Open Hand: The Long-Term Impact of Buckhead Church

We cook. We deliver. We teach. We care.

Those four simple ideas sum up the vast impact and scope of Open Hand. They’ve been delivering meals to elderly, home-bound, and chronically ill individuals in Atlanta for over 30 years, but their services were perhaps never more important than over the last year and a half.

As elderly and at-risk people across our community stayed home to protect themselves from COVID-19, Open Hand stayed open to serve our city’s most vulnerable populations. In fact, they had to ramp up their operations immensely to keep up with the growing need in Atlanta and beyond.

“The pandemic exposed how fragile the safety net is in our community,” said Matt Pieper, the Executive Director of Open Hand. “We saw dramatic increases in the number of people who were experiencing food and nutrition insecurity. We also had many seniors in rural areas across the state who could no longer travel to the senior centers where they usually got their meals due to them shutting down.”

The need was greater than ever, but Open Hand met the challenge—and you helped. “I don’t know if we would have gotten through it without Buckhead Church,” said Matt. “Your donations allowed us to develop a telenutrition platform to continue helping people. We were delivering more meals than ever and Buckhead Church members answered the call and helped us deliver thousands of meals.”

You may not realize it, but throughout the life of our partnership, you’ve been showing you’re FOR ATL by investing in the four tenets of Open Hand’s mission.

You’ve funded significant upgrades to their kitchen equipment, allowing Open Hand to cook more nutritious meals for our community than ever before.

You’ve delivered thousands of meals to our neighbors in need and funded the purchase of refrigerated trucks to help Open Hand deliver to our community.

You’ve sponsored nutritional education programs across our city and helped Open Hand expand telehealth initiatives that proved invaluable in 2020 and 2021 as they teach our community.

And maybe most importantly, through your generosity to the Be Rich campaign, you’ve funded operational expenses that have allowed them to serve more clients, shrink their waitlist, and care for even more people across our community.

“It’s so great that we can partner together to be of service to our community, which I think is what Be Rich is all about,” Matt told us. “Buckhead Church is the wind beneath our wings.”

Thank you for being FOR ATL and making it possible for Open Hand to support our most vulnerable neighbors.