We are the largest community-based food assistance provider in Montgomery County, Maryland.
We support more than 56,000 individuals each year and help distribute rescued food to partner food assistance providers, community food pantries, and emergency shelters.
Together with our neighbors, volunteers, and partners, we provide healthy food, build community partnerships, and work toward lasting solutions to end hunger.
On this page:
Our mission
Our mission is to strive to eliminate hunger through food distribution, education, and advocacy by providing healthy food, building community partnerships, and working toward lasting solutions to end hunger.
Food distribution
- We provide food access today while fighting for the systemic changes that will end hunger tomorrow.
- We build local food connections that put fresh, healthy food on tables while supporting Montgomery County farms and strengthening our local economy.
Education
- We offer health and nutrition education because knowing how to prepare healthy meals builds long-term wellbeing for families.
- We help households submit applications for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), SUN Bucks, MC Groceries, and free and reduced meals for students.
Advocacy
- We advocate for policies at every level of government that reduce hunger and make food security possible for all residents.
- We understand that food security doesn’t exist in isolation — it connects directly to affordable housing, living-wage jobs, accessible health care and every other aspect of people’s lives.
Our history
Since 1983, Manna has worked to fight hunger, feed hope and transition recipients from a place of scarcity to prosperity.
Manna Food Center’s origins reflect the shared efforts of community, civic and faith leaders to establish a centralized food bank for Montgomery County — and our history is just as remarkable as the people we serve.
When Manna’s doors opened in 1983, they were the doors of a vacant elementary school. Operations began with a meager budget, a single pledge of $3,100 and a donation of 16,000 pounds of food. At the time, Manna served just several hundred people.
Ever-increasing community support has allowed Manna to expand the scope of our work, and original operations are hardly recognizable. Now, we distribute approximately 12,000 pounds of food daily. We operate as more than just a food bank; we are also a center of distribution and nutrition education. We have grown from serving hundreds of people each year to serving over 56,000.
What’s more, our neighbors have progressively rallied around our cause. Today, our extensive network of contributors includes more than 40 grant-making organizations, and more than 12,000 corporate, faith-based, not-for-profit, and individual donors.
In the 1980s, Manna’s founders were driven by the realities of our recession-stricken county. Their steadfast sense of duty and integrity has compelled them to persevere through peaks and valleys of resources and another recession in the first decade of this century.
We are also committed to the next phase of our agency’s evolution so that ending hunger is a possibility, not a slogan. The face of hunger has been changing. The folks we are charged to serve remain under- or unemployed, yet opportunities to address their realities are not at the top of many policymakers’ or philanthropists’ lists of concerns.
These neighbors are full of potential and untapped capacities. As Manna moves from transactions to relationships, we are building new networks to create solutions to the hunger problem.