The Hunger Center is pleased to announce the grantees of the 2025 Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation backpack feeding program mini-grants. This year’s grantees include 131 projects across the U.S., representing 118 communities in 37 states plus the District of Columbia. Together these programs will provide an estimated 22,000 backpacks full of shelf-stable food items to take home to last over the weekend or holidays when school meals are not served.
2025 Backpack Program Grantees
(Click to see the list of grantees for each state.)
Since 2006, the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation has been a driving force behind weekend and holiday hunger relief for students across the U.S. This year, the Foundation chose to expand the partnership with the Congressional Hunger Center to reach more organizations in need of support. Thanks to this expanded partnership, together we’ve been able to reach over 400% more communities than last year.
Each grantee’s program is tailored to the unique circumstances of the community it serves; some providers see the backpack program as a starting point to connect families with a whole range of integrated services. “Our Backpack Program is now fully embedded across all ten Franklin Township schools, deploying two distinct models to deliver essential food directly to the hands of our most vulnerable students,” said Derek Smith, Executive Director of the Franklin Food Bank of Somerset, New Jersey. “More critically, this program is designed as a direct bridge, successfully connecting these families back to the Franklin Food Bank for more comprehensive food assistance, including our Client Choice Market and case management services. This approach ensures we are not just providing temporary relief, but are actively working with the schools to stabilize and uplift the entire family unit toward long-term food security.”
In the 2023-2024 school year more than 29 million children participated in the National School Lunch Program and over 15 million children participated in the School Breakfast Program1. For many the free and reduced-price school meals they receive at school may be the only nutritious food they eat in a day. The model backpack program is designed to provide shelf-stable, nutritious meals to ensure that children who rely on school feeding programs don’t go hungry when school is out of session.
“When school doors close, hunger shouldn’t follow children home,” said Roxanne Moore, Executive Director of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation. “By expanding our partnership with the Congressional Hunger Center, we’ve reached hundreds more communities than in previous years—empowering local organizations, the heartbeat of hunger relief, with the tools and resources they need most. Every grant, every backpack, every meal represents hope and the chance for every child to dream big without the shadow of hunger.”
“At the Hunger Center we’re committed to the idea that all children should have enough nutritious food to reach their full potential,” said Executive Director Shannon Maynard. “We’re glad to work in partnership with Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation to support community-based organizations, whose volunteers and staff can use these grants to continue their important work of nourishing future generations.”
Founded in 1993 by a bipartisan group of Members of Congress, the Congressional Hunger Center is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to the principle that access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food is a basic human right. The Hunger Center develops, inspires, and connects leaders in the movement to end hunger and advocates for public policies that will create a food secure world.
With support from Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation, the Hunger Center’s Zero Hunger Internship program has brought more than 100 student leaders to Washington, D.C., for paid internships with anti-hunger policy organizations, and its Zero Hunger Academy online courses have trained thousands in the basics of hunger and advocacy in the U.S.
- Food Research & Action Center. The Reach of School Breakfast and Lunch The Reach of School Breakfast and Lunch (n.d.). https://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/Reach-Report-2025.pdf [↩]