PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — Hundreds of seniors in Pinellas County are in jeopardy of losing weekly food deliveries.

The program put on by The Gathering of Women is running out of money, and the grant they have expires Wednesday.

In order to keep up, they say they need donations or an extension on the grant.

“It hurts our heart not to be able to deliver to them. If we had additional funding, if we had donations that could sustain us, and we could definitely serve our senior population,” said Samantha Richardson Hardy with The Gathering of Women.

Samantha said they started delivering meals to Pinellas County home bound seniors at the beginning of the pandemic, and now they serve 500 senior citizens each week. They deliver meals to their homes Tuesday through Friday, all over the county from St. Pete to Tarpon Springs.

The money the organization is using now came from a Pinellas Cares Grant they received back in September, but it expires December 30th. The new stimulus package just passed could include more funding for local nonprofits, but Samantha said Pinellas County Commissioners would need to extend the contract for the Pinellas Cares grants, which would hopefully provide funding through 2021.

Dannie Williams, a volunteer, said this service is dire and without it, many of the seniors they deliver to won’t have any other way to get food.

“They’re so appreciative. They say ‘it really helps, it saved me sometimes, I can’t get out sometimes, I don’t have the money to go, but when I see your face, when I see your truck pull up at my house,’ they say, ‘I know it has something in there that’s nice that’s going to help us along the way,” said Williams.