Mission Hospital volunteers make sandwiches for Asheville food nonprofit

Mission Hospital volunteers turned staff time into sandwiches for Food Connection, then sent the meals out through multiple HCA community partners across the mountains. The on-site effort, tied to National Volunteer Month, paired hands-on work with a $10,000 check for ABCCM, one of the region’s busiest anti-poverty and food-aid nonprofits.

The project mattered because Buncombe County families continue to feel pressure from food insecurity and higher costs, and Food Connection’s model is built for exactly that need. The Asheville nonprofit rescues and redistributes surplus prepared food in Buncombe, Henderson and Madison counties, and says it recently surpassed 1 million meals delivered to neighbors. It was founded in Asheville in December 2014 by Flori Pate, Mary Evans, Buzz Durham, Woody McKee and Amy Cantrell.

Mission Health’s Annie Carpenter said ABCCM was HCA Healthcare’s top volunteer partner last year and that the company reviewed volunteer-engagement data to choose where to focus support. ABCCM says it addresses poverty, hunger, homelessness and access to health care in Buncombe County, and its volunteers helped it serve 19,572 hot meals and 37,508 food boxes in the last year. For a healthcare employer with a large footprint in Asheville, the sandwich drive and the donation made the volunteer message more concrete than a photo opportunity, connecting hospital employees directly to local hunger relief.

The event also fit into HCA Healthcare’s broader giving program. The company says that in 2024 it and the HCA Healthcare Foundation gave more than $48.5 million to community organizations, logged nearly 240,000 volunteer hours and contributed $18 million in matching gifts. HCA also says its Healthier Tomorrow Fund was established in 2020 with an initial investment of $75 million.

Mission Hospital, at 509 Biltmore Ave. in Asheville, describes its campus as Western North Carolina’s only ACS-verified Level I trauma center. The volunteer push echoed last year’s National Volunteer Month effort, when Mission Hospital said it had 16 events planned and donated $200 to a nonprofit for every 10 hours of service. This year’s sandwiches, the donation to ABCCM and the distribution network through Food Connection showed how a single day of volunteer work can be tied to a larger system of local food aid.