What is AmpleHarvest.org?
Founded by CNN Hero and World Food Prize nominee Gary Oppenheimer, AmpleHarvest.org is a nationwide non-profit that uses technology to educate and enable the estimated 61 million (up from 42 million in pre-COVID19 world) Americans who grow food in home and community gardens to easily donate their surplus harvest to one of 8,297 registered local food pantries spread across all 50 states.
These food pantries help nourish the one out of six Americans (including a quarter of all kids under six) that rely on these pantries.
Mission Statement
To provide food insecure people with a sustained source of fresh, nutritious produce by educating and enabling America’s gardeners to donate their surplus harvests to local food pantries.
Programs
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AmpleHarvest.org
AmpleHarvest.org’s core program, Ampleharvest.org's work is to reduce food waste by helping to assure that surplus garden food gets to local food pantries. This involves two parallel work-flows: Adding food pantries to the AmpleHarvest.org search engine so they can be found by the gardeners, and educating home and community gardeners that they can donate food to a local food pantry.
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AmpleHarvest.org In Indian Country
AmpleHarvest.org In Indian Country will take our already proven model of solving hunger and the waste of food by connecting America’s gardeners with local food pantries, and adapt it to address the distinct circumstances found in Indian Country. This will include a unique food pantry model, lack of traditional street addresses or zip codes or limited Internet access in some communities, while also respecting National sovereignty.
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Faith Fights Food Waste
Faith Fights Food Waste (formerly Food Waste Weekend) is an educational program from AmpleHarvest.org that helps the clergy of all faiths learn about food waste and then enables them to give sermons on the issue. Faith Fights Food Waste is unique in that it enables clergy of different faiths to give faith specific sermons all on the same issue and all on the same weekend.
Quote from the Founder
AmpleHarvest.org is the answer to the classic ‘excess supply not reaching the demand’ dilemma that has up to now resulted in vast amounts of food wasted in millions of gardens across America while the needy in the community remained malnourished and hungry.”Founder Gary Oppenheimer, November 2010
Collaborations
AmpleHarvest.org has been working closely with many organzations as part of our effort to help more people learn that the solution to hunger in America is in their backyard
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Worked together with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative, to enable healthier eating for millions of people by providing access to the healthy food that would otherwise be unaffordable.
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Winner of the Glynwood Wave of the Future 2011 award for innovation and leadership in sustainable agriculture and regional food systems.
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Collaborations with a number of organizations such as Campus Kitchens, the National Gardening Association and the Green Education Foundation are focused on helping more children and teenagers learn about healthy eating and have or create access to fresh produce.
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Working with AARP, we are working to educate, encourage and enable more gardeners to donate surplus food from gardens to their neighbors in need.
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AmpleHarvest.org and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) have a joint campaign focused on helping more people become aware of the impact of donated fresh food on America’s veterans, all to many of whom need the help of local food pantries to help feed their families.
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The US Department of Agriculture has been helping to promote AmpleHarvest.org to America’s 95,000 Master Gardeners.
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The National Council of Churches have been working together to help more food pantries housed in local churches become aware of and register at AmpleHarvest.org.
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been working together to help education Americans on the environmental impact of wasted food.
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The Green Education Foundation and AmpleHarvest.org are working together to encourage children to learn to grow food to be donated to pantries as part of the “Plant With A Purpose” program.
More Information
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Our History
Read how Ampleharvest.org has evolved since our founding in late 2008 by Gary Oppenheimer.
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Our Financials
Download our 2022 annual report, or our IRS 990 form.
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About Our Founder
Gary is a sought after food waste thought leader, World Food Prize nominee, CNN Hero, and lecturer and speaker.
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Staff and Board
The team and board behind the work we do at Ampleharvest.org
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