After serving hundreds of thousands of meals over a decade — powered by volunteers — Denton’s downtown soup kitchen hired its first executive director.

Jenny Hawkins, the new executive director of Our Daily Bread, said she’s been brought on board to help the volunteer-run ministry follow nonprofit rules, hunt for grants and donations, and market the agency throughout Denton.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Jenny Hawkins, new executive director of Our Daily Bread at the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, helps David Murrell pack food for clients on Oct. 28.

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“The organization is at this wonderful place where the leadership gets to decide what they want to be when they grow up,” Hawkins said just moments after directing traffic in the soup kitchen, located on the first floor of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. “We’re getting to the point where we are deciding what we want to be. Our mission is feeding people, giving them emotional and physical comfort. Our board is very big about not overlapping services offered by other agencies.”

Hawkins came to Denton from Huntsville, where she was the senior accountant for a behavioral health management company. She was juggling single motherhood with the demands of work. The corporate sector took its toll.

“When I left my job in February, I left. I was done. It was very stressful, and at the end of the day you’d ask yourself: ‘Whom did I actually help?’ I decided I would only interview for nonprofits and do something I could get behind,” Hawkins said. “This is the first time I’ve worked for a religious nonprofit.”

Shortly after moving to Denton for the directorship, Hawkins got married, and she is pursuing her master’s degree in business administration at the University of North Texas.

Hawkins said her job is to see to it that the agency follows the rules of nonprofit management.

“I’m going to run it like a business because it is a business,” Hawkins said.

Terry Widmer, president of the agency’s 19-member board, agreed. She said the leadership is asking itself tough questions about how to best feed Denton’s hungry. Hawkins’ task is to manage the budget and help the agency grow wisely.

“It’s a business,” Widmer said. “Next year’s budget is probably going to be over $150,000. You don’t ask volunteers to watch over that and run the day-to-day part of it.”

Widmer said Denton’s poor are somewhat invisible to the community — to the point that people are shocked when she tells them Denton has several hundred homeless.

“It took about a day to realize they were coming here because they’re hungry,” Widmer said. “But it’s no secret that many of the people who come through the kitchen have more problems than hunger.”

Clients of the soup kitchen struggle with everything from food, clothing and shelter to illness, disability and transportation.

“The board is grappling with what to do and what we need to be doing,” Widmer said. “We’ve always fed and we’ll continue to do that, but we don’t know yet what else we should do.”

A long-range planning and strategic committee is taking on those questions, Widmer said.

The soup kitchen serves hot lunches from noon to 1:15 p.m. Monday through Friday. It closes for the weekend to accommodate the church’s activities. Health care professionals drop by the kitchen each month to do blood pressure checks and evaluate and educate clients with diabetes.

Hawkins and Widmer said it looks like the kitchen will establish a weekend program to give snack packs to its clients.

Hawkins has started giving out “hurricane kits” that the Tarrant Area Food Bank stockpiled when Hurricane Ike threatened to send evacuees to North Texas. The kits contain tuna and crackers, and for some, Hawkins said, that’s the only food they can get on weekends.

Hawkins took the administrator reins during a global economic downturn. Client numbers have grown.

Hundreds of needy men, women and children come to the church each week.

Hawkins answered questions — one after another — on a day she called “slow,” thanks to fall downpours. A young woman with a baby on her hip approached Hawkins. The Hispanic woman spoke no English, and Hawkins speaks no Spanish. Hand gestures helped Hawkins figure out that the mother needed shampoo for her baby. A trip to the kitchen pantry supplied it.

The hot ticket of the day — aside from a tomato-based soup, ham sandwich, salad and cake — was a gas voucher the agency buys from a local gas station.

A woman asks about the vouchers, saying she needs to get to a court hearing in Dallas but doesn’t have enough gas to make it. The client is out of luck.

“They go fast,” Hawkins tells her, explaining when more will be available. “My advice to you is to get here at 10:30 a.m. and be first in line. The vouchers are first-come, first-served.”

The Denton County Transit Authority has entered into an agreement with the agency to register soup kitchen clients for disability vouchers and discounted bus passes that qualify clients for unlimited bus rides for a month.

“Hunger is not a standalone issue,” Hawkins said. “If you’re hungry, you probably have other problems too. Those in poverty know they lack some planning skills, so we educate on planning. We tell them, ‘If you spend all your money at the first of the month, you’re going to run into problems at the end of the month.’”

Widmer said the agency is trying to keep clients plugged into job openings and social services offered by other local nonprofits.

“For me, food, shelter and clothing are the most important,” Widmer said. “The next tier is employment and transportation. We kind of absorbed HelpNet after it went under. It was a network that connected people to different services. Jenny has really picked up that part of it, keeping job postings current, and we’ve placed people in 11 jobs since June. That’s not bad in the current economy.”

The agency enjoys a healthy volunteer corps and participation from food and financial donors. Widmer said the next step is re-evaluating finances, personnel and volunteers to make the greatest impact possible on hunger in Denton.

“You’re very proud of what you’ve accomplished,” Widmer said. “Any time you bring someone on, people feel threatened and wonder if they’re going to lose their position. People worry about any change. So you’re proud, you’re worried and then you get past worrying and start asking what more you could and should do.”

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com .