By Tom Spalding, Boulevard Place Food Pantry
If you attend one of the five Catholic parishes that provide much of the time, talent, and treasure supporting Boulevard Place Food Pantry, you’ll soon be seeing something new: a lively, lime-green tote bag designed to help stock our shelves.
Funded by a grant from Glick Philanthropies, these two-handled totes are practical tools—and colorful symbols of generosity—at a time when our community needs them most. The St. Vincent de Paul and Boulevard Place logos are featured prominently, along with the names of our five supporting parishes and a space for other donors who want to contribute nonperishable food.
The Boulevard Place Food Pantry Board’s idea was simple: bring a little consistency to a familiar act of compassion. And what a year for compassion it has been!
In FY 2026, Boulevard Place set records for both households served (21,576) and pounds of food handled (838,045).
Five Parishes, Thousands of Pounds of Generosity
Many sources contribute to the food that passes through our pantry each year. But our five supporting parishes remain especially important. Together, they contributed 79,284 pounds of food in FY 2026, an increase of approximately 27% over the previous year.
| Supporting Parish | Pounds of Food |
|---|---|
| Immaculate Heart of Mary | 23,574 |
| Christ the King | 18,969 |
| St. Luke the Evangelist | 18,873 |
| St Thomas Aquinas | 14,289 |
| St. Joan of Arc | 3,579 |
| Total | 79,284 |
These collections show how individual families’ gifts add up over a year—and why every pound is precious beyond measure. Sometimes folks share surplus items from their kitchen, purchase bulk quantities at Costco, or contribute to a seasonal food drive. However they choose to give, those contributions make a difference.
Where Else Does Our Food Come From?
Boulevard Place also depends on a broad network of food providers.
In FY 2026, USDA food accounted for 143,818 pounds, while St. Vincent de Paul’s Pantry Partners Produce contributed 67,082 pounds. Second Helpings supplied another 22,176 pounds. These partnerships help us maintain the volume and variety of food needed to stock our shelves.
Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana plays a substantial role through both donated food and food we purchase. In FY 2026, we purchased 278,820 pounds from Gleaners—roughly one-third of all the food we handled. Our records also show 136,068 pounds in one Gleaners donation category and another 6,587 pounds recorded separately as donated.
Financial gifts help make these purchases possible, complementing the food collected through parish drives. And many of the volunteers who help distribute that food—adults and schoolchildren alike—come from those same parishes!
Support also comes from farmers, businesses, schools, other congregations, and individual donors. The Broad Ripple Farmers Market contributed 12,760 pounds in FY 2026, while school canned-food drives brought in 2,347 pounds. Contributions from individuals, one-time donors, and unidentified sources added another 23,236 pounds.
Every contribution helps sustain this community effort.
Altogether, Boulevard Place handled nearly 70,000 pounds of food per month, on average, during FY 2026.
A Simple Bag. A Meaningful Difference.
So, back to those lime-green totes!
Distribution will begin before Thanksgiving, but the new bags are meant to supplement—not replace—the parish-specific totes already in use. If you have a familiar parish bag, please keep using it. And yes, if all you have is a large Target bag or a plastic grocery bag, those work just fine, too!
What matters most is what goes inside.
Fill a bag with needed nonperishable food, and return it through a participating parish collection. Repeat that simple act throughout the year, and together we can help keep pace with the growing number of households counting on Boulevard Place Food Pantry.
Whatever the color of the bag, it’s the generosity inside that counts.
