America's Second Harvest
 |
|
| Formation | 1979 |
|---|---|
| Type | Nonprofit |
| Headquarters |
35 East Wacker Chicago, Illinois |
| Coordinates | 41°53′11″N 87°37′36″W / 41.88639°N 87.62667°W |
|
Region served
|
United States |
|
Membership
|
200 food banks |
|
CEO
|
Diana Aviv |
|
Main organ
|
Board of Directors |
| Website | http://feedingamerica.org |
Feeding America is a United States-based nonprofit organization that is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. It is the third largest U.S. charity, and the nation's largest. Feeding America's CEO is Diana Aviv. Feeding America was known as America's Second Harvest until August 31, 2008.
In the late 1960s, when John van Hengel, a retired businessman in Phoenix, Arizona began volunteering at a local soup kitchen, he began soliciting food donations for the kitchen. He ended up with far more food than the kitchen could use in its operations. Around this time, he spoke with one of the clients, who told him that she regularly fed her family with discarded items from the grocery store's garbage bins. She told him that the food quality was fine, but that there should be a place where unwanted food could be stored and later accessed by people who needed it, similar to how banks store money.
Van Hengel began to actively solicit this unwanted food from grocery stores, local gardens, and nearby produce farms. His effort led to the creation of St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance in Phoenix, the nation's first food bank.
In 1975, St. Mary's was given a federal grant to assist in developing food banks across the nation. This effort was formally incorporated into a separate non-profit organization in 1976.
In 2001, America's Second Harvest merged with Foodchain, which was the nation's largest food-rescue organization at that time.
In 2005, Feeding America began using an internal market with an artificial currency called "shares" to more rationally allocate food. Currency is allocated based on the need, and then individual banks bid on which foods they want the most, based on local knowledge and ability to transport and store the food offered. Negative prices are possible, so banks could earn shares by picking up undesirable food. The previous centrally planned system had penalized banks for refusing any food offered, even if it was the wrong type to meet their needs, and this resulted in misallocations ("sending potatoes to Idaho"), food rotted away in places that didn't need it, and the wrong types of food being delivered (e.g. not matching hot dogs with hot dog buns).
In May 2007, it was featured on American Idol, named as a charity in the Idol Gives Back charity program.
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