About The Global FoodBanking Network

A food bank is -- and needs to be -- a community asset. While it may be developed and operated by an existing NGO or an independently organized legal entity, its "owners" must ultimately be the community in which it resides and delivers service to hungry individuals and their families. Clearly, such ownership is not literal in the legal sense, but it very real in the practical sense. If the local community does not engage with and feel a sense of ownership of the food bank, it is destined to mediocrity at best, and failure at worst.

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In most cases, food banking will not be the solution to hunger in a community or in a country. Generally, the real solution to the problem lies in the far more complex resolution of poverty in the community or country. However, more than two decades of experience has proven that food banking works successfully to alleviate hunger by bringing together the public sector (government at all levels), the private sector (the business community -- including the food industry and the media), and the voluntary sector (the NGO community) in serious dialogue and action aimed at addressing the needs of hungry people.

View Pictures from the Cleveland Foodbank

How Do Food Banks Work?
Food banks acquire donated food (much of which would otherwise be wasted) and make it available to those in need through a network of community agencies. These agencies include school feeding programs, food pantries, soup kitchens, AIDS and TB hospices, substance abuse clinics, after-school programs and other non-profit organizations.

Food banks are essential community assets. They represent a non-profit distribution enterprise in service to the community.

Food banking engages people from all sectors of the community. In addition to feeding tens of millions of people each year, it has become a vehicle for building public awareness of hunger and its solutions, as well as a powerful voice in driving policy decisions that impact the food security of individuals and communities.

The core role of the food bank is to collect food from its community that would otherwise go to waste and make it available to people who are hungry. This should not suggest that food banks are distributing waste -- or garbage -- to hungry people. Quite the contrary -- reputable and effective food banks distribute food to their clients that is every bit as good as that which those who have the ability to do so are buying from the shelves of the local grocery store. The reasons this product is considered "waste" is because it has expired its commercial value by no longer being able to move successfully to the point of sale in the retail market due to a short shelf life, labeling error, discontinued brand, surplus inventory, minor recipe variation, damaged packaging, etc. None of these reasons for donation is a because of damage to the product or its usability by people. If such a threat exists for any particular product, the food bank will either decline the donation or dispose of the product rather than distribute it.