Daily Bread Food Bank
STAR RATINGCi's Star Rating is calculated based on the following independent metrics: |
✔+
FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY
Audited financial statements for current and previous years available on the charity’s website.
A
RESULTS REPORTING
Grade based on the charity's public reporting of the work it does and the results it achieves.
Good
DEMONSTRATED IMPACT
The demonstrated impact per dollar Ci calculates from available program information.
NEED FOR FUNDING
Charity's cash and investments (funding reserves) relative to how much it spends on programs in most recent year.
86%
CENTS TO THE CAUSE
For a dollar donated, after overhead costs of fundraising and admin/management (excluding surplus) 86 cents are available for programs.
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OVERVIEW
About Daily Bread Food Bank:
Daily Bread Food Bank is a 5-star rated charity with Good demonstrated impact. It has above average disclosure with an A grade for results reporting. Its overhead spending and funding reserves are within Ci reasonable range.
A Charity Intelligence 2025 Top 100 Rated Charity.
A Charity Intelligence 2025 Top Impact Charity.
Founded in 1983, Daily Bread Food Bank distributes food across Toronto and supports a network of partner agencies. It also advocates for policy changes to address food insecurity. According to Daily Bread, more than 1 in 10 Torontonians relied on a food bank in 2025. The charity reports that food banks in the city recorded 4,124,313 visits in F2025, an 18% increase from the year before. Most clients cited the rising cost of living as a main reason for visiting.
Daily Bread Food Bank runs three programs: Food Distribution and Purchases, Agency Network Support, and Other Programs. In F2025, Daily Bread spent $34.7m on these programs and distributed $45.4m of donated food.
Food Distribution and Purchases accounted for $26.0m or 75% of program spending. Daily Bread uses this program to give out food across Toronto. In F2025, it gave out 37,714,295 lb of food across 3,760,888 client visits. Food included: 36% vegetables, 18% dairy, 16% grains, 13% meat and alternatives, 12% fruit, and 4% other items.
Agency Network Support made up $6.9m or 20% of program spending in F2025. Daily Bread uses this program to provide food and grants to 144 member agencies. In F2025, the charity granted $5.1m to these agencies, which ran 214 food programs.
Other Programs made up $1.7m or 5% of program spending. This covered Kitchen, Research and Advocacy. Through Kitchen, the charity made 270,901 meals. Through Advocacy, it met with 43 officials and got 67 agency members to back a letter on school food.
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Results and Impact
Through its Food Distribution program, Daily Bread gave out 10 lb of food per visit. This is down from 11 lb per visit in F2024 and 11 lb per visit in F2023. The charity does not report unique client numbers for F2025.
Daily Bread helped win two policy changes through advocacy. In January 2025, Toronto declared food insecurity an emergency, after years of work with the charity. The federal government also created the Canada Disability Benefit in its 2024 Budget. Daily Bread led a long campaign with more than 40 partner groups to push for this. The benefit gives $6.1 billion to people with disabilities over six years. The government expects this will lift 25,000 of 600,000 eligible people out of poverty by 2028.
While Ci highlights these key results, they may not completely represent Daily Bread’s results and impact.
Ci has given Daily Bread a Good impact rating based on demonstrated social impact per dollar spent.
A Charity Intelligence 2025 Top Impact Charity.
A Charity Intelligence 2025 Top Canadian Impact Charity.
A Charity Intelligence 2025 Top 5 Toronto Impact Charity.
A Charity Intelligence 2025 Top 10 Impact: Canadian Food Banks.
Impact Rating: Good
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Finances
In F2025, Daily Bread received $88.7m of total revenues. Donations were $41.0m or 46% of revenues. Donated Food accounted for $45.4m or 51% of revenues. In F2025, the charity spent $34.7m on its programs. This was 80% of revenues less donated food.
Administrative costs were $1.3m or 2% of revenues (less investment income). Fundraising costs were $5.3m or 13% of donations. For every dollar donation to the charity 86 cents are available to go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range.
In F2025, the charity had $33.4m in cash and investments. Its funding reserves can cover a year of its annual program costs.
The charity also paid external fundraisers $105k who raised $192k in F2025. This equates to a cost of $0.55 for every dollar raised through external fundraisers.
The charity also paid professional and consulting fees of $1.2m. This is equivalent to 13% of total compensation of $9.3m in F2025.
Profile updated by Raihan Firosh on June 25, 2026. Comments and corrections may be forthcoming.
Financial Review
Fiscal year ending June
|
2025 | 2024 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative costs as % of revenues | 1.5% | 1.6% | 1.7% |
| Fundraising costs as % of donations | 12.9% | 13.3% | 13.1% |
| Total overhead spending | 14.3% | 14.9% | 14.8% |
| Program cost coverage (%) | 96.3% | 89.0% | 125.6% |
Summary Financial StatementsAll figures in $000s |
2025 | 2024 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donations | 41,033 | 36,216 | 31,369 |
| Goods in kind | 45,352 | 45,701 | 34,006 |
| Government funding | 39 | 110 | 128 |
| Fees for service | 73 | 58 | 26 |
| Investment income | 1,618 | 1,621 | 2,029 |
| Other income | 563 | 267 | 197 |
| Total revenues | 88,679 | 83,973 | 67,756 |
| Program costs | 34,718 | 34,598 | 26,830 |
| Donated goods exp | 45,352 | 45,701 | 34,007 |
| Administrative costs | 1,264 | 1,285 | 1,115 |
| Fundraising costs | 5,278 | 4,828 | 4,104 |
| Total spending | 86,613 | 86,412 | 66,055 |
| Cash flow from operations | 2,066 | (2,439) | 1,701 |
| Capital spending | 550 | 407 | 1,120 |
| Funding reserves | 33,445 | 30,800 | 33,689 |
Note: 1. CHANGES IN DEFERRED DONATIONS: Since Daily Bread follows deferred accounting, Ci adjusted donations for changes in deferred contributions to show financial information on a consistent basis. Changes in deferred contributions affected revenue by ($16k) in F2025, ($91k) in F2024, and $87k in F2023. 2. CHANGES IN DEFERRED CAPITAL CONTRIBUTIONS: Ci adjusted for changes in deferred capital contributions. This affected revenues by $218k in F2025, ($57K) in F2024, and ($70k) in F2023. 3. UNREALIZED INVESTMENT GAIN AND LOSS: Ci adjusted for unrealized investment gain and loss, affecting revenues by $244k in F2025, $250k in F2024, and $1.8m in F2023.
Salary Information
$350k + |
0 |
$300k - $350k |
0 |
$250k - $300k |
0 |
$200k - $250k |
2 |
$160k - $200k |
2 |
$120k - $160k |
6 |
$80k - $120k |
0 |
$40k - $80k |
0 |
< $40k |
0 |
Information from most recent CRA Charities Directorate filings for F2025
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Comments & Contact
Comments added by the Charity:
Food bank visits in Toronto have almost tripled since 2019, rising from pre-pandemic numbers of 60,000 client visits monthly to 171,631 in June 2022. Daily Bread in consultation with economists, the City of Toronto and internal forecasting team, anticipate that number rising to over 200,000 by the end of this fiscal year.
The Board of Directors, with Management, set an ambitious promise to the city that regardless of the number of people coming to food banks, 3 days’ worth of food weekly would be provided to each client. That promise has been kept through the pandemic despite the extraordinary growth in client visits, and food received by clients increased by 17%. Food purchases increased from $1.9M in 2019 to over $12M budgeted for fiscal 2022-23. In addition, $5.9M in new grants have been distributed to Daily Bread’s member agency network to build supply chain resiliency in community programs. Through these grants, agencies have been able to purchase additional food, appliances and even add storage solutions to their space, to help them better meet the needs in their communities. Over the next year an additional $4M in grants are expected to be distributed.
Our previous experience has shown that we have to prepare for the future, as much as we deal with the needs of today. We need to be strategic about how we utilize the reserve in order to address the expected growing need for our services within a challenging economic climate.
Historically, food bank visits continue to increase for at least two years following the start of a recession. Continuous impacts of the pandemic, the looming recession, rapidly rising inflation, and interest rate increases are combining for an unprecedented storm on top of a difficult situation.
Daily Bread’s Board of Directors monitor and oversee the financial reserves within their governance capacity to balance immediate food distribution and forecasted expenditures. The Board-approved strategic deployment of our reserve funds is forecasted to deplete our surplus reserves over the next 3.5 years.
LEARN MORE: Daily Bread 2023 Annual Report
Charity Contact
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: 416-203-0050