Second Harvest Heartland, Saint Paul

While one-time food and grocery donations are important to people in need, the question still remains: how can we ensure that same person isn’t in need again tomorrow, or in a month?

Second Harvest Heartland addresses this question by working to provide long-term hunger relief to the community. As a member of Feeding America, and the Upper Midwest’s biggest hunger-relief organization, Second Harvest Heartland continuously accepts donations of dry, refrigerated, and frozen food and stores them in 90,000+ square feet of space. From there, the organization's fleet of trucks delivers the donations to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and other community centers. But food distribution is only part of Second Harvest Heartland's mission.

The organization runs programs and initiatives such as Food Rescue, which prevents millions of pounds of food from going unused. Professional drivers head to local grocers to collect food that would otherwise be thrown away—including fresh produce, dairy, and meat—and distributes them to soup kitchens and other partners in Second Harvest Heartland’s 59-county service area. Other programs help educate members of the community, empowering them to get involved in the fight to end hunger.