AEP Foundation gives $1M to Meal-on-Wheels

The agency that operates the local Meals-on-Wheels program is set to receive a $1 million donation, the largest single gift in its more than 100-year history.

“It’s rather transformational,” Check Gehring, LifeCare Alliance president and CEO, said Wednesday of the contribution from the American Electric Power Foundation. “And it comes at a unique time.”

LifeCare, like many other senior-serving organizations around the country, has lost millions in traditional government funding since the Great Recession. But instead of scaling back, it continues to grow, taking on clients and adding to its service area and refusing to put anyone in need of food on a waiting list.

“We’ve made most of it up in fundraising and social enterprise,” Gehring said. “We’ve got to take care of ourselves.”

LifeCare supporters, from individual donors to corporate contributors such as AEP, seem pretty good about rallying when things look dicey. Gehring saw an uptick that seemed to start earlier this year after Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s budget chief, mentioned Meals-on-Wheels as he spoke broadly about cutting the federal block-grant program, which Mulvaney said funds programs that are “not showing any results.”

Mulvaney probably didn’t intend to attack the popular program that delivers meals to older adults and ill people who aren’t able to provide or prepare food for themselves. But some people weren’t sure.

“He made his comment on a Thursday at 6 at night,” Gehring said. By Saturday morning, “four people came to our Harmon Road location and knocked on the door. They had heard and they wanted to sign up and help us.”

The agency also has received donations in the budget chief’s name. “We actually sent some thank-you letters to Mick Mulvaney,” Gehring said.

LifeCare was the second agency in the nation to start delivering Meals-onWheels almost 45 years ago, and it now runs the largest such program in the Midwest.

This year, LifeCare took over routes that local programs in Marion County could no longer afford, bringing the number of counties served with meals to five. The majority of the more than 5,000 meals delivered every day — about 4,200 — go to the elderly and ill in Franklin County.

The money from AEP will flow to LifeCare during the next four years and will be used to support the organization’s health and nutrition programs. It will also be used to buy a new delivery van.

Dale Heydlauff, president of the AEP Foundation, said the utility company is proud to help.

“Nearly 100 employees volunteer their lunch hours to the Meals-on-Wheels program as part of our mission to power communities and improve lives,” he said.