NTFB Launches Ambitious Plan to Fight Hunger

The North Texas Food Bank has a new plan for fighting hunger, and it's asking the community for $500 million in food and funds.

"We're so excited to announce Nourish North Texas. It's an ambitious campaign. It's about how we can help North Texas Food Bank acquire $500 million so that we can transform how we fight hunger here in North Texas," said Trisha Cunningham, North Texas Food Bank president and CEO.

The three-year campaign is broken down into three parts.

$150M in Cash Donations:

• Supports the core mission of sourcing, collecting, and transporting food to 200+ partner agencies across the 13 counties served.
• Expands the ability to get food directly to children, seniors, and families through mobile pantries, "Food 4 Kids" and School Pantry programs and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program.
• Allows NTFB to create new and expanded partnerships that address the root causes of food insecurity and help our neighbors become more self-sufficient. This includes helping NTFB Partner Agencies build capacity to serve more people more effectively.

$300M in Donated Food Products:

• Offsets the greatest expense to the NTFB - the cost of purchased food - by sourcing nutritious food from community givers, retail partners, and food manufacturers. Purchased food has increased in price by six times compared to pre-pandemic levels.

$50M for an Endowment:

• Provides a permanent, sustainable source of income to supplement annual dollars raised. It will hold permanently invested monetary gifts, and temporarily restricted funds for emergencies. This provides a safety net to feed hungry neighbors in crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and allows the NTFB to invest in growth capacity.

The 13-county North Texas Food Bank region is the sixth highest in the nation in food insecure people. Yet the community helped the nonprofit distribute a record-level 125 million meals last fiscal year, meeting a strategic goal of 92 million meals, five years ahead of schedule.

The food bank is ready to build on that success with a strategic plan it believes will provide food for today and hope for tomorrow.

"Our number one core competency is food distribution, and we centered this stratetegic plan around that core competency but we feel like we have a responsibility. Now that we know we have the ability, we can meet the meal gap here in North Texas, we feel like we have a responsbility to take our core competency of food and help others who are trying to address those root causes of hunger, help them to accelerate their progress," Cunningham said.

The $500 million campaign is the largest campaign for a social services organization in the history of North Texas. It's also the largest effort undertaken by a member of the nationwide Feeding America.

Nourish North Texas began quietly in July of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic and in the first year raised nearly $53.4 million toward the $150 million public support goal, nearly $84 million toward the donated food goal, and $13 million in endowed funds.

NTFB believes at the of three year campaign, it will be able to meet the need for years to come.

"We know it's going to take years for our community to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic. But what we want to do is, we want to be there to support them. Our team, our North Texas Food Bank family and the feeding network worked so hard over the past 18 months to ensure that seven days a week, to make sure we were able to get food into the hands of those that need it. And now we want to make sure that we can continue to press forward. And our community that has supported us, they are the wind beneath our wings. And that's actually what this Nourish North Texas campaign is about as well, as helping us to have the resources we can continue to press on this fight against hunger so that we can have a healthy, hunger free North Texas," Cunningham said.