How Community Foundations Are Addressing Rising Hunger in the U.S.

This article was originally published by Inside Philanthropy.

by Martha Ramirez | March 10, 2026

Hunger is on the rise in the U.S. After falling to a two-decade low in 2021 — thanks in large part to federal relief programs and robust philanthropic support in response to the pandemic — the following years saw hunger rates begin to climb once again. And as has been the case with the homelessness crisis, once federal assistance vanishes and relief programs end, hunger rates go up.

According to Pew Research Center, approximately 42 million people received monthly SNAP benefits during the 2025 fiscal year. Data from USDA’s Economic Research Service shows that about 6.7 million people participate in the special nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Federal cuts, including the $186 billion cut from SNAP in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, will have a major impact on families and individuals across the U.S.

Although ensuring its people don’t go hungry falls into the government’s purview — a position which the federal government is increasingly abdicating — a wide variety of philanthropic funders are working to address the issue.

The role of community foundations is especially important here. Although they may not have the resources of national funders, community foundations are uniquely positioned to help address hunger in their areas.

“This is one example where we think that place-based funding is really critical,” said Mendi Blue Paca, president and CEO of Fairfield County’s Community Foundation. She added, “We feel really strongly that funders who are closest to communities, closest to neighborhoods, closest to households, are really well-positioned to not only know the trusted organizations who are likely to be able to reach the food insecure the fastest, the best, [the] most reliably, but also to have their pulse on where the food insecurity is the greatest in their communities.”

Below, we take a look at three examples of what community foundations are doing to address hunger. One common theme among the funders we spoke to was that the need for food assistance increased during the pandemic and hasn’t gone down since then, highlighting that this issue goes beyond a single administration or a specific event. Given the ever-increasing costs of groceries and the ongoing cuts in federal support, it’s critical that funders find innovative ways to address hunger in communities across the nation.

Fairfield County’s Community Foundation has a dual approach to addressing hunger

In Southwestern Connecticut, Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, which serves 23 towns and cities in the region, has taken a two-pronged approach to addressing hunger through its recently launched Fairfield County Food Security Fund.

The fund, which is looking to raise a half-million dollars by summer 2026 and will continue to fundraise beyond that, is designed to be both flexible and long term because, as Blue Paca explained, the foundation doesn’t see the need as temporary.

“We actually have high food insecurity in Fairfield County, and that has been part of the story since COVID, where it really ticked up and it never went down significantly. Then, in the past year, with all the federal policy changes… we’ve seen it grow exponentially,” Blue Paca said.

The foundation, she added, is anticipating more than 11,000 families in the county to be at risk of losing some or all of their current SNAP benefits. At the state level, SNAP benefits will be reduced by somewhere between $11 million and $15 million a month.

The Fairfield County Food Security Fund will take a two-pronged approach to reducing hunger. One part of the work will focus on strengthening organizations in the area’s food networks. These include big-name food banks, independent pantries on college campuses and hospitals, grassroots and faith-based networks and other groups that focus on people who are especially vulnerable and overlooked, such as veterans and those returning from incarceration. The fund will also support local farmers and growers who supply underserved communities and have been impacted by funding cuts.

For Blue Paca, funding beyond the bigger food banks is important since neighborhood-based organizations and mutual aid groups are often sought by people who may be uncomfortable with seeking help.

“For a lot of people, this is such a sensitive and personal issue… One of the things we know now is that we are seeing people in food pantry lines who have never been food insecure, who have never had to ask for help in that way before,” Blue Paca said.

The fund will also seek to address hunger over the long term by focusing on advocacy and addressing the structural causes of food insecurity. Blue Paca acknowledged that while the foundation doesn’t have the leverage to do much at the federal level, it can help effect change in its state. The foundation’s goals for this work include pushing for Connecticut to adopt universal school breakfast and expanding students’ access to lunch with no barriers.

The Boston Foundation fosters collaboration to help sustain families

In August of last year, the Boston Foundation announced the launch of its Meeting the Moment: Sustaining Families Initiative, a long-term project inspired both by rising hunger and the cuts to federal food programs. Like the Fairfield County Food Security Fund, the initiative will involve a multipronged approach to addressing hunger.

“The Boston Foundation is maybe not unique but certainly distinctive in our capacity to both do research, to convene, to be a funder, to be an advocate and a partner to support nonprofit organizations at the front line of making sure that everyone in the region… [has] the food they need,” said Lee Pelton, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation.

The initiative has three major goals: to distribute funding that responds to current needs, to identify ways to protect systems and institutions, and to collaboratively reimagine what a more resilient safety net system can look like, Pelton said.

The effort began with an initial $1.9 million for the Greater Boston Food Bank and other local and regional foodrelated organizations. The City of Boston contributed $500,000, and the initiative has raised a total of $7.6 million so far. As of January, the Boston Foundation, its partners and its donors have collectively distributed $6.7 million in aid.

One important lesson from the Boston Foundation’s approach is recognizing the importance of collaboration. “No one can do it alone,” Pelton said. “We were in partnership with the city, with food banks, with stores and bodegas.”

Hunger is too big of an issue for one — or even a few — funders to tackle individually, even at a regional level. As such, working alongside partners, whether they be other funders, businesses or local and state governments, is critical.

For the Boston Foundation, addressing hunger involves more than just making grants. “This is a multidimensional problem that [needs] a multi-dimensional solution,” Pelton said, adding, “It’s not just about grants. If you stop at grants, you won’t have the impact that you want.” As such, the Boston Foundation aims to integrate its work around hunger with adjacent issues, such as rising housing costs and work opportunities.

“Hunger and a lack of food is one aspect of a larger system failure,” Pelton said.

How the Community Foundation of Howard County convenes donors for food assistance

Howard County, Maryland, is one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. Despite that fact, the need for food assistance there is “surprisingly high,” according to Dan Flynn, director of development and external relations for the Community Foundation of Howard County (CFHC), the oldest community foundation in Maryland.

“I’m sure you’re hearing this everywhere: People who never thought that they would need assistance from a food bank…are [now] going there to get assistance,” Flynn said.

CFHC may be small, but it’s been able to mobilize critical resources to address issues in the county, including hunger. Once a quarter, CFHC brings together a small group of its most engaged and high-capacity donors to discuss specific topics, including food insecurity, housing, education and healthcare, among others.

Last April, the group discussed the needs that the Community Action Council of Howard County, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting poverty, was seeing, Flynn said. Community Action Council is responsible for running the county’s food bank and Head Start program, and offers housing and weatherization assistance. After CFHC’s roundtable in April, donors were able to directly respond and support the food bank and the Community Action Council.

Due to its proximity to Washington, D.C., and the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Howard County is home to many government employees and military families. Between layoffs and last year’s government shutdown, which saw hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed, the need for assistance increased.

“We activated something that we have called our Community Relief Fund, and had a campaign where any dollars that came in for the month of November, we would divide… between Community Action Council’s food bank and another organization that provides food assistance and helps with food insecurity called Columbia Community Cares,” Flynn said.

According to Flynn, the advantages community foundations have when it comes to addressing hunger include their ability to move quickly and their proximity to the people in need.

“Community foundations are the pulse of the community,” he said. “[They] have boots on the ground, and relationships with nonprofits and donors and can connect those. They can respond quickly to the needs in the community.”

How national funders can support hunger at the local level

Given community foundations’ understanding of local needs and their relationships with local nonprofits, national funders can help make a difference in addressing hunger by supporting them.

“For larger or national funders, finding intermediaries like community foundations and other organizations that have a broader understanding of the landscape in any given place or region is critically important because the dollars will be maximized and they will go where they’re most needed through those types of partnerships,” Blue Paca said.

Another thing for funders to consider is the use of the phrase “food insecurity.” While food insecurity and hunger are not the same thing, the use of jargon or clinical phrasing can distance people from the basic issue at hand, Pelton said.

He added, “This is an issue about hungry children and individuals and families. They don’t get up in the morning thinking they’re feeling food insecure. They get up in the morning and go to bed at night knowing that they are hungry. We both honor and emphasize that this is about alleviating, as much as we can, hunger for others.”