FRN and the Poor People’s Campaign: a powerful partnership working towards economic security

Result: recover food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US

FRN’s strategic framework has one singular result: to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US. There are many unique contributions FRN is working toward to achieve ending enduring hunger as we know it in the US. One of two indicators that we aim to achieve to reach this result is to ensure the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure in the US. 

If you’ve attended any of the Roundtable Talks hosted by FRN this program year or even skimmed our email updates, you know about our framework that we’re calling FRN10X. If this sounds unfamiliar or new to you, I encourage you to look through our Roundtable Talks webpage and to sign up for our newsletter because there is a role for each of you in the movement to recover food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US.

Strategy to achieve result: Powerful Partnerships

We have three strategies to achieve our indicators and our ultimate result, one of which is to develop powerful partnerships to help grow our network from 4,000 to 40,000 people in the next 10 years. Please consider this your formal invitation to be part of this movement. We know that including more people in our work through powerful partnerships will expedite our work to get more precious food into communities experiencing food insecurity. 

Time and again we have seen that when FRN fosters and engages relationships with other organizations, the resulting partnership helps us accomplish our goals faster and with a greater impact than we would have accomplished on our own. Here I want to highlight a new powerful partnership that FRN developed with the Poor People’s Campaign this year.

Indicator to achieve result: economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure

Though we partner with the Poor People’s Campaign at the national state levels, I want to discuss our national partnership here. To achieve the systems-level change of ensuring the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure in the US, we need to first understand the reasons why so many millions of people are struggling to the point where they do not have consistent access to the food they and their families deserve. We especially need to understand why, when we know that more than 12% of the entire US population does not have enough food to eat, we continue to allow this to happen.

At a policy level, when we understand how policies allow or encourage people to go hungry, we can change those policies so this is no longer allowed to happen. This is how we came to partner with the Poor People’s Campaign to push for policy change that improves the economic security of poor people in the US, many of whom are food insecure.

Fostering a Powerful Partnership with The Poor People’s Campaign

This year the Poor People’s Campaign Policy Director Shailly Barnes joined me as a guest speaker for a conversation I hosted about community disinvestment. At the national level, Shailly discussed what we can all do from a policy perspective to ensure the economic security of the millions of people who are working so hard each and every day, but who do not have the resources to acquire the food they deserve consistently. Shailly talked about permanently implementing the child tax credit that for a short period of time lifted many children out of poverty. She also noted that making the earned income tax credit permanent would significantly support working families. I agree with her and I encourage all of you to learn more about the particular fights to make these two tax credits permanent.

FRN partners with the Poor People’s Campaign on another proposed policy change that we believe will help ensure the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure: the fight to adopt a federal level $15 per hour minimum wage.

FRN is joining the “Fight for $15”

FRN has joined the “fight for $15”, which seeks to update the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour. We’re joining this critical push to support fair wages for hourly workers because our network is composed of young people, current students and alumni, dining staff, and farm workers alike, who are often working hourly wage positions and deserve a fair wage for their work. We need to be sure their time is compensated fairly so they can pay for their rent or mortgage, food, transportation, education, and other basic life necessities. There are millions of people working multiple jobs in the US for a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Our neighbors and loved ones working hourly for $7.25 per hour have children, they have elderly parents they’re taking care of, they have hopes and dreams that further education can support them to achieve. However, they will not begin to advance upon those dreams, let alone have consistent access to food and housing while stuck in the rut of poverty and being working poor that $7.25 per hour almost certainly ensures. Morally, we have an obligation to stop this crisis of continuing to hold so many people back, including the many incredible people that the food FRN donates feeds every single day.

I will continue to talk more about the fight for $15 that FRN has joined in future blogs, so that we can share more of the details about what a federal minimum wage increase like this can mean. In the meantime, I wrote this blog post with more information and action steps that came from my conversation with Shailly Barnes and others dedicated to ensuring our communities thrive. This is a good place to start learning about the struggles of so many people in our very neighborhoods who are working hard every single day to get by.

Another resource I want to share is a report written by Shailly Barnes, along with Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, Josh Bivens, Krista Fairies, Thea M. Lee and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis produced in collaboration with The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The report first appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of American Educator and I picked it up when it appeared in The Economic Policy Institute website. The report is called “Moral Policy = Good Policy: Lifting up poor and working-class people — and our whole economy.” The report reminds us, and asks us to consider, that “this inequality in the United States did not happen suddenly and cannot be explained as the consequence of individual failures; rather, decades of public policies brought us to this point, making the rich richer at the expense of everybody else. When we fail to meet basic needs for food, housing, and health care for everyone, when we fail to invest in education, safe communities, and fair elections, the health and well-being of our entire nation is compromised.”

Lastly, I hope you can sign your name to the pledge to fight for $15, and join our newsletter to stay updated on this topic, FRN10X and our work to feed more people, faster. As always, I hope you will share your thoughts with us, too.

Food recovery, Football, and FRNds galore! 🙌

Below is a short report back to you, our amazing network, on how Food Recovery Network was able to recover close to 2,000 pounds of food for neighbors in Los Angeles experiencing food insecurity on the day of Super Bowl LVI. By being in FRN’s corner, you made this recovery a reality.

My fellow FRN team members Cassie and Erin flew with me to LA to provide on-the-ground support to recover surplus food from The Players Tailgate on February 13, 2022. The Players Tailgate is a massive event catered by celebrity chef Guy Fieri during the Super Bowl, a 50,000 square foot experience filled with decadent food stations run by Fieri’s chef friends. 

After the Tailgate, as guests shuffled into SoFi stadium to watch the big game, it was go-time for the FRN team and our amazing volunteers, including an alum and members of the new FRN chapter at Chapman University. There was A LOT of food to recover. Our Instagram page has tons of content showing a behind the scenes look at the food recovery!

© Ellen Friedlander

Had FRN not been there, so much unopened and unprepared seafood, pallets of butter, milk, bread, salad greens, onions, and herbs would have been unnecessarily discarded. However, because our longtime partners at Operation BBQ were involved in planning the logistics of the Players Tailgate, they contacted FRN to develop a plan to recover any surplus event food. 

Operation BBQ asked us to set up a recovery program for the Tailgate just as we had done in 2020 for previous Operation BBQ events. We were able to say yes to this event because our partner, the National Association of REALTORS®, supported the financial costs to FRN to accomplish this recovery. Individual donations to FRN also ensure we can coordinate big recoveries like this one. 

Once we confirmed, Operation BBQ connected us to the group organizing the Players Tailgate, Bullseye Event Group, to hash out the details of the recovery: when the event would be over and we could start packing up the food, what food would be donated, and where the food would be located within the event space. 

Erin, FRN’s Program Manager, then began making calls to find nonprofit partner agencies who could receive the food (and there is so much that goes into that process!) and calls to our local chapters in the area who could help us on the ground with the actual recovery.

Photo Credit: LA Times / Stephanie Breijo

© Ellen Friedlander

We partnered with Hollywood Food Coalition and the Westside Food Bank to distribute the amazing food we recovered from the Tailgate, and our local FRN chapter at Chapman University stepped up to volunteer at the event. Thank you to Hilary, Nicole, and Audrey! We were also joined by FRN alum and Secretary of FRN’s Student and Alumni Advisory Board, Alexi, and her mom.

Our joint effort was a huge success and brought more than 1,500 meals to the LA community. 

There is so much more to share about the Players Tailgate recovery, and we recommend you check out our social media to see what we were up to during the Tailgate! We also received incredible media coverage at the event. Read this LA Times article and watch this ABC7LA video for a deeper look into what it takes to pull off a big food recovery. 

Also, please consider being an individual donor or making an additional gift if you already contribute to our work so we can feed more people, faster! Your financial support ensures FRN can say yes to large scale recoveries by offsetting the costs to complete those recoveries.

A solar moment for FRN

We have a big announcement to share with everyone! This is a once in a lifetime moment and we are out of this world excited!

As of 2/22/22, aka the ultimate TWOSday, FRN achieved TWO huge milestones!

  • We recovered TWO million pounds of food this program year

  • We have grown to more than TWO hundred FRN chapters across the US

To keep the momentum going, we have TWO ways you can catapult us to 222 chapters by June 30!

  • Donate $22 to support our food recovery efforts

    • Consider making your $22 donation a recurring gift!

  • Tag two friends on social media who go to school or are alumni of schools not yet in FRN’s network (check out our list of chapters here)


Shout out to Julius Caesar for creating the 12 month calendar based on the solar year in 45 BC, which brought us to this year’s epic Twosday. And thank YOU for supporting FRN to get to this latest milestone!

The importance of how we volunteer at Food Recovery Network

Until recently, Food Recovery Network celebrated Dr. King’s National Day of Service as a day on, not a day off, for our team. Now, instead of celebrating MLK Day engaged in a worthwhile volunteer effort, Food Recovery Network offers 8 hours of paid time for each employee to use throughout the year for a volunteer activity of their choosing. The decision to stop organizing a group volunteer effort for our team on MLK Day came after I had years of experience at FRN and other nonprofits. I want to share with all of you why we came to celebrate MLK Day in this way and how this approach better fits FRN’s culture. 

I recently wrote a blog post about my re-immersion into the history of MLK Day. That post came flooding out as part of my research to prepare for another post about the ripple effect that volunteering has on our communities, and specifically, the student-effect of the amazing FRN chapters across the US. I have so much to say about volunteering, its importance to me personally, and how it has shaped my life over the years. I’m a proud AmeriCorps volunteer, and previously, FRN hosted AmeriCorps VISTA service members. As part of our equity walk, work and practice, FRN no longer has a grant with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the government program that supports AmeriCorps. Our history is forever tied with AmeriCorps, and I am so thankful to know the many VISTAs who have come through the doors of FRN to support our neighbors in receiving the food they deserve by training, mentoring and coaching our student leaders. I am also grateful that we have been able to realize our efforts to offer full-time and living wages to those we hire, and I know that AmeriCorps was a vital part of the effort to get to this place. 

Feedback from our AmeriCorps VISTAs about volunteering on MLK Day helped shape my own thinking about how FRN could honor MLK Day. Volunteering for MLK Day was not always met with alacrity at FRN by our VISTAs or our staff. For a long time, to me that felt very counter to what we are trying to accomplish at FRN. Why wouldn’t our team who works so tirelessly with our students across the country want to celebrate MLK Day together engaging in a different kind of socially-focused project? I reflected on other MLK Day volunteer efforts I was a part of at other nonprofits and realized many times, those projects were also met with lukewarm enthusiasm. Why? Well, honestly, the reasons are many. It took a couple of years for me to figure it all out, and for me to hear and absorb what members of my team were telling me.

The culmination of all of this led FRN to reimagine how we volunteer and how we honor MLK Day. FRN now provides a bank of 8 paid hours to each employee to use to volunteer in lieu of a MLK Day volunteer service project. I’ve outlined the reasons why we made this change below, which do not reflect the stance of any one person on my team, but are a culmination of my experiences and feedback from staff:

  1. MLK Day is a national holiday, and it’s the only day that is recognized as a day of service designed “to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.” The tagline for MLK Day of Service, led by AmeriCorps, is that it’s “a day on, not a day off.” However, reflecting on my own experience and feedback from my staff, I find that if you work at a nonprofit, every day you show up to work is a day on, not a day off. Working in the nonprofit sector means you dedicate much of your day to a mission that once achieved, will make our communities better, safer, stronger, and more enjoyable. For many of us, this is our life’s work, and when that is the case, a day off might look very different than in other situations.

    Two of my Intersectionalities in Practice conversations discuss the need to be gentle with ourselves and those around us so that we can show up strong in our work. When we need to rest, we can count on so many others who are doing the work, and then when they need to rest we can keep the work moving forward. In our conversation about combatting community disinvestment, we also spoke about the burnout that many of us in the nonprofit sector often experience due to constant resource scarcity. While we chose this sector and our particular professions within it, that does not mean we must work ourselves to a nub, and that healthy boundaries around work aren’t necessary. With this context, MLK Day offered a day of rest for my team who works so hard to support our student leaders across the country. I think ensuring my team can take the time they need to rest and replenish on MLK Day is a valuable way to honor Dr. King’s legacy.

  2. FRN’s team members each have personal volunteer pursuits that are important to them, and our bank of 8 hours of paid volunteer time provides the flexibility for them to honor Dr. King’s commitment to service by engaging in efforts particularly meaningful to them. Recently our team had a conversation together about how we volunteer and it was so enjoyable to get to know what ignites passion for each of us outside of our work at FRN. I highly recommend engaging in a similar conversation with your team.

  3. Many MLK Day service projects act as a team-building exercise for companies and organizations. I think this is a great idea. I became dear friends with a coworker whom I now consider a little brother during a MLK Day service project at the DC Center together many years ago. It was just the two of us from our organization and that provided the opportunity for us to talk for a few uninterrupted hours. This was the beginning of our journey to becoming a chosen family.

  4. I mentioned FRN’s particular culture earlier. Our team has opportunities to bond every day through the structures and space we’ve set up within our organization. We learn about one another during our weekly one-on-one check-ins, our debriefs, and our free flowing chats before we “dig in” to the meetings or work at hand. For example, at our biweekly all-staff meetings we always start with a check in question. The questions range from very philosophical to funny and light, and this was actually how we all learned about each other’s volunteer pursuits. I highly suggest incorporating a check in question to your team meetings as a way to bond and build a compassionate workplace. I can only describe it as wonderful, and often exceedingly fun. Here are some of our recent check in questions:

    • What is your favorite road trip snack?

    • Tell us about any “pile” of things you have in your home that you need to deal with. 

    • Talk to us about how you view branding and authenticity.

    • What is your unconventional idea (that is against the grain and isn’t popularly held) that if adopted would create a huge positive humanitarian impact in 10 or 15 years?

    • Tell us about an object that is within reach of you right now.

Our staff also chooses to volunteer on MLK Day! Many of us took an hour to be together with others from across the FRN network for a “power hour” of researching farms in Texas and Florida. This was not mandatory, but a volunteer opportunity we offered to both our staff and wider network. Our Program Manager, Erin sent this note to everyone who participated: “Your participation not only helps to keep Dr. King's legacy of service and his commitment to equality and justice fresh in our minds, but you've also helped to ensure that 156,000+ pounds of surplus food will be recovered   That is AMAZING!”

Amazing indeed. I have organized MLK Day service events, and for anyone who also supports those activities, thank you. It takes a lot of time to coordinate service projects and that act is often overlooked by the actual event. Whatever project your organization volunteers to participate in, it matters and it makes a difference. At FRN, we see you, and we appreciate you. Thank you to the FRN team members who volunteer with youth, at farmers markets, and in social justice initiatives throughout the year. And for those of you who choose to take MLK Day as a day of rest, thank you, too, for there is power in rest.