than 21,000 miles on their cars to do so. In all, the pantry gave out nearly 223,000 pounds of food in 2017.

Food pantries, both those that appear to be doing well and those, like the one run by St. Vincent de Paul in Prineville, never have too many volunteers or too much money. All of them, and NeighborImpact, which supplies much of what they give away, could use a helping hand, or cash, or both.