Space to Erase Hunger Capital Campaign

MANNA FoodBank firmly believes that nobody should have to live with the fear that they will not have enough food on the table to feed their children. Since 1983, MANNA has been providing food with hope and dignity to people in need in Western North Carolina. In our first year, we distributed 40,000 pounds of food. We now distribute more than 40,000 pounds every day.

Last year, MANNA turned away more than 500,000 pounds of nutritious food simply because we did not have the freezer and cooler space to receive it. By renovating and expanding our existing facilities, we can receive and efficiently distribute more food to our neighbors.

The Space to Erase Hunger campaign is critical to our future and is a huge step toward achieving our vision of a hunger-free WNC. We hope you will join us in this effort. Watch our short campaign video to see the challenges we face and what our partners in the community are doing in the work to end hunger.

40 percent of the food produced in our country never makes it to the table. Billions of pounds of food goes to waste every year, enough to easily feed every hungry person in the United States. Sometimes it is a truckload of sweet potatoes that are not the right size for market or yogurt nearing the sell-by date on a grocer’s shelf. These kinds of good, safe surplus food will be lost between the field and the grocery cart if not for the work of MANNA. The Space to Erase Hunger Capital Campaign will fund renovations so that MANNA may capitalize on every opportunity to acquire food. Our capacity solution includes the following features:

• Expansion of cold storage space, resulting in a 400 percent increase in freezer capacity and a 171 percent increase in cooler space.
• Increase in storage space and racking for dry food and grocery products by 24 percent.
• Additional racking and warehouse space within our two buildings providing increased storage, safety, and efficiency.
• A new volunteer café.
• Additional loading docks for greater efficiency, and a dedicated loading dock for our Ingles reclaim operations.
• Enhancements in our Information Technology (IT). These new technologies will increase effectiveness and efficiency and provide stability for future operations.
• Improvements in our meeting space for agency and community education on nutrition and food safety.

The impact of the campaign will be less hunger in Western North Carolina. If we increase our distribution to 20 million pounds a year, that will equal more than 4 million additional meals for hungry families. Through the Space to Erase Hunger project, MANNA FoodBank will be able to achieve the following:

• Provide more food to more people.
• Supply more fresh produce and proteins, which will allow our clients to make better food choices.
• Add stability to the lives of food insecure people throughout our region.
• Empower our partner agencies through education and increased collaboration.

Honorary Capital Campaign Chair David Holt

We need your support to make our goal. The 107,600 people in our region who sought food assistance last year are counting on us so that they may have a better tomorrow, a tomorrow without the barrier of hunger, a tomorrow that includes a stronger community for everyone. The complete campaign brochure for the Space to Erase Hunger campaign may be downloaded here: CapitalCampaignBrochure.