Q&A With Karen DeMarco—2023 National Association of Realtors® Good Neighbor Award Recipient

Congratulations to Karen DeMarco on her remarkable achievement of winning the National Association of Realtors® 2023 Good Neighbor Award. Karen’s organization, The Food Brigade, received a donation of $10,000 to continue their mission of hunger relief in New Jersey plus Karen received additional funds for winning one of the three web choice favorites.

We sat down with Karen to discuss who inspired her volunteerism, balancing volunteer work with her career, and more.

What inspired you to start the Food Brigade?

The origins of The Food Brigade date back to 2017, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. During my recuperation, we had friends and neighbors bringing meals to our house, so that we didn’t have to worry about dinner for our family. So it was one less thing we needed to think about, and the meals were a tremendous help during a difficult period. I wanted to “pay it forward,” so within a couple of months I started the Dumont Meal Brigade— an informal grouping of volunteers who would prepare and deliver meals to local residents who were dealing with a death in the family, loss of employment, serious illness or injury, etc.

When the COVID-19 lockdown hit, I went into high gear cooking meals in my kitchen for senior citizens who could no longer go to the supermarket because the jitney bus was shut down, and for other people affected by COVID-19. Before I knew it, my husband and I were distributing boxes of food from in front of our house and had set up a free produce stand in our driveway. From there, we relocated to the parking lot of a local church and did “drive through” food distributions, with volunteers loading people’s cars with boxes of food. We also set up a network of around 30 other organizations— food pantries, women’s shelters, churches—and at the peak of the pandemic, we were distributing 30-40 tons of food every week through that network, from two locations. I didn’t set out to establish a hungerrelief nonprofit. I just kind of found myself here as a progressive outgrowth of the informal charitable work my husband and I were doing.

How do you balance your volunteer work with your real estate career?

I am so fortunate to have such an amazing team at The Food Brigade. Thanks to our Pantry Managers and our other volunteers, our food distributions operations run like clockwork every week, whether I’m there onsite or not. In addition, we have a full-time Executive Director who runs the organization, so that allows me to focus strictly on our food distribution operations and on serving our clients, and not have to worry about things like volunteer recruitment and management, bookkeeping and legal compliance, communications and social media, fundraising, etc. That frees me up to be able to handle my real estate work around the schedule of The Food Brigade’s weekly distributions. I also have a wonderful team of Realtors® in my office that are there for whatever I need. The support that I have from my Broker and my Regional Vice President of Coldwell Banker has been amazing as well as making it easy for me to still be a successful real estate agent.

What have you learned since starting the Food Brigade?

First, from doing this work, I’ve learned just how much need there is in New Jersey, and it’s in virtually every community. Second, from our volunteers, I’ve learned how incredibly giving and caring people are in New Jersey—to watch these volunteers in action, week in and week out, will restore your faith in your fellow humans no matter how jaded you are. Lastly, I’ve grown to truly appreciate the importance and power of a team. There’s no way that I alone could ever have made the impact that The Food Brigade has. Each week, we have an average of 80100 volunteers helping to feed around 2,000 of their neighbors in need. So, I’ve learned that the work of The Food Brigade, and the organization’s expansion, could not possibly be done without our amazing volunteers.

How can other Realtors® get involved with The Food Brigade or support the cause?

We have expenses that go beyond food acquisition: things like rent, utilities, insurance, and carting fees, to gasoline for our delivery vehicles, to plastic gloves for food handling. So aside from our volunteers, the lifeblood of an organization like ours is financial support. We have a donations page on our website at foodbrigade.org/ donate, and we accept credit cards, PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, and checks. We also accept donations of stock. And for those who’d like to join us on the “front lines” in the fight against food insecurity in New Jersey, they can “enlist” in the Brigade at foodbrigade.org/volunteer.

What’s your proudest moment since starting the Food Brigade?

I think what makes me most proud is actually how proud our three children are of me, and knowing that my husband and I succeeded in raising what we call “good humans.” But in terms of a specific event, I would say receiving the national Good Neighbor Award at the NAR’s annual conference in Anaheim in November. The whole process running up to the award ceremony really enabled me to kind of step outside of myself, to objectively look at the workings and effect of The Food Brigade. It made me better able to appreciate the organization’s growth and the importance of its work. It’s like with your children: you’re around them all the time, and you don’t notice on a dayto-day basis how they’re growing over time. With The Food Brigade soon opening its fourth food distribution center in New Jersey, I think I’m better able now to understand and appreciate the impact of our organization and the number of people in need that we’re helping.