Davenport, Iowa – In April of 2022, the Geifman Iowa Family Trust (GIFT) Fund committed $25,000 in matching funds to support River Bend Food Bank’s EXPANDING to End Hunger Campaign. For the months of April and May, every donation to the Food Bank in support of the campaign was matched dollar for dollar by the Geifmans, up to $25,000.
As of June 1, 2022, the campaign has exceeded the goal and raised a total of $96,653!
“We are humbled by the incredible outpouring of support we’ve received from the Geifman family match,” said Jenny Brinkmeyer-Colvin, Chief Development Officer for River Bend Food Bank. “We have a very giving community, and it’s inspiring to see everyone coming together to make this crucial project a reality.”
In 1921, George Geifman, a Ukrainian immigrant, arrived in Galveston, TX, and made his way to Davenport, IA. With limited English-speaking ability, Geifman made ends meet selling brooms up and down Brady Street to students living on the Palmer College of Chiropractic campus. However, when the students turned down his wares and told him what they really needed was food, the idea took hold and Geifman turned to wheeling a horse and wagon filled with produce through the neighborhood.
Geifman later took over a grocery store in what is now Kaiserslautern Park on 3rd and Brady streets, and a legacy was born. That store would grow to a 15-store chain of grocery retailers known as Geifman Food Stores, feeding Quad Cities area residents for several decades before the locations were sold or rented out to other retail and commercial businesses like Hy-Vee, Inc. in the mid-1980s.
Today, Steve Geifman, a fourth-generation family member and Quad Cities resident with his wife, Joni, and children, Ethan and Stella, runs Geifman First Equity – a Midwest real estate development company with 45 commercial and retail properties – along with the GIFT Fund.
“We’ve been in business for 101 years, and grocery was the main focus until the mid-1980s. Food is in our blood,” smiles Geifman. “We’ve supplied the Quad Cities with food for a long time, and we wanted to find a mission for our family and the Trust to really help the Quad Cities with something we understand.”
The response from the community to the match campaign has been so overwhelming that the Geifmans announced they’ll pledge an additional $18,000 in matching funds for donations received in support of the Food Bank’s capital campaign for the month of June.
Anyone wishing to make a gift of any size to the campaign can give online or can send a donation to:
River Bend Food Bank – Geifman Match Campaign, 4010 Kimmel Dr., Davenport, IA 52802
The renovation and expansion of the Food Bank’s Davenport facility are scheduled to begin in January of 2023 and take approximately 10 months to complete.
About River Bend Food Bank: No one should go hungry. River Bend Food Bank works with 300+ partner agencies in 23 counties to make sure people facing hunger have reliable access to healthy food. Leading the community-wide effort to eliminate hunger in eastern Iowa and western Illinois, the Food Bank distributes over 22 million meals each year to children, adults, and seniors through food pantries, schools, senior residences, and community organizations. River Bend Food Bank will feed people today and end hunger tomorrow. Learn more about our programs and read stories of success at riverbendfoodbank.org and by following @riverbendfoodbank on Facebook and Instagram.
About Geifman First Equity and the GIFT Fund: Geifman First Equity operates over 45 commercial, industrial, and office rental spaces throughout the Iowa-Illinois Quad Cities area. In all, the company owns and/or manages over 1 million square feet of commercial, industrial, office space, and farmland. In serving the needs of tenants, either through offering quality rental space or developing space as necessary to fit specific needs, we are a full-service organization. The Geifman family created GIFT in 2020 as a helpful way to give back to the community that we all know and love. 100% of all funds donated to GIFT go directly back to local charities.
