FY 2016 Annual Report - Celebrating a Decade of Global Food Banking

Greetings from The Global FoodBanking Network!

I am pleased to share our FY2016 Annual Report, which lays out the strategies, progress and impact for our organization for the period July 2015 – June 2016.

This year, The Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) served food banking organizations in more countries than ever before. Our network now includes organizations in 32 countries, and we were fortunate to host leaders from 38 countries at our annual training institute. Collectively, our network had the most impactful year yet by distributing 928 million pounds of food to more than 6.8 million people in need.

We celebrated GFN’s 10th anniversary in FY16. Over the past decade, it has been our privilege to play a formative role in the launch of now-thriving food banking organizations in 15 countries. In this report, you will read how food bank leaders have leveraged the technical expertise and global connections offered by GFN to create sustainable organizations that provide nourishing food to thousands of families in their communities. As Mauricio Ramirez, one of the cofounders of Banco de Alimentos Diakonia in Guayaquil, Ecuador, said, “Our ‘learning curve’ for the construction of [our food bank] has resulted in success, thanks to GFN and experts, who provided us the ‘know-how’ and who encouraged us to build a self-sustaining organization.”

After nearly a decade of focusing predominately on starting food banks in communities where they are needed, this year we expanded our focus on the second part of our mission: to strengthen food banks where they exist. The food banks in the GFN network are doing impactful work, but there are still millions of hungry children and families they cannot serve due to limited capacity. GFN is determined to continue to partner with them in meeting these needs. And through providing more resources, engaging food bank staff at all levels in our education and training program and broadly making available innovative approaches that drive scale, we can do this.

In FY16, we expanded our education and training offering by launching the GFN e-Learning Center to provide ongoing access to technical expertise and best practices for food bank staff at all levels. To aid leaders in growing their operational effectiveness, we developed an inventory management system and tested the concept through a partnership with Feeding Hong Kong, which is reporting efficiency gains of nearly 30 percent. Finally, we’ve expanded our direct support for building food bank capacity so that organizations in our network can grow their service area and distribute a greater diversity of food, like fruits and vegetables. Due to the GFN capacity-building program, 900,000 people were provided safe and nutritious food in FY16.

GFN’s work is only made possible through the support and confidence of donors and partners like you. On behalf of our Board of Directors and staff, thank you for your commitment to a world free of hunger. It is my hope that this report demonstrates how your investments have helped establish community-based organizations that can meet hunger needs across the globe.

Although GFN has grown significantly in its first decade, there is still far more work to be done. One in four people suffers from malnutrition, and millions could be reached through food banking. GFN is advancing a solution that can nourish a community. We’ve challenged ourselves to partner with those in our network to scale this solution to help nourish the world.

With best regards,

Lisa J. Moon