Tartu Food Bank in financial dire straits
Tartu Food Bank is facing financial hardship as voluntary funding from local governments has declined and no longer covers its fixed costs.
Tartu Food Bank serves the entire Tartu County region. According to Kerttu Olõkainen, project manager at the Estonian Food Bank, the system has long relied on support from local governments to cover operating expenses at the county level.
However, Tartu Food Bank is now struggling to cover its rent and utility bills this year and next, Olõkainen said: "These difficulties have arisen because everything has gotten more expensive and because local governments in Tartu County are no longer supporting us at the same level as before."
As a result, the food bank has reached out to every municipality in Tartu County for financial assistance. For example, the city of Tartu made an exceptional, one-time allocation of €9,500 from its reserve fund this year to help cover the food bank's facility costs for the second half of the year.
For 2025, the food bank has requested an additional €27,000 from the city to help cover rent and utilities. But that request puts the city in a difficult position, said Deputy Mayor Reno Laidre: "Tartu accounts for 39 percent of service volume in the region, but we're being asked to cover 61 percent of the shortfall. That's quite a significant gap and it's going to be difficult to justify such a decision, even if it might be the right thing to do."
Olõkainen said the request was made in proportion to population size and without the city's support, it will be difficult to continue operating at the current location.
"Since April of last year, the number of people receiving food aid in Tartu has decreased. That drop is larger than the decline in the number of recipients of subsistence benefits. When the number of people in need goes down, our fixed costs stay the same, but our funding from the ministry decreases," Olõkainen explained.
Laidre added that, in fact, the city is under no obligation to cover the local food bank's fixed costs. This was also confirmed in writing by Aire Johanson, food aid adviser at the Ministry of Social Affairs.
The city expects the food bank's operations to be more sustainable. "That food parcel they distribute — nearly 18 kilograms, if I'm not mistaken — they're being paid too little for it. If Tartu Food Bank received higher compensation from the Ministry of Social Affairs for each large batch of food, they'd be in a much better position," Laidre said.
Both Olõkainen and Johanson noted that the situation can't be changed on short notice. The food bank currently has a procurement contract with the ministry for rescuing and distributing food based on statistics from the first half of 2024 regarding the number of aid recipients. In the second quarter of this year, the ministry raised its compensation from three kilograms to five kilograms per person per distribution. Starting in the third quarter, it began paying for seven kilograms per person per distribution.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski, Mait Ots
