Food Security Grants for Nonprofits
Learn more about grants for food security by exploring Inside Philanthropy’s list of top food security funders below. Subscribers can also explore funders using our Grantfinder Search Tool. Become a member.
Key Funders
- Albertsons Companies Foundation
- America Online Giving Foundation
- Bank of America Charitable Foundation
- Clif Family Foundation
- Howard G. Buffett Foundation
- Enterprise Holdings Foundation
- General Mills Foundation
- Gates Foundation
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- W.K. Kellogg Foundation
- Kresge Foundation
- Kroger Foundation
- Network for Good
- Otto Bremer Trust
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- PayPal Giving Fund
- Seattle Foundation
- Silicon Valley Community Foundation
- Stupski Foundation
- Walmart Foundation
Funding trends for food security grants
More than 700 million people around the world faced hunger in 2023. People in Gaza, Sudan, and elsewhere are on the brink of famine. In the U.S., 13.5% of households were food-insecure at some point in 2023, an increase from the prior year. The causes of hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition are multiple and intersecting. The World Food Programme names conflict, climate, economy, and displacement as leading causes of the global food crisis. In the U.S., Feeding America identifies the root causes of food insecurity as poverty and unemployment, unaffordable housing, chronic health conditions, racism and discrimination.
Philanthropy strives to address food insecurity and nutrition locally and globally. Donations and grants support a wide range of initiatives, from food banks to food policy advocacy to cutting-edge agriculture research and efforts to transform global food systems.
Where are food security and nutrition grants going?
Philanthropic donors have long recognized that U.S. government programs such as food stamps and school lunch programs do not meet everyone’s needs, and food-oriented nonprofits have been consistent recipients of charitable gifts. In 2023, one in six American adults reported receiving charitable food assistance for their households, the Urban Institute found. Many community foundations, Jewish federations, and Catholic charities have programs to ensure local community members have access to healthy food.
Globally, legacy foundations such as Gates and Rockefeller have invested in large-scale efforts to feed the world’s people. The “Green Revolution” approach — which focused on agricultural technology to produce more food — received substantial philanthropic support in 20th-century efforts to end hunger.
But there is growing disagreement over whether industrial agriculture, which has harmed the planet as well as smaller-scale farmers, is what the world needs, and some funders are starting to resource smaller, more local solutions that prioritize biodiversity and equity.
Even funders who invested heavily in Green Revolution solutions, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, are rethinking their strategies. It’s a shift “from calories to systems” that has been happening over the past decade, IP’s Paul Karon reported.
Another trend among funders is more support for food justice, a movement that aims for universal access to nutritious and affordable food as well as safe and sustainable processes for food and agriculture workers and the planet. Equity-focused funders are directing food and nutrition grants to community-based and BIPOC-led organizations. For example, a pooled fund called Growing Justice, which supports BIPOC-led solutions to transform food systems in the U.S., was founded by the Kresge, Rockefeller, W. K. Kellogg, Panta Rhea, Waverley Street, and Clif Family foundations, as well as the Native American Agriculture Fund.
Grantmaking for food security and nutrition overlaps with grantmaking related to aging, global health, poverty, public health, and the environment. Funders focused on the links between food and climate increasingly focus their food-related grantmaking on sustainable agriculture.
Food security and nutrition grants go to direct services such as food banks, soup kitchens, and meal delivery, as well as to a range of research, advocacy, and movement building efforts. For example, there are grants to educate farmers, grants for nutrition research, and grants for policy advocacy to expand food assistance programs. Food security and nutrition grants can be local, global, and anywhere in between.
Gaps in food and nutrition funding
Within the U.S. and globally, government funding plays a big role in food access, but there remain many gaps that philanthropy attempts to fill, as well as plenty of opportunities for private funders to partner with governments and each other to resource large-scale solutions to the unfolding hunger crisis in the U.S..
There is a need for more philanthropic support for advocacy around food and nutrition, such as advocacy for policies that address the root causes of food insecurity, IP’s Martha Ramirez reported. Funders including the Robertson Foundation, Bezos Earth Fund, and the IKEA Foundation also see a need for more philanthropic involvement in efforts to reduce food loss and waste, an issue at the intersection of food access and sustainable agriculture.
The combined pressures of climate change, inflation, tariff war and, under the second Trump administration, massive cuts to SNAP benefits, defunding food banks, public school lunch and farming subsidies, means the gap in funding for food security and nutrition has expanded at a catastrophic rate. This leaves nonprofits to reconsider how they fund this space in the coming months and years as crises converge.
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