Community Need
Food insecurity, disaster risk, rural and tribal needs, transportation barriers, and distance from existing distribution facilities.
Regional Hubs
Bringing shared food infrastructure closer to Oregon communities.
A regional hub can be a warehouse, food bank, church facility, farm location, community center, mobile refrigeration unit, shared vehicle, or coordinated network of partner sites.
Practical regional capacity
What a regional hub can do.
- Receive truckload, pallet-sized, and other large food donations.
- Inspect, sort, organize, and store donated food.
- Maintain refrigerated, frozen, and shelf-stable storage.
- Divide large donations into quantities appropriate for local organizations.
- Prepare partner orders and coordinate pickup or delivery schedules.
- Operate shared transportation and food-rescue routes.
- Maintain emergency food, water, and supply inventories.
- Support mobile distributions and home-delivery programs.
- Share equipment and coordinate cooperative purchasing.
Selecting locations
Hubs are shaped by regional need.
UFNOR will consider practical and equitable factors when selecting hub locations and hosts.
Operational Capacity
Refrigeration, freezer, warehouse and loading capacity, qualified staff and volunteers, insurance, safety, and accessibility.
Regional Benefit
Proximity to farms and donors, highways and routes, financial sustainability, and the ability to serve multiple organizations.
Local independence
A hub coordinates resources—it does not control participants.
Regional hubs will not appoint partner boards, supervise partner staff, control partner finances, take ownership of partner property or records, require UFNOR branding, or dictate programs unrelated to UFNOR resources.
Hub arrangements will be documented through written agreements covering food safety, ownership, insurance, staffing, reporting, emergency authority, termination, and the disposition of food and equipment.