AmpleHarvest.org
No Food Left Behind
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
America's food pantries rarely, if ever, have fresh food. America's 62 million gardeners grow 11 billion pounds of surplus harvests every year. This food, enough to feed 28 million hungry people, has been historically lost to waste. AmpleHarvest.org bridges these two problems together on a nationwide level to make each, a solution for the other.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
AmpleHarvest.org
This program is a nationwide effort eliminate the waste of locally grown food in America.
We do thing by educating, encouraging and enabling America's 42 million home and community gardeners to share their excess harvest with a local food pantry.
The program is two tiered... both in reaching the growers across America and helping them learn that they can now donate food, AND enabling them to do so by expanding the opt in registry of food pantries eager for the assistance.
The result is less food wasted, more healthy food for the nations food insecure families and an improved environment. See www.AmpleHarvest.org/atwork for 2 recent TV news stories.
Faith Fights Food Waste
Faith Fights Food Waste (#FoodWasteWeekend) – a nationwide opportunity for the faith community (Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, Unitarian-Universalists, and non-secular spiritual) to learn about and address waste of food from their own faith perspective – has been announced by AmpleHarvest.org. It educates and enables clergy of all faiths to give faith specific sermons on food waste including donating excess garden produce to local food pantries.
The program includes calls to action and even material for the religious school. Note that AmpleHarvest.org does not promote religion or any particular religion, but it does partner with the faith community as part of its goal of enabling food pantries nationwide to receive locally grown surplus harvests.
Where we work
Awards
CNN Hero 2010
CNN
Greatest Person of the Day 2010
Huffington's Post
Game Changer 2011 2011
Huffington's Post
In Harmony With Hope 2012
Elfenworks Foundation
Points of Light 2013
Points of Light
Nominee 2014
World Food Prize
Affiliations & memberships
Points of Light Foundation 2013
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of participating food pantries
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
AmpleHarvest.org
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Number of member food pantries. Critical for the number of locations growers can donate food to. As of 12/23, this covers 4,200 communities across all 50 states. Note COVID forced some to close
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
AmpleHarvest.org eliminates the waste of locally grown fresh food that occurs in millions of home and community gardens across all 50 states by enabling these growers to share their surplus harvest with a local food pantry on a sustainable and permanent basis. This is critical because the food bank/pantry network in the United States has, up to now, been unable to accept and distribute fresh food.
AmpleHarvest.org solved that.
Because we use "just-in-time" inventory logic, this logistics free solution does not require food pantries to buy costly refrigeration or storage.
Starting in 2023, with the leadership and help of Tribal elders and Indigenous food sovereignty experts, AmpleHarvest.org has made the program available for use on Native American reservations by solving logistics issues that have prevented other solutions from taking hold.
It important to note that AmpleHarvest.org is not a feeding program - it is a program that gets people fed. We are the infrastructure between the growers across America and the food pantry in their own community.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Our solution has two separate but parallel tracks:
1. Educate growers nationwide that they can, for the first time, donate food. Historically, any attempts to share their bounty was thwarted because they could not find a food pantry, and if/when they found one, the food was refused. The refusal was because the pantries thought they'd be unable to accept and handle the food. The just in time logic built into AmpleHarvest.org solved that. We have partnered with Google, Bonnie Plants, the USDA, Home Depot and others to help gardeners learn that the solution to hunger is in their back yard.
2. Create a customized nationwide search engine of local food pantries eager for the fresh food and make it freely available online. This ongoing effort involves a close working relationship with the nation's Feeding America food bank network. Today, more than 25% of these pantries are a part of AmpleHarvest.org.
Everything AmpleHarvest.org does is cloud-based meaning we can scale to any/every community in real time without the need for local offices or staff/volunteers. This makes AmpleHarvest.org extraordinarily efficient and effective because we're solving misinformation and missing information problems that have kept healthy food from getting to food insecure families.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
AmpleHarvest.org both discovered and documented the problem of garden food waste, and it invented the most efficient solution possible. More importantly, it did so with a methodology that not only scales, but is now being replicated in other countries.
AmpleHarvest.org has demonstrated since 2009 the capacity to use technology to efficiently and simply solve what has historically been viewed as a costly and difficult problem to solve: food waste and hunger.
It was founded by a CNN Hero and World Food Prize nominee and has a staff and board dedicated to solving the issue of local garden produce food waste.
Because the grower him/her self is connected directly to the local food pantry, they deliver the food they are donating. AmpleHarvest.org has no logistics in the transaction.
As a result, our program scales immediately and efficiently as the opportunity growers. We are limited only by the reach of the Internet, the number of food pantries in the network and their distribution across the 50 states.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
As of Dec 2023, AmpleHarvest.org's network includes more than 8,100 or 25% of the food pantries in 4,200 communities across the United States. As we continue to add more pantries to the network and reach more growers, an ever increasing amount of fresh food will be available to millions of hungry people receiving assistance from local food pantries.
75% of the opportunity lies ahead of us - along with 11 billion pounds of fresh food that growers have available to donate.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection, We deal directly with food pantries with little or no contact with the food pantry clients.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
AmpleHarvest.org
Board of directorsas of 01/24/2024
Wendy Gonzalez
Term: 2023 - 2019
Gary Oppenheimer
AmpleHarvest.org, Inc.
Steve Shah
Citrix Inc.
Terry L McCray
McCrary & Company
Brian Kirkpatrick
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Martin Baumann
Adjunct Professor at The Washington Campus
Beth Rosenstein
Deloitte Global Consulting
Matthew Strabone
Palladium Equity Partners
Mike Sutterer
CEO Bonnie Plants
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
No data
We do not display disability information for organizations with fewer than 15 staff.
Equity strategies
Last updated: 01/19/2022GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.