Thank you to everyone who joined us in September for our 7th Roundtable Talk since we began hosting these conversations in July 2020. For those of you who were not able to attend,and for those of you who would like continued access to the information, below is a recap of the conversation and a link to the entire Roundtable Talk.

If you are unfamiliar with our Roundtable Talks, to understand more about what our Roundtable Talks are, why we host them, and what we cover during these biannual conversations, please read this short primer, “What are FRN’s Roundtable Talks.”

The summer Roundtable Talk journeys across two key points in time. First, we discuss progress towards our established goals (also called metrics) for the entirety of our just concluded program year, which runs from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. Second, we announce our new goals for this current program year that kicked off on July 1,2023. Dispersed throughout the telling of that journey—across analyzing our progress and announcing our new goals—we describe in detail why we were able to accomplish what we did, where there have been difficulties or if the work has been accomplished at a different pace than expected, and importantly, our key takeaways that inform how we chart our pathway for this year.

The analysis and key learnings have accumulated over more than a decade of food recovery efforts to be sure. We are experts in recovering food, and we are dogged about ending hunger forever. In particular, our feedback loop mechanism, built into the strategic framework we launched in 2020, FRN10X, allows FRN to make better decisions based on what our data is telling us, including how the locations in the U.S. afflicted with the highest rates of food insecurity are not the same locations where there is an abundance of surplus food. It is in those locations of food insecurity that our data is telling us we must work alongside communities as much as our resources will allow to literally drive the surplus food in ways that make sense for the communities

Key Takeaways from September:

Though we concluded the Roundtable Talk with our key takeaways, I think it’s important to start with them now to act as a lens with which you can see how we accomplished all that we set out to do, and where we’re forging ahead for this year.

• Cross-sector partnership is essential. As the saying goes, if you want to go fast, go solo, if you want to go farther, go together. We have achieved our success when we partner with aligned groups and individuals. Every single metric requires partnership and when we can spend more time with funders and stakeholders who want to achieve what our framework has set out, as you will see from our results, we are able to do more.

• The toll of routine community disinvestment harms all of us. That makes both human and financial capital required for community change. We talk at great length about our mapping work in this Roundtable Talk, and we will have more dedicated time specifically to the maps we are designing. Our “mapping work,” has been a 2 years long journey bringing together a variety of data-sets from the EPA, Feeding America, location mapping and other data sets such as the MIT living wage. What our data is telling us is that of the 3,144 counties (including DC), in only about 100 of these counties is the average income a living wage income. This is abominable. This means people are suffering way more than the defined poverty line would have us believe. We will persist until the 34 million people who are currently food insecure, are economically secure.

Our accomplishments July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023:

We surpassed our goals of recovering food and recruiting new chapters (welcome new chapters! Thank you for your efforts!). These are hard tangibles that demonstrate our capacity to recover and donate surplus food to nonprofits on the frontlines helping our community members in need. That’s the first column. The second column demonstrates our work toward wider impact. Recovering food and donating that food is our bedrock work. To end hunger forever, we must understand the impact of our work on the communities. What works for them to access food and what do they need to increase the flow of food? That is where we want to help. And for the student leaders we serve, it is important to deepen authentic relationships with them as they conduct our bedrock work and show up with us in our advocacy efforts to end hunger forever.

Further, together:

When polled, the majority of people tuning in stated they had never attended a Roundtable Talk before. Perhaps reading this now, you haven’t either. I invite you all to become familiar with the knowledge, data, takeaways and celebrations we’ve summarized during our Roundtable Talks. In his book, Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck wrote, “looking back, you can usually find the moment of the birth of a new era, whereas, when it happened, it was one day hooked on to the tail of another.” That is just like the work of FRN, hooked onto the tail of our creation in 2011 - the moment we recovered 1 million pounds of food, one carload of food at a time in 2015; when we replaced our fellowship program that did not pay a living wage with permanent, full-time jobs that do pay a living wage; when we launched our audacious strategic framework and said, with this blueprint, FRN is publicly putting forward our unique contribution to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the United States. Big or small, you are needed in these efforts. Here are our current program goals and ways you can be involved so that we achieve these goals this year and come ever closer to our larger result.

Announcing FRN’s July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024 Impact Goals:

You are invited to be part of the effort:

• Start an FRN chapter in the priority states: We will bring on 20-30 new chapters this program year and our desire is to have as many chapters as possible to increase the flow of food into communities. And, with our current mapping refinement, we know that the states of California, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania have the greatest opportunity to support communities. You can start a chapter if you are a current higher ed student, alum, faculty member or if you just know someone in one of those roles you can introduce us to them.

• Monetary support ensures we can be where we need to when we need to be there: Please make a donation to FRN. All of our budgets are different and honestly, every dollar counts to allow FRN to show up for recoveries. Many of our large-scale recoveries, where we can recover large volumes of food, are not funded at all. Your donation can help us to feed more people. If a donation is not in your budget, please know we truly understand and thank you everyone for considering.

• Follow us on our social media channels to stay updated and inspired! @FoodRecovery