Making sure older New Yorkers have meals on the holidays – and always

On Thanksgiving, aided by some 6,000 volunteers, the nonprofit Citymeals on Wheels will begin delivering the first of 325,000 holiday-season meals to New York City seniors. And that's just a portion of the roughly 2.1 million meals the charity, founded in 1981, distributes annually to its 22,000 recipients age 60 or older—400 of whom are over 100! 

This is all according to Beth Shapiro, the group's leader since 2011. (Her title changed last year from executive director to CEO.) Shapiro spoke with New York Nonprofit Media about how the holiday meals are put together, research and programming that Citymeals is doing with CUNY to eliminate hunger among older New Yorkers by 2040, how the nonprofit builds social connection into its meal delivery – and what a typical day for her is like. 

Editor’s note: This interview occurred hours before the presidential election. Federal funding and mandates mentioned here may disappear or change under the forthcoming second Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Beth, thanks so much for talking today. I usually begin by asking what you'd tell me if we met at a party and you told me you were the head of Citymeals and I said, "What's that?" But so many New Yorkers have heard of Citymeals that I'll have to pretend I'm from Europe visiting New York City to ask that question.

I'd say that Citymeals provides food for homebound older adults in all five boroughs, making sure they get a meal every day. And because you just said you were from Europe, I'd add that the idea of meals on wheels started in Britain during The Blitz of WWII when older people could not get out of their homes, so people were bringing them food. We're serving four decades of people, whom I meet regularly when I go out on deliveries.

As CEO, how often do you manage to do that?

Every couple of months. It's really what grounds me. Like any leader of a large nonprofit, my job is stressful and it really helps to connect with these people who built this city for us. That feeds me. I had both my knees replaced at different times in the past 14 months and when I came back, our COO said to me, "You're not so connected." And she was right. And she said, "Go on a delivery," and I said, "Fine!" So I'm walking with a cane and delivering meals right in the area where our office is in Murray Hill and chatting with a recipient, and when I came back, our COO said, "Look at your face – you're totally back." And that's how I felt. Doing deliveries is the best part of my job. Also, my being able to talk about the people I meet when I do them helps me sell what we do to donors large and small. Of our recipients over age 100, I've met a few. They're the reason we exist.

So what are the meals exactly?

There is actually a federally funded and mandated program that gets elders one meal per weekday, so we focus on getting them meals on weekends, holidays and during emergencies. Our founder, [the late restaurant critic] Gael Greene, read in The New York Times in 1981 that many older people were going four days without food, so she raised $35,000 and called the city to say that they'd deliver food on weekends. And since then, we've delivered 70 million meals with privately raised funds.

Our meals meet the Older Americans Act mandate that they include three ounces of protein, three ounces of a vegetable and a starch component – so it might be chicken, green beans and brown rice – as well as calcium, which comes in the form of fruit, juice, milk, bread or butter. They're tasty meals. We partner with 30 providers all around the city and work from our distribution center in the Bronx. We offer kosher, halal, vegetarian, Chinese, Korean. We try very hard to make our meals as diverse as the city, and much of that is neighborhood-driven.

What's a typical day like for you from top to bottom?

I'm up at 5:35am and I do a 6 a.m. online yoga, including meditation, with four other women. After that, I like to get to work early to set my day, and I'll have green tea, egg whites and avocado when I get there. Then the day is interaction with my board, with donors, internal meetings. In the last six months, I've been focused a lot around communicating a goal based on research that we did last year with CUNY's Urban Food Policy Institute.

What's the research?

Even before COVID, we knew that hunger was an issue among older New Yorkers, so we engaged CUNY to research it. The results were startling. We spoke primarily to people getting home-delivered meals like ours or going to older adult centers. And almost half of the people we spoke with, even though they were getting meals, reported food insecurity, which is defined as limited or uncertain access to adequate food. They said they sometimes or often worry that food would run out before they had money to buy more. And another startling finding was that 65% of the people we spoke with are living on $15,000 a year or less—in this very expensive city.

So they are getting meals delivered at home or at a senior center, but maybe not more, or not much more, than that?

Yes, they're having to choose between buying food and paying for air conditioning or medicine or rent. Their physical ability to access food is also hindered. The closest market may be only two blocks away but they can't carry the stuff back. So out of this research we've set a very big goal to end hunger among older New Yorkers by 2040. So I have to build the time in the day to focus on that, including the programs we're piloting now, such as a box we're delivering now to almost 1,000 people a month with a month's worth of breakfast foods in it – such as a frozen egg component, cereal, oatmeal and milk, including non-dairy milk – plus seven pounds of produce. Our goal for this fiscal year is to get to 3,000 people across all five boroughs. And as we introduce this pilot, we're asking people what they're using in the box so we can tweak and expand it. 

We also have a pilot dealing with social isolation. In 2005, we launched the Friendly Visiting program in which a volunteer visits a recipient on a weekly basis. During COVID, we switched to calls. But now we're switching that up to bring a group of older adults together with a facilitator, either a conference call or a Zoom for those who can do that. It's a two- or three-month program on a particular topic like a book club or your favorite recipes. So now you're not only connecting one-on-one with a volunteer but also 10 or so other older adults that you may wish to continue to connect with outside the pilot. The goal is to reduce our clients' sense of isolation this fiscal year by 60 percent, to hear enough people say, "I'm not feeling as lonely because I have people to talk to."

That's really cool. So just to finish up your typical day...

Typically I go home at six if I don't have a work meeting or dinner, such as with the board. When I'm home, I'm working hard to put my phone down during dinner. My husband would appreciate that. But I do pick it up after dinner. Either I cook or we order in. Then I do a little bit of work, like answering the outstanding emails of the day. Then we chill with some TV. I just started the latest season of The Great British Bake Off. Then I try to watch the 10 p.m. news and go to sleep by 10:30. 

So how will your holiday meal services differ from non-holiday?

The holidays are a big deal for us – we were founded at this time of year. We try to recognize how integral holidays were in the lives of our recipients, many of whom have outlived friends, family – even their own children. It can be a lonely time for people, so we really feel we need to step it up. This year, the 325,000 meals we deliver between Thanksgiving and New Year's will be a significant increase from prior holiday seasons, which is partly because of those monthly breakfast boxes. This year, actually, Christmas and Hanukkah almost overlap, so we do a "Seasons Greetings" card. We get tens of thousands of handmade cards from kids that we send out with meals all the time. And even though our recipients observe different holidays culturally, from Kwanzaa to the Lunar New Year, we do a festive meal for everyone on Thanksgiving and Christmas – turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green beans and a slice of apple or pumpkin pie. We couldn't do all this without our 6,000 volunteers.

What has been your career trajectory that brought you to helm Citymeals?

I started my career in marketing and advertising in the for-profit world for 20 years, then came to Citymeals as director of marketing and communications in 2006. I was compelled to go into nonprofit because I was looking for more meaning in what I was doing and wanted to leverage my skills for something that I felt good about every day. I also thought it would be… "easier" is not the right word. And it's certainly not. We run like a business. But as stressful and complicated as it can be, I can leave every day and feel great knowing that I'm helping bring food to older people who built this city for us.

How did you become CEO?

I was the associate executive director for a year, and then Marcia Stein, our founding executive director, announced her retirement and recommended me for the job. So I threw my hat in while our board did a full search. I stuck with it and got the job. 

How has Citymeals most changed since you took the lead in 2011?

We've grown, including our staff, as the need for us has grown, and continues to. The scale of what we do, and the deeper focus on emergency food. I thought we would never do as much as we did during Hurricane Sandy, but then COVID came. I think we did 64,000 emergency meals during Sandy and 4 million during COVID. But before COVID, thankfully, we'd gone from renting our space in Williamsburg to buying property in the Bronx and creating a distribution center that's twice the size of Williamsburg. We thought we'd never fill it. And then we ordered a year's worth of food in early COVID and actually needed additional space. So we doubled our team and quadrupled what we were doing there. It was very challenging and impressive and great learning came from it. It opened the door for us to realize we needed to understand the depths of hunger in older people, which led to our research.

What have you learned throughout your career that most serves you now in this very high-responsibility role?

I'm strong at building relationships and partnerships, partly because I understand that they are two-way streets, and we need to understand – as people and as organizations – what benefits we bring to any kind of relationship, and we need to be clear about that. I have an empathetic view and understand that no one is as strong alone as they are with other people.

So you mean you have an ability to see what another party wants? 

I understand that I need to see it – I need to know. I think I read people well and understand what I need to take into consideration when I'm asking for funding, feeding someone, working in an office trying to collaborate with someone. What's important to them that I can address to get a better outcome?

You mean like directly asking people "What do you want? What do you need?"

Yes. People don't always say it, so you need to ask. Ask a funder what's of interest to them. You might be disappointed, but ultimately you can get an answer that can drive a conversation, and maybe it works next time. Or maybe you create something that works for both of you.

What would you share with folks a few steps behind you who are maybe on a trajectory toward leading a large nonprofit?

Recognize your strengths as well as the areas where you're challenged, and seek to fill in your weaker areas by learning and surrounding yourself with really smart people who challenge you all the time. Don't hire people with your same strengths. 

What are you most proud of so far in your tenure as the head of Citymeals?

I would've said how we handed COVID, but now I'm most proud that we're doing this research, to look beyond our comfort zone to identify a real need in this city and begin to create programs that help address that need.

What is your biggest structural challenge at Citymeals?

I mean, sadly, it is very much funding – and I'm not going to say funding directly for us but a historical lack of funding for older adults, not just here in New York City but nationwide. Based, quite frankly, on systemic ageism. People don't want to think about getting old. But we need to recognize that we're all going to get old. And we at Citymeals need to be raising much more money to address that need.

What would you do with much more money?

We would be so much closer to our goal of ending hunger for older adults. We'd be able to ensure that older people have the food that they need, and in ways that they want and need it, so they no longer feel hungry or worry where their next meal is going to come from.

You mean you'd be able to lay in more backup food in addition to the meal-per-day?

Yes. Understanding that Mrs. Jones is just fine on one meal per day but that her neighbor may need two meals a day, or might be so much on the verge of depression, from loneliness, that they're not eating their meals, so they need some outreach and connection as well as the food. It's being able to throw away this one-size-fits-all approach and customize what we do to a recipient's needs.

And what's your biggest personal challenge? Something you have to work on?

I think it's stepping into my own power. There are positive and negative aspects to my coming into this job from within the organization. How do I continue to step into my power to drive this organization to success?

What does stepping into your power mean to you or look like?

It's people earning respect. People need to earn respect – it's not given. It's listening to my gut, which is almost always right. We all – well, maybe not all – I think most of us question ourselves sometimes. I like to take the time I need to respond to something accurately versus rushing. It's taking the time to think things through, listening to my gut and to others, and really being direct with decisions. I continue to need to do that.

What do you want most for Citymeals in the five years ahead?

I want us to grow in leaps and bounds, to be closer to ending hunger among older adults in New York City. Our goal is to do that by 2040. It's a long way away, but I think we can be providing much more food to people who need it in five years, bringing partners along with us who can help make big differences. Like getting the federal government to fund more than 76 cents per every home-delivered meal. And pushing governmental partners, starting with the feds, to more clearly recognize the needs of older adults and better fund programs for them.