Ninety-five-year-old Joshua Jegede opened his door, eager for a hot meal and a familiar face.
It was Meals on Wheels volunteer Ethan Gonzales, bringing lunch to Jegede’s home in the Carver Park neighborhood of East Waco.
Ethan’s dad, Meals on Wheels board member David Gonzales, remained in the minivan at the curb. He shouted out the window: “Show us your moves, Joshua!”
Jegede, a native of Nigeria, hit a hip-shaking jig from the stoop while Ethan shimmied and laughed in the driveway.
It was their routine – the exchange of food, a friendly check-in and the two-man dance-off. The scene from a September morning ridealong showed how Meals on Wheels is more than food delivery to seniors and disabled people.
Ethan, a 36-year-old with high-functioning autism, has endeared himself to clients over 12 years of volunteering. His friendship with Jegede was built week by week on regular acts of care.
“You warm up my heart!” Jegede said as the van pulled away and rolled on to the next house.
But scenes like this in Jegede’s driveway face a threat as Meals on Wheels struggles with federal funding cuts and inflation. Now the charity is asking the community to step up to make up the difference.
Meals on Wheels Waco’s federal reimbursements for cooked meals declined by 41% since 2023, affecting food deliveries as well as group meals at 13 senior centers the nonprofit serves in McLennan and Hill counties.
That reduction has resulted in 47,000 fewer reimbursed meals in 2025 and has meant painful conversations between Meals on Wheels staff members and the swelling waitlist of seniors the group can no longer afford to serve.
The number of area seniors in need has steadily increased, exceeding the state average by 2.3%, according to the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty.
“It’s either we cover the cost of all those meals that (federal funding) will not cover, or we cut our program service delivery,” said Rachel Salazar, Meals on Wheels Waco’s director of grants, engagement and marketing.
Similar strains led Meals on Wheels San Antonio to suspend deliveries to hundreds of seniors last month.
But as the Waco organization’s waitlist grew to more than 400 seniors this fall, the nonprofit set out to turn the tide with a $1 million local fundraising campaign called “Step Up for Seniors.”
The campaign has made progress, raising $682,000 of its year-end goal so far. The money is being spent as it comes in to knock down the waitlist.
“What’s more important than feeding Grandma?” Meals on Wheels CEO Estrellita Doolin said on a September call with the Waco Bridge.
Simple math
David and Ethan Gonzalez balanced conversation with clients and the NASCAR pit crew-like efficiency needed to deliver each meal on time. Along that morning’s route through East Waco were an 86-year-old husband caring for his wife and two centenarians, among others.
To maintain the tight schedule, the day’s preparations begin hours before delivery volunteers show up and load up at the Meals on Wheels headquarters, 501 W. Waco Drive.
Stoves ignite inside the nonprofit’s commercial kitchen at 4:30 a.m.
The logistics of cooking hundreds of fresh meals each week can be complex, but the math is simple.
“It takes about $8 to deliver a meal to a senior, and if we can’t get that $8 we can’t deliver that meal,” Doolin said.
At the same time, the cost of fuel, labor and food behind that $8 figure have gone up.
“Everything is going up, but the government funding is not at pace with all these rising costs,” Salazar said.
Those two trends — declining government support and rising operational costs — are compounded by a third factor, the increasing number of Waco-area seniors in need.
Eighteen percent of Waco’s population is 65 or older, according to 2023 census estimates, up from 14.2% just three years earlier.
“They’re living on fixed incomes,” said Jeremy Everett, the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty’s founder and executive director. “Fixed incomes are not rising with the rate of inflation, their dollars are stretched even thinner and many of (these seniors) are shut in,”
Inflation could explain why the general increase in Waco’s senior population is mirrored by a rising demand for Meals on Wheels’ local services. The recent disruptions to federal SNAP assistance also intensified pressure on the Waco nonprofit and its sibling organizations across the country.
The government shutdown that suspended SNAP assistance in the first half of November did not directly affect Meals on Wheels funding, but it increased demand.
“We fielded the calls (from client families) and told them ‘We hate that this is happening, but we don’t have the resources’,” Doolin said. “They were in a crisis and calling anyone. Calls were coming in from out-of-state.”
The waitlist for food delivery is the clearest account of where lack of funding and dire need converge. Doolin and Salazar said the seniors on the list all met the strict federal requirements for food assistance introduced in the years after the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the money to serve them will have to come from an alternative source.
“Obviously we can’t rely on government funding because it ebbs and flows,” Salazar said. “The community stepping up is critical for sustaining our services,” which extend to pet food, groceries and weekly wellness checks.
Whittling the waitlist to zero would require completing the $1 million “Step up for Seniors” challenge by year’s end.
Still, Doolin said, “we’re going to celebrate every penny raised, because every penny goes toward cooking a meal, feeding a neighbor.”
‘Don’t take it away’
For its final delivery of the day, the Gonzales team minivan turned off J.J. Flewellen Road into the low-slung apartments of Estella Maxey Place.
Norman Rauls answered the door.
Rauls, 80, is a legally blind U.S. Air Force veteran who used to cook chili beans, burritos, “all the works,” he said.
“Now I can’t stand up too long,” he said. “My daughter comes by and cooks me breakfast. This is my supper.”
Asked about the funding challenges for Meals on Wheels organizations nationwide, Rauls was unequivocal: “Don’t take it away.”
The volunteers nodded their heads in understanding. Back in the van, David Gonzales said seniors like Rauls can count on him and his son to keep volunteering.
“I wouldn’t even say this is a labor of love because we just love doing this,” Gonzales said.
