Our Impact

By powering the ideas and innovations of local leaders, we help move our food systems toward efficiency, inclusiveness, and sustainability.
volunteer food items

How do we
measure progress?

No single metric can define our progress. The number of food banks we support, the number of people who access food from a partner food bank, and the number of community service organizations strengthened through food bank partnerships—these all point to the impact we’ve made, but that’s not all.

We also measure our success by listening to feedback from GFN member food banks—about our quality, depth, and breadth of our services. Because for us, when GFN partners meet the markers of success that they’ve defined for themselves, that’s also what progress looks like. And we point to the range of deep relationships we’ve built with partners in the corporate sector, governments, academia, and more as evidence of impact—because no one organization can solve food insecurity alone.

With our partners, we create lasting change—and you can see some of that change captured in the following data, which represents GFN and member food bank activity from calendar year 2024..

*The following data represents GFN and food bank member activity from CY2023.
2 billion meals
served by food banks in 2024, an increase of 17% over 2023.
59,000
COMMUNITY SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS STRENGTHENED IN 2024.
eggs
Prevented an estimated
1.9 million metric tons of CO2e
in 2024.
bags of beans
Fernando Mendoza, Executive Director, Red Argentina de Bancos de Alimentos
We are very happy to have been part of the birth of GFN, together with Mexico, Canada, and the United States 15 years ago, and to see the enormous growth of the global Network, which today connects food banks in more than 40 countries around the world. We have to continue working to recover and deliver food to more and more people on the entire planet.
boxed food goods

Our Track Record

Since 2006, GFN has provided food banks with the knowledge and support they need to be successful. GFN accelerates the impact of the Network by offering services that drive efficiency and scalability, which leads to an increase in nutritious food distribution. This has led to strategic food bank growth and expansion in more than 50 countries.
Since our beginning, we have:
Granted approximately
$55.2 million
to food banks.
Trained and guided more than
580 food bankers
at our annual conference.
Connected food banks in more than
50 countries.

Lasting Food Systems Change

Newer food banks that are part of GFN’s Accelerator program are growing quickly, driven by intensive technical assistance and catalytic funding from GFN.
GFN’s Accelerator program helps visionary local leaders improve food access in their communities through food banking. Food banks in the first cohort, which graduated in 2024, continue to demonstrate sustainable growth and on average increased their distribution by 30%.
Fruits and vegetables made up nearly 41% of food distributed by GFN members in 2024.
More than 3 billion people across the globe can’t afford a healthy diet but local food banks can help by providing nutrient-dense choices. Technical assistance, grants, connections to companies across the food chain, training and certification, and research are just a few of the ways that GFN helps food banks achieve their own nutrition goals and provide high-quality food to people who need it most.
In 2024, food banks recovered 147 million kilograms of food from the agricultural sector, more than double compared to just five years ago.
Through agricultural recovery programs, food banks partner with local farmers to ensure fresh, wholesome but unsalable produce is distributed to people facing hunger. Supported by GFN’s Agriculture Recovery Hub, food banks are rapidly increasing recovery of fresh fruits and vegetables from farms and local markets, delivering more high nutrition food to people.
Read our FY2023 Annual Report: More Than Food