Donate to feed hungry kids and help ensure that all our nation’s children have the food they need to thrive

To address the alarming growth of childhood hunger in Colorado, we invested in two critical programs that reach high numbers of hungry kids with nutritious food all year long – School Breakfast and Summer Meals, and set our sites on making sure that Colorado’s hungriest kids are getting both. By providing grants, staff, and technical assistance to local organizations throughout Colorado we enabled our partner to open new summer meal sites and help families find the free summer meals for kids in need. And to combat the growing number of kids coming to school too hungry to learn, our partnership launched the Colorado School Breakfast Challenge and through grants, training, and staff assistance, we changed the way schools are providing breakfast to their students. Both efforts showed dramatic results.

Finding the greatest opportunity to do good - we're making dollars go further.

Your donation combines with others to help Share Our Strength provide food, supplies and technical assistance to organizations feeding kids. It also funds our work to recruit new summer meal sites, help schools provide breakfast for kids facing hunger, and teach families how to prevent hunger at home. We do all of these things to reach hungry kids in communities across America and we’re seeing remarkable results. In Maryland, our work to connect kids to summer meals yielded 10 meals for every $1 invested. And in Colorado, just $46 helped connect children facing hunger to breakfast every school day and meals all summer long. But the costs and tactics vary from place to place. Sometimes communities have the infrastructure, but need help raising awareness of their programs or learning the best practices from other successful community efforts. Sometimes, funding something as simple as mobile meals trucks gets food to the children in need the fastest. We’re finding the need and making every dollar count.

Share Our Strength ensures that every dollar donated has a direct impact on our nation’s children. We accomplish this critically important mission by making targeted investments that leverage enormous community resources across the country. In fiscal year 2011, Share Our Strength had total revenues of $64.6 million and operating expenses of $59.9 million in support of the No Kid Hungry program. Approximately $46 million, or 76% of total operating expenses, were invested in Share Our Strength’s program activities that connect kids facing hunger to healthy meals served in their communities.

Share Our Strength’s investments in best in class fundraising efforts to support the No Kid Hungry program, which represented 18% of our 2011 budget, have resulted in the organization achieving significant growth since 2008 and provided the strong, sustainable funding base needed to accomplish our bold goal of ending childhood hunger in America. The final 6% of our 2011 budget were general and management expenses, which includes essentials like technology, infrastructure and communications efforts to raise awareness of hunger issues and to mobilize a network of more than 250,000 activists, working to end childhood hunger in their communities. We are proud of our smart investments and of the important results we’re seeing across the country.

Share Our Strength’s auditors have expressed an unqualified opinion on our financial statements. These statements will help interested supporters as they review the financial results and strong financial condition of our organization. You can access the complete set of financial statements and notes here.

No child should grow up hungry in America, but one in five children struggles with hunger. Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign is ending childhood hunger in America by ensuring all children get the healthy food they need, every day.

The No Kid Hungry campaign connects kids in need with nutritious food and teaches their families how to cook healthy, affordable meals. By doing this, we surround children in this nation with healthy food where they live, learn and play.

We’re ending childhood hunger by connecting kids to effective nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals. This work is accomplished through the No Kid Hungry network, made up of private citizens, public officials, business leaders and others providing innovative hunger solutions in their communities. These public-private partnerships work together to identify and eliminate the barriers that may prevent children from accessing existing food and nutrition programs.

Through its Cooking Matters program, the No Kid Hungry campaign educates and empowers low-income families to stretch their food budgets so their kids get healthy meals at home. Cooking Matters participants learn to shop smarter, use nutrition information to make healthier food choices, and cook delicious, affordable meals.

The No Kid Hungry campaign also engages the public to make ending childhood hunger a national priority, working to shine the spotlight on the crisis and mobilize a powerful movement of individuals committed to bold action. We build partnerships that enlist influential individuals in the cause and advocate policy changes needed to achieve our goals.

The No Kid Hungry campaign is supported by unique programs that raise critical funds and allow our champions to share their strengths in the battle to end childhood hunger. Working closely with the culinary community and relying on the strength of its volunteers, No Kid Hungry hosts innovative culinary fundraising events and develops pioneering cause marketing campaigns that support ending childhood hunger. This work also allows us to invest in community organizations effectively helping feed hungry kids on the local level.

Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry strategy is a measurable one. It's not about measuring food (we have plenty of it to go around). It's about measuring and leveraging programs that are effective and already in place. If every eligible child used these programs, No Kid Hungry would be reality in America.

But millions of kids in need don't participate. That's why the programmatic priority of our No Kid Hungry strategy is focused on feeding hungry kids byincreasing participation in five programs that provide nutritious food at home, during school and when school is out:

We have established target participation rates for SNAP, school breakfast and summer meals programs (see "Goals" above), and are establishing similar target rates for WIC and afterschool snacks and meals programs.

We measure participation through our No Kid Hungry program partners and the community organizations that we support with grants. Each partnership or grant recipient submits an annual report of their progress. We have also developed a "dashboard" mechanism for tracking the key indicators for each programmatic partnership. The tool allows the partnership to display trends, make projections, and identify trouble spots early enough to address them.

Nutrition education is our sixth area of measurable programmatic focus. Share Our Strength'sCooking Mattersprogram teaches low-income families and children how to make healthy, affordable meals on their own. The program includes a disciplined evaluation component that documents the before-and-after course knowledge, skills, behaviors and attitudes of class participants. The data are stored and processed through an online database and reported annually in the Cooking Matters Annual Review.

You can read our full annual report here to learn more about the impact of the No Kid Hungry campaign.

Every person makes a difference in the fight to end childhood hunger. Our network of teachers, parents, community leaders, kids, teens, chefs, and volunteers from all walks of life take actions big and small to help connect kids with nutritious food where they live, learn and play. It all starts when you take the No Kid Hungry Pledge and learn about ways to get involved. Whether you are a teacher sharing stories of hunger in your classroom, an employee asking your colleagues or online community to join in the fight by taking the No Kid Hungry Pledge, a mother writing Congress to tell them to protect critical programs that help feed hungry kids, a restaurateur raising funds during Dine Out For No Kid Hungry, or a chef who volunteers their time at a to teach a Cooking Matters course, visit policymakers during lobbying days in Washington, D.C. or participating in a Taste of the Nation event , every action and every dollar counts. And because of our unique No Kid Hungry campaign model, every dollar you donate can help connect a child in need with up to 10 meals.

Donating to charity is one of the most powerful ways to pay tribute to a person’s life, whether you are honoring their memory, expressing condolences to a family, or celebrating a significant occasion such as birthdays, weddings or special accomplishments. Simply complete this honorary form to make a secure, on-line honor donation to benefit Share Our Strength’s work to end childhood hunger in America.

You can change the amount, date, or any other details of your monthly gift by contacting Deborah Heller at dheller@strength.org or 202.649.4352. Or sign up to join our monthly giving club, The Hunger Core today.

No child should grow up hungry in America, but one in five children struggles with hunger. Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign is ending childhood hunger in this nation by ensuring all children get the healthy food they need, every day.

By connecting kids in need with nutritious food and teaching their families how to cook healthy, affordable meals, the No Kid Hungry campaign surrounds children with healthy food where they live, learn and play.

We’re ending childhood hunger by connecting kids to effective nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals. This work is accomplished through the No Kid Hungry network, made up of private citizens, public officials, nonprofits, business leaders and others providing innovative hunger solutions in their communities. These public-private partnerships work together to identify and eliminate the barriers that may prevent children from accessing existing food and nutrition resources.

Through its Cooking Matters program, the No Kid Hungry campaign equips low-income families with skills to stretch their food budgets so their kids get healthy meals at home. Cooking Matters participants learn to shop smarter, use nutrition information to make healthier food choices, and cook delicious, affordable meals.

The No Kid Hungry campaign also engages the public to make ending childhood hunger a national priority, working to shine the spotlight on the crisis and mobilize a powerful movement of individuals committed to bold action. We build partnerships that enlist influential individuals in the cause and advocate policy changes needed to achieve our goals.  

The No Kid Hungry campaign is supported by unique programs that raise critical funds and allow our champions to share their strengths in the battle to end childhood hunger. Working closely with the culinary community and relying on the strength of its volunteers, No Kid Hungry hosts innovative culinary fundraising events and develops pioneering cause marketing campaigns that support ending childhood hunger. This work also allows us to invest in community organizations effectively fighting hunger on the local level.

Together, we are making No Kid Hungry a reality in America.

Here are a few of our accomplishments from the past year alone.

We are proud to have an overall rating of three stars from Charity Navigator and a four star rating for accountability and transparency.