Hunger is often not a food problem; it’s a logistics problem. The world produces more than enough food for every human being on the planet, yet two billion people in the world suffer from moderate to severe food insecurity. Each year billions of pounds of food go to waste. Food banks are nonprofit wholesale distributors, sourcing food destined for the landfill and delivering it to other agencies serving the hungry. Food banking systems operate at the community level, and involve different sectors of society, such as governments, business, and civil, in the process. Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) works to solve the world’s food problem by creating, sustaining, certifying, and strengthening food banks.

Operating alone, food banks can generally only alleviate hunger for a small area and often have limited capacity and efficiency. As a result, many food banks and community-based organizations may take decades to develop and be effective. GFN creates and supports food banks by offering knowledge and expertise, partnerships with global food suppliers, and seed financing that allow food banks to provide food to more people safely. GFN also provides technical assistance to their food bank members; for example, GFN provides an e-learning online portal to connect food bankers with each other and provides 24/7 support and information to improve food banks’ staff knowledge. Further, GFN provides grants for one-time investments and to seed new programs.

Providing technical assistance and seed financing to an established food bank to expand service costs approximately $75,000 year. In 2018, GFN provided this type of support to food banks in ten countries, and collectively expanded the number of people served by those food banks by more than 330,000. That means a donor can help one person facing hunger for just $2.25.