You Make Good Things Happen
You know what it means to serve goodness every day to the men and women suffering on the streets. Your generosity over the last 26 years has brought immediate relief to our neighbors experiencing homelessness on the streets of Austin through our truck ministry. You continue to stand alongside us as we lift our neighbors up and bring them home to Community First! Village. You demonstrate again and again what it means to “love your neighbor” by helping to provide a permanent home within a caring and compassionate community.
Working together, we have proven that housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will.
Because of you, 107 men and women who were struggling on the streets of Austin moved home to Community First! Village in 2024. Because of you, the Village has just what our neighbors need to settle in, cultivate a new life and begin to care about themselves and those around them. You have provided a place where everyone belongs, where they can feel wholly known and wholly loved. That, my friend, is pure goodness!
Because of you, Community First! Village has become the flourishing neighborhood it is today!
Because of you, this ministry continues to expand to meet the needs of our city’s most vulnerable neighbors. By joining this movement to mitigate homelessness in our city, 393 formerly homeless neighbors now call Community First! Village home.
Because of you, we continued to move forward with the construction on the Village expansion properties in 2024. Once complete, the Hog Eye Road property directly across the street from where we are now and the Burleson Road property will provide as many as 1400 additional homes, community buildings and other shared spaces. With your continued support, as many as 1900 neighbors will eventually have a place to call home in Community First! Village.
Friend, your goodness shines through all that is Mobile Loaves & Fishes. This is your Goodness Report for 2024. Please take some time to celebrate all the goodness that is happening here!
Because of you, we have so much to be grateful for!
Blessings,
Alan Graham (Founder & CEO)
Our Vision & Mission
In 1998, Mobile Loaves & Fishes’ founders boldly answered God’s call to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Mobile Loaves & Fishes is a Christian social outreach ministry that empowers communities into a lifestyle of service with the homeless. Our mission to provide food and clothing, cultivate community and promote dignity to our homeless brothers and sisters is accomplished through our core programs: Community First! Village, Community Works and our Truck Ministry.
Through our years of serving alongside our homeless neighbors, Mobile Loaves & Fishes’ staff and vast network of volunteers have made connections built on trust and have learned so much about our friends and their needs. We learned that they need much more than shelter to no longer be homeless. They need to be settled in a safe place with people who care and where they feel they belong. They need more than a house. They need a home in a supportive community. This is where they can truly begin transforming their lives and engaging in meaningful ways with their community.
Housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will!
Mobile Loaves & Fishes promotes a culture that prioritizes relational connection. Every aspect of our work has the opportunity to be relational in a highly transactional world, and we use these transactions as the means to a relational end.
This begins with the countercultural love poured out by Jesus Christ and grows as imperfect people strive to show this love to each other human to human, heart to heart.
I’m so glad to be here and off the streets. The people are wonderful!
- Cecile, Community First! Village neighbor since 2022
As our neighbors begin to settle into their permanent homes within this caring community, they begin to heal and reconnect to themselves. Transformation happens as they cultivate a new life in this place where they are surrounded by people who care for them. Just like us, they long to be wholly known and wholly loved. Because of you, Community First! Village is the place where our neighbors are seen, known and loved exactly as they are.
393
formerly homeless neighbors are now at home in Community First! Village.
Each of us has a story to tell about who we are and how we got to where we are in life, and the element of community, whether you realize it or not, has played a vital part. Hosted by Alan Graham, founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, the ‘Gospel Con Carne’ podcast explores the woundedness of society through the untold stories of individuals who have encountered homelessness.
Head to our Gospel Con Carne page to hear more stories from Community First! Village.
Community
You demonstrate every day what it means to “love your neighbor.”
Our missional neighbors, volunteers, partners and donors always give their best first to our Village neighbors and our friends still living on the streets. As we strive to empower communities into a lifestyle of service with the homeless, we are incredibly grateful for the many ways you—our loyal community—show up to care for and support our neighbors who need us most.
1,020
events hosted by our Neighbor Engagement team.
17,500
cups of coffee served at the Living Room.
352
neighbors received fresh food from the Central Texas Food Bank’s FARMacy truck.
“I believe that we were created by God for community. As a missional neighbor, consistently being here for my neighbors helps them know they are loved and known in ways they may have never experienced before.”
– Sharon, CFV Missional neighbor since 2023
Collaboration: Communities Within a Community
From the earliest days of our Truck Ministry, we have known that food is a nurturing tool of hospitality and a natural conduit for connecting human to human and heart to heart. Gathering with neighbors over a shared meal drives conversation, encourages understanding and builds relationships.
Our King Park neighborhood gatherings have done that and much more. Village neighbors and members of the Westlake Hills Presbyterian Church (WHPC) have used food and fellowship to show love and support to each other every month.
The King Park gatherings are a model for our Neighborhoods of Knowingness approach that is being used with the expansion properties of CFV. This unique site design combines a mix of home models grouped around a common area and shared community buildings, allowing neighbors to connect more regularly. Volunteers like those from WHPC will be needed to help steward and nurture these communities within Community First! Village.
12
King Park Gatherings
10-12
Average Volunteers joining in the Fellowship and conversations
35-40
Neighbors Served Monthly
260+
Collective Hours of engagement with CFV neighbors
Collaboration: MLF, Red River Rising and Stand Together
In December of 2024, Mobile Loaves & Fishes was the beneficiary of a benefit concert at the Moody Center.
The collaboration between our friends at Stand Together and Red River Rising in Austin aims to raise awareness and funds for social issues, with a particular focus on local causes that resonate with the values of the featured artists, Stand Together and Red River Rising.
This amazing event gave us the opportunity to share our vision and mission with the greater Austin community. In addition to the concert, the event featured an art installation highlighting artwork created by CFV neighbors, as well as one of our Mobile Loaves & Fishes’ food trucks that showed guests how our ministry started. Best of all, the event gave Community First! Village neighbors, staff and missionals a chance to spend time together!
Growth
Community First! Village Expansion – We’re Making Progress!
Because of its uniqueness, Mobile Loaves & Fishes’ Community First! Village has become the most talked about neighborhood in Austin, Texas. The Community First! model has proven that it works.
We know that homelessness can be mitigated by providing affordable, permanent homes in a supportive community.
In 2024, we completed the infrastructure for the 51-acre Hog Eye Road expansion, and began work on the community buildings and tiny homes. Infrastructure for the 76-acre Burleson Road expansion was nearly 75% complete by the end of the year.
Combined, these two properties will provide room for an additional 1400 homes. Once fully developed, Community First! Village will provide 1900 homes spread across 178 acres.
Progress is happening on our expansion properties as we work to move more men and women who are experiencing homelessness off the streets into a permanent home in a caring community.
first look!
Community First! Village donors and supporters tour the Village expansion properties and get updated on the construction plans and progress by our Architecture, Site Development & Construction team.
Grateful: By the Numbers
Because everything we do is about relationships, a page of numbers seems somewhat transactional and contrary to our mission and purpose. We share these numbers to provide you with insight into the power of community—the impact YOU have on the work we get to do together.
You make good things happen every day by serving alongside us!
You demonstrate what it means to “love your neighbor” by compassionately caring for this unique neighborhood, continuing to lift our neighbors experiencing homelessness up off the streets and bringing them home to Community First! Village.
We are so grateful for you!
107
new neighbors moved home to Community First! Village in 2024.
welcome home!
home to:
55
missional neighbors
393
formerly homeless neighbors
served by:
129
MLF staff
11
service partners
6,565
volunteers
32,814
volunteer hours worked
6.8+
million meals served
Serving since 1998, MLF is the largest prepared feeding program serving homeless men and women in Central Texas.
Relationships
Public tours of Community First! Village are given on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
In 2024, 1,000 guests experienced the goodness of the Village with a tour of our 51-acre neighborhood!
Community inn
In 2024, the Community Inn hosted 514 guests over 912 nights and earned $83,955 for the Village.
Community cinema
18 movie nights brought out more than 1,562 guests to the Village.
village of lights
1,800 guests visited our Village of Lights across 4 nights of the holiday event.
Care
medical transportation team
23% of our CFV neighbors used our Medical Transportation Program to get safely to and from their medical appointments in 2024. 108 neighbors received 1,936 rides spanning more than 71,613 miles.
Dignity
Community works: More than $1.2M in dignified income was earned by nearly 200 Village neighbors.
This dignified income was collectively earned by formerly homeless artists, makers, hospitality, maintenance, janitorial and groundskeeping contractors through our Community Works programs.
holiday market
$64,493 of products sold during our Holiday Market, helping to support our artists and makers who live in the Village.
genesis gardens
$50,456 worth of produce, eggs and meat were given to our neighbors in 2024 through our Genesis Gardens program. Another $47,281 was given through donations from fresh food vendors and volunteers.
3,412 Volunteers spent nearly 1,000 hours working in the gardens and at the farmer’s market alongside our neighbors.
19 Neighbors earned a dignified income by working in the Genesis Gardens program.
shop for goodness
Our Shop for Goodness online store sold our “Products of Pure Goodness” to 418 customers in 48 states and the UK—adding $31,665 to support our neighbors in Community First! Village.
Financial Growth
We strive to be good stewards of your generous donations. We are intentional in our efforts to keep operating costs low, and this allows MLF to put 82% of all money raised directly into providing services for our Village neighbors and the men and women who are still struggling on the streets of Austin.
functional expenses 2024
functional expenses 2024
2,891
New Donors
joined our community
1,388
everyday angel
donors provided monthly support
shop
Your purchases directly support the mission of MLF and the neighbors living in Community First! Village.
“The key to this miracle that we call Mobile Loaves & Fishes turns out to have everything to do with you!”
donate
Your generous gifts directly impact our Village neighbors and our friends still struggling on the streets.
support
Become an Everyday Angel and support MLF with a monthly gift.
Explore other ways to give: donate@mlf.org
