Philomath Community Services has ended its gleaners program after a three-month pause failed to produce new volunteer leadership. In the meantime, former members are among those organizing a new group to take its place.
The new nonprofit, Philomath Open Arms Gleaners, hoped to begin distributing food Nov. 7 but has not yet found a location.
PCS officials say its program ended because no participants came forward to lead it. Linn Benton Food Share, which oversees gleaning groups in the two counties, said it received a letter from the PCS board president stating that the board had decided to discontinue the program.
“The PCS board did not vote to end the Gleaners program,” said Jodi Russell, PCS board president. “The program depended on volunteer leadership to coordinate its day-to-day operations. When those leadership positions became vacant, the program was placed on a three-month pause to allow time for new volunteers to step forward.”
“Unfortunately, no one came forward to assume those responsibilities,” she added. “The board acknowledged that without the necessary volunteer leadership, the program could not continue.”
Pause that didn’t end
The program, which served about 80 enrolled households, went on hiatus after its final distributions May 29 and 30, when its co-coordinators stepped down. At the time, PCS said it hoped to reorganize the group in September if new leadership emerged from within its membership.
PCS Executive Director Sharon Thornberry said in an Oct. 27 interview that the former coordinators stayed in touch with participants during the pause. As the three months came to an end, they asked whether anyone was willing to take on leadership.
No one was, she said, adding that a planned September reorganization meeting did not take place because no one was interested in attending.
“I’ve not gotten one single call from anybody who was in the group saying, ‘What happened? Why is this happening?'” Thornberry said. “Well, it means there was no real interest.”
Thornberry stressed that the outcome was not PCS’s choice.
“This was not a board decision. The board did not participate or weigh in on this decision,” Thornberry said. “It was decided by the participants themselves, basically by noncommitment.”
Ryan McCambridge, program director for Linn Benton Food Share, said Thornberry and one of the program’s former coordinators told Food Share in August that no one was stepping up to take over. When Food Share emailed the PCS board asking for a written statement on whether it would continue the program, the board responded that it would not, he said.
“The PCS board and its officers had sole authority to end the program,” McCambridge said. He added that Food Share “continuously offered support for the gleaning group to continue within PCS.”
“Many families in Philomath raised their children while members of the gleaners,” he said. “It is unfortunate that it closed.”
A unique structure
Food Share currently partners with 13 gleaning organizations. Each is its own nonprofit with its own bylaws, and members vote on how the group is structured and run, McCambridge said.
The Philomath group was different. It operated in the neighborhood of three decades as a program of PCS under the organization’s nonprofit status. McCambridge said it was the only gleaning group he is aware of in the state that operated as a program of another organization.
“The PCS gleaning program was already an outlier in its composition, since the board structure was not voted on by the gleaning group members, but was organized by the standards set by Philomath Community Services,” he said. “So, in a very significant way, the PCS gleaning program was already being ‘led’ by nonmembers in their roles as the PCS board.”
He added that “the gleaning program certainly benefitted from being part of PCS, particularly in the use of the PCS building.”
Thornberry described the program as participant-led under PCS’s nonprofit umbrella.
“We housed it — I don’t even want to call it an umbrella,” she said. “It was our program, a program under our 501(c)(3).”
She added that the Food Share model “requires that it be participant-led.”
McCambridge said Food Share “does not mandate the structure of gleaning groups.” It does, however, see self-determination as central to gleaning, which he said gives low-income participants “the chance to grow and govern themselves.”
Asked whether PCS could have kept the program going with staff coordinating it, McCambridge said Food Share was not aware of any such effort. He added that staff leadership “does change the dynamic of what a gleaning group is at its core — low-income participants helping one another, guiding their own efforts and feeling agency in their lives while helping the community.”
Strains on program
McCambridge said Food Share met with members before the hiatus, when “some concerns” were raised. He described “a spiraling effect” as previously active members left the group, leaving fewer people to handle day-to-day operations, “which the membership and adoptees felt.”
McCambridge added, “Also of concern, as PCS has shared, the loss of portions of the parking lot accessing the PCS building led to some logistical stress.”
Asked about those issues, Russell said the primary challenge was “the lack of volunteers willing to take on leadership responsibilities.”
The demands on members also came up.
Thornberry said that if a household was able-bodied, someone in it had to work eight hours a month. “A lot of people simply can’t do that, or they don’t have the gas to drive,” she said.
McCambridge said each gleaning group in the Food Share network votes on its own volunteer-hour requirement, which ranges from two to eight hours a month. Program documents describe the hours as a condition of membership. The PCS gleaners application packet, updated in March 2025, states, “As a gleaner you will need to fulfill eight hours per month to keep your membership.” Food Share’s 2026 manual states that gleaning households “can be suspended or terminated for not putting in required volunteer hours.”
McCambridge said households that fall short typically receive written notice and a corrective plan, a process that usually lasts months.
“During the process households still receive food,” he said. Households still delinquent at the end are terminated by the group.
“Adoptee” households, in which no adult is able to do the work, are not required to volunteer.
Where the food went
As active membership declined, McCambridge said, the gleaners could no longer cover all the grocery store and farm pickups they had built up, and some were reassigned to other Food Share partners, including South Corvallis Food Bank. During the hiatus, remaining pickups were temporarily divided among groups that took in displaced gleaning households. Some went to Nancy’s Food Pantry at PCS.
Thornberry said the change did lead to some food being lost to the Philomath area. The pantry now picks up donations at the Dollar General in Philomath two to three times a week and at the Safeway on 53rd Street in Corvallis on Tuesdays.
Thornberry said Food Share readily agreed to the Dollar General pickup without objection but that securing Safeway took longer.
“I had to make a very strident argument to get us the Safeway store,” she said.
From Safeway, the pantry receives bread, produce, meat and sometimes nonperishable items.
Former gleaner households can use Nancy’s Food Pantry twice a month and pick up bread and produce whenever the pantry is open, Thornberry said. McCambridge said the number of people seeking help from the pantry has “increased substantially” since the gleaners went on hiatus.
Russell said PCS continues to receive requests from local farms for gleaning opportunities and reimburses volunteers for mileage when they participate. The two grants designated for the gleaners were fully used before the program ended, she said, and equipment at PCS was shared among programs and not designated exclusively for the gleaners.
PCS plans to use the building space differently. It will expand food pantry storage and add an adult clothing closet as part of June’s Kids Kloset.
A new group forms
Philomath Open Arms Gleaners was incorporated with the Oregon Secretary of State on Sept. 18 as a public-benefit nonprofit with members. State records list Patricia Nobles as president, Valarie Goodness as secretary and Ann Morgan as treasurer.
Nobles joined the PCS gleaners in 2018 and served as program coordinator from October 2020 through the end of 2024. She later became coordinator and a board member of Lebanon Gleaners.
Nobles said the new group’s origins trace to a Food Share monthly leadership meeting. There, she said, gleaning coordinators were told the PCS gleaners “would be shutting down in June while the organization assessed member interest in continuing the program.”
Many members she spoke with understood that to mean the program was ending, she said.
When Lebanon Gleaners was later invited to a glean in Philomath, Nobles said, she saw several former members. Conversation turned to the future of gleaning in Philomath, and members said they wanted a local group they could join without traveling long distances.
“Rather than let the opportunity pass, we quickly began working on the necessary filings, organizational logistics, and contacting other interested individuals,” she said.
Nobles said the decision to organize independently “was made respectfully, with no intention of creating conflict or disregarding the work that PCS had done for the community.”
More than 50 households have committed to joining, mostly through word of mouth, she said. An established gleaning group in the Food Share network has agreed to sponsor the new group while it seeks federal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
McCambridge confirmed the group has made preliminary inquiries about becoming a Food Share partner agency. If it does, he said, Food Share will assess store pickups for the group “based on group size, need and capacity.”
“LBFS believes there is need and enthusiasm for a gleaning group to exist in Philomath,” he said.
Thornberry and Russell said they were not aware of the new organization, and Russell said the board, as of early this week, has had no contact with its representatives.
“PCS remains committed to supporting efforts that benefit individuals and families in our community,” Russell said.
The new group’s immediate obstacle is finding a place to operate. Nobles said it has contacted several Philomath organizations but has no commitment yet.
“We are asking our community to help us turn this vision into a reality by donating the use of an available building, room, covered area, or other suitable space where we can safely receive, organize and distribute food,” she said.
Even temporary space would help the group get started, she added.
Anyone who can offer space or wants more information about Philomath Open Arms Gleaners can contact Nobles at 541-829-3980 or nobles.p1021@gmail.com.
