Unforgettable harvest; Our best-managed nonprofit is feeding more people for less.(Focus)(Forgotten Harvest)

Byline: Sherri Begin

When Nancy Fishman founded Forgotten Harvest in 1990, she hoped to rescue about 1,000 pounds of food each month.

In fiscal 2007, despite the loss of a million pounds of fresh food with the closure of Farmer Jack's Livonia warehouse, the food rescuers picked up and distributed 8.6 million pounds of food from a network of 375 food donors.

That's up from 1.1 million pounds six years ago when Executive Director Susan Ellis Goodell joined the nonprofit.

Over that same period, Forgotten Harvest has decreased its cost to rescue and distribute a pound of food to 16 cents from 33 cents, with only 5 cents of every dollar supporting administration, fundraising, and food solicitation activities.

The nonprofit is doing it all on a cash budget that totaled just $1.3 million in fiscal 2006.

For doing more with less, diversifying its sources of food donations, working with a number of nonprofit and for-profit agencies and serving as a national model for food rescue operation, Forgotten Harvest is Crain's 2007 best-managed nonprofit.

Forgotten Harvest's operating model is "making it easier for companies to donate the food to us than it is for them to put it in the trash,'' Goodell said. "That's being …