Did your summer fly by as quickly as ours? It feels as if we’ve hardly had time to catch our breath this year. Let’s catch up!

We Moved!

In July, Food For Free signed a lease on a great new program space in Somerville’s Inner Belt neighborhood.

Wait. Didn’t Food For Free just acquire a new space last year? Yes. Our space at 73 First Street was always going to be temporary. Urban Spaces generously rented us the space well below market rates with the understanding that it was a short-term solution. And, frankly, our programs are growing so quickly, we’d already outgrown that space anyway.

The Inner Belt location, with its loading dock and expanded cold-storage is making it possible for us to receive and handle pallets of donated food—quantities we simply couldn’t manage previously. This space will support our goal of distributing more than 6 million pounds of food over the next year.

Excited to see it? Sign up for a volunteer shift here.

Four Stars!

We are so excited—and maybe just a little bit proud—to announce that Food For Fee has debuted on Charity Navigator with four stars, their highest rating! We received a score of 100 out of 100 for accountability and transparency and a score of 92.5/100 for our finances. Charity Navigator says you can “Give with Confidence” to Food For Free. (We knew that, but it’s still nice to hear.) Check out our profile here.

New Program Names

In an effort to highlight what makes our programs great—the beautiful, fresh, healthy food—and to reduce some confusion, we’re changing up a few program names this fall. Introducing:

• Healthy Eats (formerly Home Delivery)
• Weekend Eats (formerly the Cambridge and Somerville Weekend Backpack Program)
• Weekend Eats Carrot Cards (new this year!)

Food For Free in the News

We’ve received some nice media coverage this summer, including an episode of the Cool Change podcast, a piece in Cambridge Day about our move. You can see ALL of our coverage here.

Funding Updates

First, a HUGE THANK YOU to Takeda for their incredibly generous support of the Just Eats program. This grant will keep this critical program—an important new source of good, healthy food for pantries and their clients this year—running through the end of this year.

We are also grateful to these businesses and foundations for their support of Food For Free this summer:

• Bank of America Charitable Foundation
• Baupost Group
• Cummings Foundation
• Didriks
• Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation
• Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation
• Harvard University
• LGA
• Liberty Mutual Foundation
• Louis and Anne Abrons Foundation, Inc.

We’d also like to give a shout out to our awesome business partners, who came through with incredibly generous sponsorships this year—even though the Party Under the Harvest Moon is virtual.

• Alexandria Real Estate Equities
• Bernard Johnson Hagan Couto and Co.
• Cambridge Savings Bank
• Charles R. Myer & Partners, Ltd.
• MIT
• Takeda
• Trinity Property Management

These businesses are true partners; they understand that supporting the Party means supporting healthy food for all. Thank you to all of them!

Before you go, make sure you’ve caught up on our summer programs here and then go see what’s planned for the fall over here.

Thanks for reading!