During our October Roundtable Talk, a recurring theme emerged, woven into each of the goals we achieved this past year and stitched into the larger goal we unfurled for this upcoming program year: when we invest in the people within our movement, we surpass our goals. I invite you to read the update below and follow along by listening to our recorded conversation.

We have seen the investment in our FRN national staff and in our incredible student leaders support the larger movement year after year after year. In fact, since the launch of our strategic framework, FRN10X, our network of student leaders and food system partners has doubled within that time. Where we were once a network of 4,000 people, we have grown to a network of more than 8,000 people. FRN’s network of student leaders and alums is multi-generational, and when we committed our resources like staff time, large-scale recovery opportunities, and monetary support for chapters to further strengthen relationships, we have seen our chapters recover more precious food for local communities.

Our commitment to our network goes hand in hand with the diversification of recovery across the food system. Our chapters and food system partners can mobilize on farm fields, large-scale events, college dining halls, restaurants, grocery stores, and more. Each community where we have a presence has different needs. We know to ensure that consistent food access means we must diversify where we recover food.

During the recorded conversation, you will hear the progress made toward our goals from our program year that just concluded on June 30th. Spoiler, yet again, because of the investment in our people, and because of the diversification of food recovery, we surpassed our goals. You will also hear about the new mountain top for Food Recovery Network for this program year and the focus we intend to apply to our work. With FRN10X as our guide, we get clearer and clearer as to how we can achieve recovering surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S. Each year we apply our learning and we make meaning from what our data is telling us.

Through analyzing our data, something important has taken shape that demands our attention and our focus in order to keep the momentum of the movement strong: Student chapters provide consistent food access, but community markets provide a surge of available produce needed to meet the need at key times of the year.

What does this mean? Our student leaders continue to be a vital resource to their communities to provide food access. We always say, our students provide meals one carload of food at a time. They recover food at all hours of the day when many of us have other time demands. They are there to package up and deliver pans of food to homeless shelters and churches. They have worked with their partner agencies for years. They are the constant source, and I am personally in awe of and forever grateful to them.

Second, our data shows that our community produce markets are designed with the growing season of those locations in mind ensuring precious surplus produce has a home with community members. We can increase access to food by donating thousands and thousands of pounds of produce, and ensure large volumes of food aren’t tilled back underground or brought to landfills.

What does this mean for the work ahead? We are striving to grow our network from 8,000 members to 40,000! I ask each of you reading this to talk about the Food Recovery Network with your peers, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and anyone else to whom you can share an inspiring message. By having conversations about FRN’s work, we can normalize food recovery and reduce the waste of perfectly good food.

 For the current program year, our specific goal is to expand FRN’s programming coverage from 60% to 80% of our target areas and to recover 1 million pounds of surplus food from across the supply chain. Our mapping discussion provides more details about where our target areas are and the data supporting our choices. When we achieve this goal, we will be able to feed more people, more quickly.

If you would like to support our work for this program year (and beyond) and are in a place to make a financial contribution to Food Recovery Network, your gift would be most welcomed and immediately put to critical use. Thank you for considering. 

And for all of you who are part of our 8,000 strong, thank you, thank you for all you have done for FRN and for all that you continue to d