Mike Wolanin | The Republic Volunteers sort food at the Love Chapel Food Pantry in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.
Love Chapel has seen what its executive director has described as a “tremendous increase” in donations from community members and local employers and organization after food aid lapses for nearly 5,400 Bartholomew County residents amid the government shutdown.
The community support comes as Love Chapel sees unprecedented demand for food after full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments lapsed amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
More than 3,000 Bartholomew County households have lost their SNAP benefits for at least part of November, according to local officials. The most recent data from the Indiana Department of Family and Social Services shows that 5,382 county residents — 2,735 households — received a collective $1.01 million in SNAP benefits in September.
Payments through SNAP lapsed on Nov. 1 after President Donald Trump’s administration initially refused to tap billions in reserve funds Congress had designated for the program in the event of funding emergencies.
The administration later agreed to make partial payments of food assistance this month following court orders to do so and is currently fighting an appellate court order requirement the full payment.
As of Thursday, Love Chapel had served over 900 families, which Daugherty said likely puts the food pantry on pace to serve at least a record 2,000 families this month. The previous record was 1,698 families served in a month.
“It’s just beyond belief,” said Love Chapel Executive Director Kelly Daugherty, referring to the outpouring of local support.
Earlier this week, the City of Columbus and several community partners announced that they will be providing $300,000 in emergency funding to Love Chapel, aiming to help the food pantry meet surging demand following the lapse in SNAP payments.
The community partners include Cummins Inc., Centra Credit Union, Toyota Material Handling North America, Love Chapel Foundation and Heritage Fund of Bartholomew County. The emergency funding aims to ensure that Love Chapel could continue providing meals and food assistance affected by the disruption to SNAP benefits.
The $300,000 donation is the largest one-time cash donation in Love Chapel’s over 50-year history, Daugherty said.
“As far as the actual single coming all at once, yes, it’s the largest by far,” Daugherty said. “But the community during the pandemic just responded tremendously and probably in the same neighborhood as what this has been to be able to bless us, to be able to continue providing food for folks. You know, it’s how good things can come out of bad things.”
To put the donation into perspective, Love Chapel gives out about $360,000 worth of food per month, Daugherty said. The donation will allow the food pantry to “definitely double, if not triple” its capacity this month, he said. Love Chapel has purchased over $70,000 of food so far this month, including $57,000 of food last week.
“Because of the generosity and (other) folks have been stepping up to help do this, we’ve added two extra frozen meats, two extra canned meats and nine other items that we give extra,” Daugherty said. “And that’s what we’re giving to everybody right now just to try and help them through this tough time. So not only are we seeing more people, but we’ve actually increased what we give to try and help out. It wouldn’t have been possible without that donation and the donation of other people as well.”
‘Heartwarming to see’
However, the community support has gone well beyond the $300,000 donation announced this week, Daugherty said.
For instance, Love Chapel briefly ran out of produce last week amid the surging demand for food. While the organization had bought $57,000 of food, the order did not arrive in time for a mobile pantry.
Love Chapel advised people via Facebook that “if you can make it until tomorrow” with food, the organization’s truck would be fully loaded the following day “because we’re out of produce and fruit right now.”
However, local community members saw the Facebook post and dropped off food donations as the mobile pantry was set to open.
“Our pantry opened at 3 p.m., and by 3:20 p.m., I had a full shelf of produce and tons of fruit to give out,” Daugherty said. “People just saw it on Facebook. …Whipkers sent over 250 pounds of tomatoes, and we had eight different people that just dropped off produce to put on the shelves. It has just been heartwarming to see it happen.”
First Financial Bank, local associates and community members also completed a month-long Columbus-area food drive, with 325 food items collected locally, the organization said Monday. Donated food was shared with Love Chapel, Edinburgh Food Pantry and Student Fund of Hope.
At the same time, Daugherty praised Love Chapel’s volunteers, who he said have been working hard to keep up with the unprecedented demand for food.
“I’m just real proud of my volunteers, too, because it has been really hard on them,” Daugherty said. “With the volume being so much higher — people dropping off food is awesome, but it all has to be sorted and weighed and put away. (The volunteers) just have worked so hard through this so far.”
Hardship remains
While the government shutdown has ended, the hardship low-income Bartholomew County residents are experiencing has not, local officials said.
Gov. Mike Braun said state officials were expected to start processing partial SNAP benefit payments this past Monday with the partial payments expected to be available on EBT cards starting as early as this past Tuesday.
The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service has directed states to reduce maximum SNAP benefits this month by 50%, according to FSSA
“I’ve heard that the SNAP benefits can be available fairly soon,” Daugherty said. “…But I think people are so far behind that even if they get them, they’re still going to need to come to us at least for the next six or eight weeks. We expect that we’re still going to continue to give out the extra food and meet more clients at least through the end of the year or so. And honestly, December is always our busiest month so it probably will be so again.”
Other local pantries have also seen increases in demand since the full SNAP benefits lapsed.
Salvation Army, for its part, said it has seen an increase in demand for food — including a lot of people who had never visited the pantry before, said Nancy Johnson, the organization’s director of social services.
“There was one week I had 37 new people, so that was about 15 new families,” Johnson said. “We’ve had days where we’ve had 47 families. That’s about 150 people. We have definitely seen increases. We’ve been lucky that people have donation when we’ve needed donations and God has taken care of everything.”
Johnson said Salvation Army could use donations of ramen noodles, canned soup and canned vegetables. The organization could also use more volunteers, she said.
“Pray for us to keep us going,” Johnson said.
As the community has responded over the past couple weeks after full SNAP payments lapsed, Daugherty said it has been “heartwarming” to see the outpouring in support.
“It just shows that there’s still hope for our world that we live in,” Daugherty said.
