NEW #FRNds JOIN OUR FIGHT AGAINST FOOD WASTE AND HUNGER

FRNds, our movement just got bigger and stronger. Food Recovery Network recently welcomed four new faces to help us fight waste and feed people. The growth of this organization is only possible when we join forces with amazing people who bring their plethora of talents to our shared table.

Let’s get to the introductions.

Our Board of Directors grew by two.

Help us welcome Matt Kruse, a leader in social responsibility and sustainability, and Kent Wilson, who is passionate about public policy and reducing food waste. Matt and Kent bring a lot of value to our board.

We’d also like to recognize the continued commitment of Ernie Minor and Tim Kunin. Ernie and Tim served on our board for three consecutive terms. With their guidance, FRN went further than before and explored new places. Thank you for providing your support through the years!

Our FRN staff also grew by two.

Katie Jones is FRN’s first chief operating officer. Katie’s experience as the director of strategic initiatives for a nonprofit coalition will take FRN to new heights. Also joining us as chief program officer is Jon Wogman, whose previous work focused on ending hunger. We’re excited to see where he takes our programs.

Get to know Matt, Kent, Katie and Jon.

They each live by our mission to create a more sustainable food supply chain that reduces food waste. Get a small glimpse of who they are below or read their full bios here.

MATT KRUSE

Board Member

Matt is a corporate communications professional with more than 15 years of experience leading best-in-class social responsibility and sustainability programs across financial services, retail and e-commerce industries.

KENT WILSON

Board Member

As a director for state and local government affairs at Target, Kent leads legislative and public affairs activities in the Pacific Northwest, Mountain Region, and Southwest. He’s a passionate advocate for the role public policy plays in cutting food loss and waste.

KATIE JONES

Chief Operating Officer

Katie is delighted to join FRN as its first chief operating officer. In this role, Katie will partner with the executive director to oversee programming, fundraising, communications and operations for the organization.

JON WOGMAN

Chief Program Officer

Jon joined FRN in 2019 as the chief program officer and is responsible for the management and strategic growth of FRN’s programs. He is excited about increasing partnerships with college students, higher education institutions, and other key stakeholders to end hunger and food waste.

Looking to the Sky Above: Food Recovery Network’s 2019 Annual Report

FRNds:

Thank you for your continued support as we build Food Recovery Network to become the impactful student-driven hunger- and climate-fighting movement that this nation needs.

FRN supporters proved critical in 2019 as we entered into year three of our three-year strategic plan with our most ambitious goals to date. Our 2019 annual report will highlight:

1. Our impact

2. Our partnerships that propel our progress

3. Our voice within this growing food recovery movement

We’ve seen many successes through the years, and we are especially proud of the following milestones:

Since FRN’s start in 2011:

• 3,852,778 pounds total of food recovered

• 3,210,648 meals total donated

• More than 350 community partners across the U.S. within our network

In 2019 alone:

• 881,063 pounds recovered

• 734,219 meals donated

• 4,565 pounds average recovered by chapter

• 17 new chapters nationwide

• $2,120,251 generated by the value of student volunteers’ time

This expansion would not have been possible without our established chapters, partners, and donors. One of the newest partnerships that truly accelerated our impact is with Whole Foods Market in Florida, Southern California, and Arizona, where proceeds from 5% Give Back Day led to our largest revenue year to date.

Food Recovery Network is poised to continue this positive momentum in the coming years with the growth of this student-led movement. Our national Board of Directors remains dedicated to securing more resources for FRN that will provide the bandwidth needed to accept the challenges of our next ambitious goal – to exponentially grow the number of people we gather around our food recovery table.

You’ve been with us since we began prepping to gather people around our table, and now we are excited to take this journey from a shared meal to a bright sky of food recovery opportunities swirling around us.

Regina Anderson – Executive Director

Perteet Spencer – Board President

Giving Back While Moving Out

When students move out of their residence halls for the summer, they tend to leave behind a lot of things, and that includes perfectly good food. As students rush out of their dorms, excited to finally be finished with a busy Spring semester, they might forget about the huge box of granola bars buried in the back of their cabinet or the giant jar of peanut butter they never opened. Unfortunately, when this happens, that food is thrown away as residential life services clean out the dorms. This perfectly good food is left to rot in a landfill, emitting methane gas rather than feeding hungry people in the community. Luckily, there are organizations working with Food Recovery Network (FRN) to ensure that this food never goes to waste.

You can see the excitement from the University of Delaware chapter as they collected more than 780 pounds of food in 2019.

Move for Hunger (MFH), an organization founded in 2009 that works with moving companies all around the United States to collect food to donate as people move out of their homes, is one of those organizations. Since their founding, they have recovered more than 16 million pounds of food. Last year, FRN had the pleasure of partnering with MFH for our third annual Move Out For Hunger event, expanding the model that MFH has built to college campuses around the United States.

Since 2017, FRN and MFH have worked together to ensure FRN chapters collect non-perishable foods from students as they move out of their residence halls. Our FRN chapters provide the people power to raise awareness for the event and collect food donations, while MFH leverages their partnerships with moving companies to provide the transportation needed to deliver the food to hunger-fighting nonprofit organizations.

The entire MOFH team at Olivet Nazarene University huddles up as they collected more than 980 pounds of food!

As the Food Recovery Verified VISTA, I had the pleasure of planning MOFH in Spring 2019, where nine FRN chapters hosted MOFH events on their campuses: Brandeis University, Goucher College, Knox College, Lawrence University, Olivet Nazarene University, University of Delaware, University of New Mexico, University of Texas at Dallas, and West Virginia University. All of the students who participated saw the direct impact of their work as the piles of surplus food grew. Thanks to the hard work of our student leaders, the truck drivers, MFH, and FRN staff, 4,164 pounds of food was recovered and delivered to those who need it the most. This event was a huge success and we couldn’t be more grateful for the hard work of everyone involved.

I joined our Goucher College chapter to recover almost 100 pounds of food.

We are especially grateful to our chapter at Goucher College. Not only did they host a successful event, but they were also kind enough to invite me and Cassie Olovsson, our Manager of External Partnerships, to join them. We were so proud to see the passion of our Goucher student leaders, as they worked hard to make this event a success. Originally, there was a fear that the chapter would not have the materials they needed to collect food from students around campus because food collection boxes were in short supply. But thanks to the resourcefulness of their volunteers, our Goucher College chapter was able to gather boxes from local grocery stores, who generously donated them so that the chapter could collect the food donations. The Goucher chapter recovered almost 100 pounds of food and thanks to our partners at MFH, the food was delivered to the Maryland Food Bank in Baltimore.

We want to thank Move for Hunger for their hard work ensuring that the food donations that our FRN chapters collected were delivered to nonprofit organizations in their communities. We would also like to thank Clif Bar, who were generous enough to supply hundreds of Clif Bars to our students to hand out to people as an incentive to donate their food. We look forward to hosting another successful Move Out for Hunger event in 2020. We have 30 chapters committed to hosting this event in 2020 so it is sure to be an even greater success this year! If you are a company that is interested in getting involved and learning more about how you can sponsor the event, don’t hesitate to email us at info@foodrecoverynetwork.org.