San Francisco Food Bank

Community Engagement Profile:

San Francisco Food Bank (SFFB) is in the City and County of San Francisco, a compact and diverse urban region with a high cost of living. Nearly 150,000 San Franciscans live with the threat of hunger including one in four children who live near or below the poverty line and are at risk of hunger every day.

SFFB works to eradicate hunger by distributing food and advocating for improvement in government food programs and policies. The food bank supplies food to more than 500 nonprofit anti-hunger programs—from senior centers and after-school programs to soup kitchens—providing food for approximately 118,000 people annually. SFFB distributes 26 million pounds of food—enough to provide more than 55,000 meals to hungry San Franciscans every day.

SFFB became concerned that 58 percent of San Francisco’s public school children participated in the free or reduced National School Lunch Program; but when school was out only about 25% of these eligible children participated in a summer lunch program. In 2003 SFFB spearheaded a working group that included representatives from programs’ sponsors, state and federal agencies, and interest groups to address the low level of participation in summer meals and to maximize the federally funded child nutrition program.